Driverless Cars: You Heard It Here First

Lawrence D. Burns asks,in the Wall Street Journal and in his new bookAutonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car, why the major automobile companies ignored the technology that could create self-driving cars and are now playing catchup to Google:Early in 2011, two top engineers for Google traveled together to Detroit on what amounted to a diplomatic mission. They had just spent 18 months on a top-secret project called Chauffeur: the development of a car that could drive itself over 10 different 100-mile routes on public roads. Now they were looking for a partner to carry the project forward. “The idea was, if you’re going to make self-driving cars, you have to work with a car company,” recalls Chris Urmson, who made the trip with fellow engineer Anthony Levandowski. “Maybe they’ll sell us cars to build a fleet. Maybe we’re going to be retrofitting our stuff onto their cars t o sell.”But they couldn ’t find any takers.They might have been better prepared if they had read Cato analyst  Randal O ’Toole’s early warning, alsoin the Wall Street Journal but in early 2010:Consumers today can buy cars that steer themselves; accelerate and brake to maintain a safe driving distance from cars ahead; and detect and avoid collisions with other cars on all sides. Making them completely driverless will involve little more than a software upgrade.O ’Toole’s article was based on his bookGridlock: Why We ’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.  Reading his ...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 20, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs