The comments here are rather disappointing. It doesn't have manual controls? Well thats the point! I want to leave my crap in it and paint it some ugly color? Get with the times, young people already opt to not own cars. I can't double park in the city? Why are you imposing your steel box on people living in cities, many of which do not own cars and want walkable streets?<p>I mean, this is the news website for a startup accelerator. If you are on here, have some appreciation for <i>new ways of doing things</i>. To disrupt the status quo is the very goal. If you ask for perfection from day one, we will never get anywhere.<p>These cars have the potential to massively reduce traffic fatalities (one of the biggest remaining killers) and make cities useful again to the people that actually live in them.
It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like:<p>Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick someone up in a no-standing zone and a cop just pulled up behind you; moving the car to just the right spot so grandma doesn't have to walk any more steps than absolutely necessary; parking on a lawn for a party or concert; backing up to just the right spot so you can hitch up a trailer.<p>The list could go on forever, and that's the point -- you can surely automate away some of these tasks, but there is an infinite multiplicity of things that need to be done with a car, and having to point them out on a map in order to get the car to do them, or even use a joystick to do it, sounds like an obnoxious chore.<p>Edit: to those who disagree with me by pointing to a utopian future of car sharing for everyone and no one even being able to drive, that's fine I guess, but this seems to be suggesting that the very first generation of these will be without a steering wheel, when very few people will have these cars and all of the problems I listed will still exist. Even if your ultimate goal is for passengers to be completely dependent on the AI for navigation, that's just not going to be an option when these things roll off the lot as soon as 2016.
Given that they're capped at 25 mph, these are legally "low-speed vehicles", not cars, which means they're <i>way</i> less regulated.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-speed_vehicle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-speed_vehicle</a>
When the man with glasses gives his perspective, the enablement hits you. If you've any humanity, you feel the potential this technology brings to so many.
I think the biggest news was this sentence:<p><pre><code> If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years.
</code></pre>
This is the next step in their very slow but, apparently, very steady march towards real self-driving cars that anyone can buy.
Tesla (or insert company willing to go big on electric cars) and Google really need to team up on this. Self driving cars have the potential to completely do away with owning personal cars. Imagine a new public/private service that allows people to travel where & when they want without having to deal with the hassles or cost of owning a car. With the added centralization, the headaches that electric cars cause can be eliminated with a bit of logistics planning (cars are interchangeable so low battery cars can go straight to a charging station instead of wait for their owners to take them to one).
I feel as though they really havent embraced the driverless concept with their prototype.<p>Why have seats that are fixed and facing forward?
What about a couch?
Why is there a dash?<p>The people in the video are essentially watching the car drive itself, when they could be doing anything else.<p>There are probably a multitude of reasons why the things above are the way they are. However, the prototype seems like just another car to me.<p>Also, off-topic, but can we have a google/product launch video without the corny piano soundtrack.
It is easy to explain no manual control. Google will include insurance cost into the service itself. If there is any accident, Google's insurance plan will cover it. If there is manual control, the insurance cost will be a mess, since you have to factor in the driving record of the person who is in the car. This alone would be a show stopper.
I wonder whether they will first become available as a product that individual people can buy, or if Google will open some sort of service where you can sign up for a monthly "car plan" for X miles. Or maybe partner with a taxi company/Uber, where you pay per ride but the cars are driverless. I imagine all 3 models will be tried at some point, and it'll be interesting to watch their development and which one eventually dominates.<p>Also, commuting could be done so much more efficiently. Imagine a fleet of 1 person cars that pick you up in the morning, drop you off at a more central location (than your house), at which point you get on a higher capacity (driverless?) vehicle - bus or van maybe - for the trip into the city. And the bus unloads into another central area, with another bunch of small cars taking people to their offices. I'd use the bus if it never stopped, and that system would be almost as fast as driving yourself. Heck, it'd probably be much faster, because the hordes of people people sitting alone in their sedans would be consolidated and eliminate a lot of highway congestion. Not to mention cheaper, and better for the environment (less gas).<p>I haven't heard much about addressing the legal and regulatory issues driverless cars are going to have to overcome, does anyone have more information on that? Obviously something will have to be done for when the car wrecks or malfunctions and damages something.
This will eventually make non-automated driving sort of like a manual transmission (in North America) - something you get because you either specifically want one or because it's all you can afford (I'm probably way over-generalizing). Eventually, just like the automatic transmission, the self-driving car will be the default for most people.<p>I don't imagine that we'll get away from people who drive because they find it enjoyable any time soon.
This is going to change the world.<p>No more car insurance. Vastly fewer driving fatalities. Shared cars. Less parking problems.<p>I can't wait. Just take my money already.
One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D<p>I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph forever and will tell my grandchildren there was a time when you actually could drive a car yourself!<p>And to those that argue young people don't want to own the car - it's mostly about not wanting to spend your life commuting, hunting parking spots or in traffic jams, and frankly, daily driving to work in the States is as boring as it can get.<p>I don't own a car, I rely on public transport which is usually faster in European cities than driving your own car, allowing me to work on a lot of stuff while traveling. Whenever I need I rather rent a car - it's newer, serviced, no hassles and I can try different cars at will. From that point of view self-driving vehicle is wonderful (if it becomes eco-nomical/logical), though as a car-geek and F1/CART fan I really love to drive for pleasure.
Looks like it has no trunk, which is a huge use case for self-driving cars. How many trips do you make just to move things around? How much of what you own would you rather rent if you could have it delivered within 15 minutes? Then there's the economics of prepared meal delivery... I'll be surprised if passengerless cars don't outnumber passenger cars in 20 years.<p>As for moving people, a significant part of city bus fares goes to driver salaries. And other vehicles tend to avoid buses / don't rely on making eye contact with bus drivers. And buses follow predefined routes. So it's surprising to me that Google is going for private cars instead of city buses as a first market.
The video shows a rotating camera at the top of the car that's scanning for objects (I guess). What's the advantage of a mechanical rotary movement over an array of cameras that give a continuous 360 degree view (e.g. the street view cars)?<p><i>Update</i> :
Found a link : <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402516,00.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402516,00.asp</a>
In an interview last week, Stuart Woods, the executive vice president of Velodyne, which manufactures the LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) rotating module that sits atop Google's autonomous vehicles, said that his company has started developing prototype security systems that could be trialed within the next year. The Velodyne LIDAR HDL-64E and HDL-32E modules use an array of either 64 or 32 lasers to electronically "see" the environment, Woods said. On Google's car, the module is set inside a rotating drum. Its lasers complement Google's own mapping software and GPS data, which help orient the car on the road. The LIDAR provides additional positional data, but also identifies other cars, bicycles, pedestrians, and road hazards.
<a href="https://maps.google.com/locationhistory" rel="nofollow">https://maps.google.com/locationhistory</a><p>right now google already knows where we have been; with the car they will know where we are going to;<p>The car as a tracking device, pure genius.
So far Google's self-driving cars have been designed to have the driver take over in certain situations. I wonder how that works without a steering wheel and pedals. Are the cars manually drivable at all?
In Amsterdam, I'm a big user of car2go.<p>These are little electric smart cars which you can rent by the minute. For times when I don't have my bike nearby, or the public transport is not handy.<p>These are basically little smart cars which drive themselves, which would be perfect.
Will there come a time when you can just cross the road whenever you choose knowing that all traffic will stop, without fail, automatically?<p>I think the driverless car will actually make more of a difference to the typical pedestrian than the typical car occupier.
I'm thinking about this basic idea: We have, in this case, a machine that is doing the job that a human driver would do - A machine replacing a man.<p>My question is: Should we be happy about this? Or should we be sad?<p>This time, we have a machine replacing a driver. In the future we may have machines replacing teachers, doctors, carpenters, artists... even lovers and machine makers.<p>So, my question remains: Should we be happy? Or should we be sad?<p>Normally, in science fiction movies, when the machines become intelectually smarter than humans, they try to destroy humanity.<p>But if, in the real world, they just become smarter than us, and just replace us in every activity. Then, what would we do?
Personally, I find it disappointing that this is perpetuating the inherent inefficiencies of the car concept, carrying a small number of people, usually a single person. The ultimate end game where cities are full of autonomous taxi vehicles that aren't owned, but paid for by usage makes sense though. You fire up an app / web link or SMS and a car appears within 5 minutes, drops off someone else and takes you on your way. Provided folk don't leave too many empty beer cans in the back seat...
It seems like they would eventually have a four-seater version but the bench seats could face each other.<p>What a simple thing but so different. Maybe like suicide-doors used to be common in the US but they're such a novelty now.
Can't wait till these work on country roads!<p>Would really free me up from living in the city I work. Can get work and other things done on the commute to work. Or live miles away and telecommute work most days then travel overnight whilst sleeping for times I need to be in the office.<p>Best yet, I can go on nights out without worrying about driving home / paying taxi.<p>The other maniacs and safety of country roads has always put me off commuting from rural areas, but this really changes that!
<i>They won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal… because they don’t need them.</i><p>I like the self-driving prototype. But this comment brings to my mind a situation where police operators or organized crime override the car's controls and reroute it to an alternative destination. A manual override, perhaps no more than an emergency brake, would be really nice if you thought something weird was going on.
One question I'm curious about is whether or not we will shift to having seats in a different configuration such as having people sit facing each other. Furthermore I'm curious what factors will contribute to one configuration over another.<p>factors that may matter:
(1) safety<p>(2) situational interaction (meeting, road trip with family)<p>(3) social norms (what are we used to. e.g. the french sit next to each other in cafes, but americans sit across from each other)<p>(4) motion sickness<p>(5) ???
It will be good if we can see these cars tested on the streets here in India. India is an amazing test bed for this kind of an application. Narrow roads, haphazard traffic, undisciplined crowd and driver behavior, kids playing on the roads, obstructions, potholes, animals on the roads etc etc.<p>This will make an amazing place to test this set up.<p>Plus India is an amazing business opportunity, given the overall scale of the economy here.
>They won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal… because they don’t need them. Our software and sensors do all the work<p>This sounds amazing.
I think Google could reach their goal faster if they started with more controlled environments - such as baggage vehicles at airports or mining trucks. There are plenty of people in my part of the world who are paid six figures to drive a truck up and down the same road of a mine all day.
The biggest problem I see here is that if all cars on the road were self driving then you have more control. The issue is when you mix human behaviour and error into the mix. The first fatal or near fatal accident with self driving cars could be the end before it's even started.
Best part of the embedded video, and a moment sure to bring a smile to the engineer's faces is at 1:45. No amount of data can give you that sort of useful feedback.
I think many people against Google self-driving vehicle are worried about privacy issue. Well I say please bring out the self-driving cars asap.<p>IMHO, big part of the first wave of customers to buy self-driving cars will be older drivers who are not allowed (or choose to) drive on their own. My parents are able to drive on their around now but are already getting worried about the day when they can't drive around on their own. They would appreciate a self-driving car.<p>Only issue for google would be that they won't be providing any useful data to google with their destinations and they are not really online but oh well...
This warmed my heart. And thinking about it from a business perspective, not everybody needs to own their own self-driving car. Ie. it can self-drive itself home for use by the next person. Which means economically, the car price can be many multiples of the cost of current cars (imagine a $100k car that is shared between five families rather than five families each with their own car).
It's so cute! Look at it! It's even got a happy face! It's totally not a life-threatening robot of doom!<p>And it promotes family talking time! Just like fast food restaurants in recent episodes of Mad Men!<p>Sorry. It really is a slick ad for a neat product, I just can't resist noticing how they position it.
Forgive my crankiness, but: Does this say anything that the casual follower of self driving cars doesn't already know? All I got out of this was:<p>- Self driving cars would be awesome, for well known reasons.<p>- We have to use a lot of good sensors to make this work.<p>- It's an interesting problem.