However, as soon as you've said that, you now have a requirement that:
- There be a sober, competent, licensed driver in the vehicle
- There needs to be a reliable non-instantaneous handoff from the vehicle to the snoozing driver
- The driver is probably still ultimately responsible for actions taken by the vehicle
Don't get me wrong. I'll take a reliable highway autopilot system. But this does largely rule out many of the use cases that people are thinking about when they say self-driving car.
Kyle Vogt, YC alum and CEO of Cruise said on Monday "It's looking like months, not years, that we're going to have the first commercial production of driverless cars". They're pursuing robotaxis which won't have the option of allowing an occupant to take over.
The initial intent with Google's Koala cars in 2015 was to deploy them sans steering wheel, but they were thwarted by hamfisted regulation from California's DOT. That's expected to be revised before the end of this year.
Cruise is in San Fransisco and Phoenix right now, so as well known and controlled as driving pretty much anywhere in downtown SF is what we can expect, and that's not easy driving.
Another interesting thing Vogt said on Monday "Looking just at disengagements, if you extrapolate, based on past data, and using our internal metrics, we think we'll actually be in the number 1 spot in 3 to 6 months"
So at last report in December of last year, Waymo's test vehicles had 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles on average, which is impressive, but Cruise thinks they'll be beating that benchmark in very short order.
However, as soon as you've said that, you now have a requirement that:
- There be a sober, competent, licensed driver in the vehicle
- There needs to be a reliable non-instantaneous handoff from the vehicle to the snoozing driver
- The driver is probably still ultimately responsible for actions taken by the vehicle
Don't get me wrong. I'll take a reliable highway autopilot system. But this does largely rule out many of the use cases that people are thinking about when they say self-driving car.