Cars of the Future?

[longknife]

Okay, this along with joysticks. They don't include not needing to drive as roads contain data strips read by onboard computers.

Read article with links @ Your Future Car May Be A Living Room on Wheels ? ReadWrite

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd workin' on a remote controlled go-cart for Granny to ride...

A look at the roadblocks facing driverless cars
May 30,`14 ~ Google Inc. is pushing hard to bring cars driven by computers - not people - to market. To do so, the Silicon Valley giant first had to persuade states including California to pass laws legalizing the still-emerging technology. After all, a basic premise of driving is that a person controls the vehicle.

Though California's rules will go into effect in June 2015, barriers remain to the widespread availability of the cars of the future, whether made by Google or traditional automakers.

REGULATORY

California's Department of Motor Vehicles has until the end of the year to finalize rules for the public's use of driverless cars (there is a 180-day lag between then and when a car might be permitted to hit the road). That's plenty of time for regulators to include requirements that manufacturers consider onerous, and thus delay the debut of a driverless car. Safety is a paramount concern. How does the DMV know that a car's computers can't be commandeered by a hacker? More fundamentally, how does the DMV know that the car drives safely under a range of conditions?

BUSINESS

This week, Google said it plans to make 100 prototype driverless cars without steering wheels or pedals, and hopes to let select Californians use them once they have been tested for safety. But those cars have just two seats and max out at 25 mph. It's unlikely that Google will start mass producing full-sized driverless cars, at least not any time soon. While major automakers are accelerating the development of self-driving technology, none has publicly discussed the release of a fully driverless car before 2020.

TECHNOLOGICAL

So far, Google has taken Toyota Priuses and Lexus SUVs and outfitted them with cameras, radar and laser sensors, and computers - all to see and react to other cars, pedestrians and bicyclists. Those vehicles have driven more than 700,000 miles. In April, Google said they are starting to master the complications of city streets (initially, Google sent them along freeways, which are more orderly and thus easier for the cars to navigate). But they are far from perfect. Google isn't fully confident they can drive themselves in rain or fog - and they've never driven in snow. They don't turn right on red. And they only can go on roads or freeways that Google has charted in far greater detail than the maps found on its public site.

AP Newswire | Stars and Stripes

See also:

How Google got states to legalize driverless cars
May 30,`14 -- About four years ago, the Google team trying to develop cars driven by computers - not people - became convinced that sooner than later, the technology would be ready for the masses. There was one big problem: Driverless cars were almost certainly illegal.

And yet this week, Google said it wants to give Californians access to a small fleet of prototypes it will make without a steering wheel or pedals. The plan is possible because, by this time next year, driverless cars will be legal in the tech giant's home state. And for that, Google can thank Google, and an unorthodox lobbying campaign to shape the road rules of the future in car-obsessed California - and maybe even the rest of the nation - that began with a game-changing conversation in Las Vegas. The campaign was based on a principle that businesses rarely embrace: ask for regulation.

The journey to a law in California began in January 2011 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Nevada legislator-turned-lobbyist David Goldwater began chatting up Anthony Levandowski, one of the self-driving car project's leaders. When talk drifted to the legal hurdles, Goldwater suggested that rather than entering California's potentially bruising political process, Google should start small. Here, in neighboring Nevada, he said, where the Legislature famously has an impulse to regulate lightly. It made sense to Google, which hired Goldwater. "The good thing about laws is if they don't exist and you want one - or if they exist and you don't like them - you can change them," Levandowski told students at the University of California, Berkeley in December. "And so in Nevada, we did our first bill."

Up to that point, Google had quietly sent early versions of the car, with a "safety driver" behind the wheel, more than 100,000 miles in California. Eventually, government would catch up, just as stop signs began appearing well after cars rolled onto America's roads a century ago. If the trigger to act was a bad accident, lawmakers could set the technology back years. Feeling some urgency, Google bet it could legalize a technology that though still experimental had the potential to save thousands of lives and generate millions in profits. The cars were their own best salesmen. Nevada's governor and other key policy makers emerged enthusiastic after test rides. The bill passed quickly enough that potential opponents - primarily automakers - were unable to influence its outcome.

Next, Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles had to write rules implementing the law. At the DMV, Google had an enthusiastic supporter in Bruce Breslow, then the agency's leader. Breslow had been fascinated by driverless cars since seeing an exhibit at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Seeing a career-defining opportunity, Breslow shelved other projects and shifted money so he wouldn't have to ask for the $200,000 needed to research and write the rules. At first, DMV staff panicked - they only had several months to write unprecedented rules on a technology they didn't know. But Google knew the technology, and was eager to help. "Very few people deeply understand" driverless car technology, said Chris Urmson, the self-driving car pioneer lured from academia who now leads Google's project. Offering policymakers information "to make informed decisions ... is really important to us."

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[Politico]

The only things I see in my future are exhaust belching big blocks. And a lot of beating assholes who hit me in their Google cars.

 

[priceless]

Driverless cars will probably not grow popular until driverless delivery drones have been operating successfully for a while. Amazon's air-delivery drones were an unpopular prospect because of all the public paranoia about privacy-protection and airborne terrorist threats but small delivery drone-scooters are likely to emerge shortly since they will save fuel and road-space by operating in shoulder/bike lanes. People will complain about them destroying jobs until they realize that it will give people jobs to load, maintain, and manage drone fleets.

 

[Pogo]

I hate this idea. Seems like yet another technological jiggery-pokery designed to isolate humans more and more away from our own world.

I never get into a car thinking "I need to drive to ___". I get in thinking "I get to drive".

 

[TheOldSchool]

Damn many people are going to load up their cars with kegs and doobies and say "Car! Drive me to the coast!"