True, we’ve known about Google’s self-driving car for a while, as it offers rich fodder for Conan O’Brien. But this is the full enchilada. It’s even got luxuries like headlights!
Today, Google has unveiled the full, official prototype, and it’s really just a question of when it’ll start trying to sell them:
We’re going to be spending the holidays zipping around our test track, and we hope to see you on the streets of Northern California in the new year. Our safety drivers will continue to oversee the vehicle for a while longer, using temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn.
That’s code for “teaching it how not to run over small mammals and cyclists,” if you were wondering. By all accounts, Google is safety-obsessed for obvious reasons and is spending an enormous amount of time refining its hardware and software.
As for where said hardware and software might wind up… good question. While self-driving features are becoming more and more commonplace in cars, Google still has to fight the idea that when you drive, you are in control of your fate, instead of putting it in the hands of every idiot half-awake enough to fake competence at the DMV. Odds are pretty good that at first you’re largely going to see it in gated communities and small towns as a sort of public transit system for low-traffic areas.
Over time it’ll likely become more popular, as people get used to the idea. Eventually, we won’t drive our cars at all. No, we’ll put our fate entirely at the hands of robots that we get inside and that whizz around at speeds that would turn us to hamburger if said robot decided to go 95 mph into a pole.
Uh, Google? Could you maybe shut down that artificial intelligence lab before you roll this out?