Ready For a Self-Driving Car?

Altan

11 years ago

Ready For a Self-Driving Car?

As kids growing up with The Jetsons, many of us probably wondered if we’d see flying cars, robot maids and jetpacks in our lifetimes.

Well, guess what! The first flying car is already here. The Terrafugia made its debut at the New York Auto Show in 2012 to great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, it’s quite pricey — at $279,000, it doesn’t seem to be within the reach of an average consumer. But what about owning a self-driving car?

A Self-driving Volvo from the “Drive Me” project.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is developing technologies that allow cars to “talk” to each other – dubbed vehicle-to-vehicle communication or V2V systems. A number of states have already passed driverless car laws focused on testing. For several years, Google has been testing cars equipped with special sensors over thousands of freeway miles in California and Nevada. Major automakers are also testing their own models. In the news just this week, Volvo announced it has begun testing self-driving cars on city streets in Sweden.

A new study commissioned by Intel Corporation found that on average, half of Americans desire a driverless society, and want cities to “invest in smart infrastructures that would use and apply non-personal data from cars and buildings to improve quality of life for them and their community.” People seem to want this technology, so corporations are responding to bring it to them.

There are countless scenarios where a driverless car could provide real benefits and safety to drivers. One of the first users of Google’s self-driving car was Steve Mahan, who is 95% legally blind. With the help of laser range finders, radar, cameras, and inertia sensors, he was able to pick up his dry cleaning and go through a drive-thru restaurant for lunch. Do you enjoy drinking coffee and watching the morning news? How about a quick shave on the way to work? You can do all that in a self-driving car — interested?

At the same time, many experts are also very skeptical about safety issues and software and hardware reliability; they are urging caution. And, according to a study by the Eno Center, a self-driving vehicle would require added sensors, software, engineering and power and computing requirements that in today’s technology would cost about $100,000 per vehicle.

Still, get ready – self-driving cars are coming. Perhaps in the near future, the government might even step in and mandate that everyone drives an autonomous vehicle for reasons of public safety. It’s only a matter of time before an OEM or Google, develops safer technologies to the point where costs are reduced and these vehicles are widely accessible to the public. Do you think these smart vehicles will also be able to diagnose and repair themselves? It’s something to think about.