When I think of self driving cars I am not thinking of mere driver assistance features like pulling out of your garage, radar-assisted cruise control (all three of my Toyotas have that, by the way), keep in lane features, or parking features.
No, I am talking about the full monty: where a car can drive around town without any human inside AND without a steering wheel.
Thats what it will take to threaten the Uber drivers livelihood. We are a LONG way from being able to buy that kind of car for less than $40,000, which is what it would take too. Some of the insiders say were 15 years away from such a car. Some say even more.
There are HUGE challenges to having such a car driving around that simply havent been solved yet. Heres just some:
- Humans dont like programming their cars. Heck, most humans dont even like using Waze, which helps make your drive much nicer (by routing you around traffic accidents, warning you of objects in road, potholes, and stuff like that). My wife wont even use cruise control and we have really amazing cruise control systems in our Toyotas.
- We have thousands of social rules when it comes to cars. Think about it, when you are in a crosswalk you look at the eyes of the driver coming toward you to know whether or not she/he will stop. Thats just one rule. There are many, many, other rules and we dont yet have a car that communicates with other drivers, or pedestrians, in any real way.
- We dont have sensors that work in all situations. Last February I drove in a heavy snowstorm where I could hardly discern where the lane was. Yes, I know, that was stupid of me to do, but sensors simply arent good enough to withstand those kinds of situations yet.
- Our current compute power isnt good enough. In China recently my driver went through a crowd of hundreds of people. Our current systems cant handle that kind of complexity right up close to the car. How did our driver handle it? By relying on social rules. Going slow, honking, and watching for people who werent paying attention. The people working on these technologies say thats just too complex for our current systems.
- Maps arent good enough. Next month Ill be headed to Seattle to see Here Maps (formerly Nokia/Navtek/Microsoft map team). They are building new maps specifically for self driving cars. Why arent current maps good enough? They arent accurate enough, they dont have all the signage on them. They havent yet figured out where all the potholes are and arent updatable easily enough by sensors being driven around.
- People arent ready for these kinds of cars. We all say we are, but, really, we arent even close to the place where wed trust our kids in one of these yet. Just trusting my Toyotas radar-assisted cruise control took me a few hundred hours. No one has had the kind of time we need to get comfortable with these cars to the level where well never need a steering wheel or human assistance. Not even Larry Page is that comfortable with them.
- Our laws arent ready for these cars. Heck, many states arent even allowing them to be tested (Virginia is one of the few states thats supporting their development because they know that the highly-educated geeks that these things bring to the state are great for its economy).
- Other drivers arent ready for these cars. They are gonna do weird things, at first. Like drive too slowly, or stop in complex situations and wait, or stop for kids who act like they are gonna run in front of the car. Fords head of safety told me that 80% of people who get into accidents dont apply full braking pressure. That wont be true in a self driving car. So, it will probably stop in time to avoid an accident but YOU WONT. Already Googles self driving cars have been hit several times from behind due to this problem. We need to have a few years of them on the road to completely get used to having no humans inside.
The insurance industry isnt ready for this yet, either. Neither are the police. The cartoon in the New Yorker that made fun of the cop who asks do you know why my car pulled your car over? is funny, but its funny because it hits on the truth that tons of things havent been figured out when it comes to insurance and who is to blame when things go wrong.
- Security. When I asked Mercedes why dont you allow over-the-air updates like Tesla does? Their answer showed they are afraid of hackers. They said they just dont want their brand to be dragged through the mud like Jeeps was by hackers who get access to these systems. How are you going to get conservative car companies over that fear? Many millions of dollars worth of software engineering and testing. How do you get the public over that fear? Years on the road without an incident. Lets be honest, my Toyota was broken into by a device built by a hacker. If car companies cant even properly secure vehicles yet, do we really trust them to build a car that can drive around?
Put these, and other issues into the mix and you see that true self-driving cars wont be here for many years. Oh, and even after they start arriving, it will be at least another 10 years before most of the cars on the road have these new features. Probably longer, especially in poorer economies.
Translation: Uber drivers? Your job is safe for now, but do start taking long-term steps to make sure you arent in that career a decade from now.
That all said, that doesnt take anything away from the driver assistance features that many cars, like Tesla and Mercedes (and my Toyotas), are getting. Just dont expect to see humans completely removed from the act of driving anytime soon.