A product well past beta: The GOOG driverless car, equipped with LiDAR (that costs a steep $70K) can do almost everything a human can, and even better. It has navigated some of the most precarious streets (think Lombard Street in San Francisco), completed over 400,000 miles in test drives across most road conditions. YouTube videos show how the car self navigate across a four-way stop sign with pedestrians. Its nothing short of awesome. A year ago, this Google car drove a blind man to a drive-through restaurant and back. I am ready for this car - are you?
Think about the possibilities: Even as you get in the car, any morning, the car will know where I need to go (from my Google Calendar), alert me ahead of time if the freeway is congested (Google traffic), suggest alternate routes, even alert me of my favorite Blue Bottle Coffee when I am in the vicinity. My productivity during the drive time zooms, and I dont need to pay attention to auto-re routing. If my wife chooses not to drive, my daughter can be dropped off to school. The concept of a designated driver (for drunks and disabled alike) is liberating. Mother against Drunk Driving can declare victory and go home. Senior citizens struggling with parallel parking - sane drivers searching for parking - all of these change when the car's OS takes over. Its like trying to find empty space in your harddrive to save a file - we just dont do that! The OS does that. Not to mention the 1.2 million lives lost in accidents. One last thing - we wont need a drivers license.
Will legislation slow this machine down? Nevada and California have passed legislation to allow driverless cars. Michigan has introduced this legislation as well. But what would be even more fun is when the government clears lanes for driver-less cars. The Economist reported that the aerodynamic effects of road trains offer scope for even greater environmental gains: a 1995 study by the University of Southern California showed that they can improve fuel efficiency by up to 30%. Wouldn't it be cool if government were to designate lanes for driverless cars, similar to car-pool lanes?
The government is pushing the envelope on auto innovation but is it sufficient? The Brazil government wants all cars to transmit their make, model, registration number, age, fuel and engine power. This digital- mesh-activity is being tested at a larger scale in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where around 3000 cars have been fitted with two-way sensors to alert drivers: the ultimate goal being to provide a digital safety cocoon. I wrote in greater detail in MIT's Technology Review about how Ford is attempting to become a open-platform for cars, but Google has a significant step up. If I were Ford, I'd be knocking doors at Google's Mountain View HQ, trying to licensing the driverless technology to make sure it does not wipe me out.
Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder expects its autonomous driving system to be ready for the market in five years. If Google's bold actions are any indication, they will soon have flying cars (not hard to imagine, coupled with the developments in drones / UAV technologies). No software company or car company is thinking along these lines - case in point: Bill Gates quote in Wired magazine (April 2013) - "I feel sorry for Peter Thiel. Did he really want flying cars? Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another." And I thought Bill Gates admired the Wright brothers for having made the most remarkbale invention of the 20th century.
In sharp contrast, Google Ventures often says, when asked about such bold moves that "we would rather see a smoking crater in the ground than a mediocre result." Hallelujah to boldness in thought, action and innovation.
