I think with something like this, if it isn't Google then it will be one of the large car manufacturers first.
I just don't see a random company popping out of nowhere and bringing something like this to the market as the costs involved in the production are going to be huge.
I don't think Google has a decade ahead of anyone in self driving cars. The AI technology and datasets are shared pretty liberally and as soon as someone makes a breakthrough, everyone can replicate it. It's much closer to fashion than rocket design in that sense.
Google will be the first but I expect many to follow suit. Maybe if Google pulls another Android move and open-sources the driving tech, they could possibly gain 90% of the market share by making it less interesting to develop competing technologies.
But look at other AI fields - speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing - they are in the open and all improvements quickly circulate.
That's what I've been wondering. I know VW, Daimler AG, Toyota, Volvo, BMW, and others have making pretty good strides in self driving tech, but it seems most American car companies are pretty far behind already. I wonder if Google intends to license the tech out to the companies who can't or won't do it themselves, or if they decide to pull a Motorola and enter the manufacturing market at some point in the future.
In the article there is this idea that Google will get auto makers to actually make cars that use Google technology - a bit like the 'Android' model in a way, co-opt everyone except 'Apple' and 'Microsoft'.
This contrasts with the Elon Musk attitude where the auto makers can be consigned to the dustbin of history - there isn't going to be some hideous GM/Chrysler/Ford effort 'powered by Tesla technologies' because at heart Elon Musk really does not want to do business with them.
As I understand it there are many companies working on the self driving car with all of Google's rivals going for an iterative approach, e.g. a car that can stay in lane, park, not go over the speed limit or hit the car in front. However, this is not 'driving', i.e. in a city with lots of pedestrians around. Only Google are going for the everything always automated being the product, the rivals are going for just the 'easy' bits with a view to adding the features later. The problem with this later approach is that people expect the car to do all of the driving, they get their phones and laptops out, hence, when they have to take the wheel they are not exactly prepared for it. So the Google approach is better.
If I was CEO of Hyundai (or any other manufacturer) I would just wait for Google to launch 'Android for cars' and go with that rather than do the Volvo/BMW/Mercedes iterative approach.
Yeah, absolutely, huge credit to Google if they do put a self-driving car on the customer market. I was just responding to parent's question about the last truly exciting thing that was being tested in the real marketplace, which I felt trivialized existing technology and somewhat implied only Google is working on new automobile technology these days.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the big car manufacturers put a self-driving car on the market before Google. For instance, the car in the video looks much more like an actual product than the Google car, with it's spinning radar on top.
Google's spent a lot of money in a lot of different areas, but I haven't been terribly impressed by their output. Google glasses seems to be a good example about how they can excite people before release and then stumble when the product actually comes out (though this is an issue with a lot of tech companies).
I don't see what Google's role is going to be, aside from pushing forward legislation for unknown reasons. The auto manufacturers don't need them for the technology and research... they've all had access to that for just as long. We'd have self-driving cars today if the public (and regulators) were ready for it.
But they're not and aren't going to be overnight; what makes more sense is to gradually introduce the features a little at a time so that the move to complete autonomy is a small step instead of a leap. First, automatic parking. Then, collision detection warnings. Next, lane assist that steers you back into the lane when you drift. In the next few years, you'll start seeing "smart cruise control" that will drive for you on well-marked roads in mapped areas.
Just like TSLA is going to beat the big car companies at electric cars, so too will GOOG beat them at self-driving ones.
The electro-mechanical and mechanical aspect of a self-driving car is the easy part; it is the software that will be where the real innovation occurs, and Google has arguably more software expertise than any other organization on the planet, and much, much more than any car company.
But it leaves me deeply suspicious. Having some insight into what it took the team at Google to get theirs to work I find that unless GM starts with that team, and their patent portfolio, this will be be a longer term thing. I'd put money on a self driving car from someone before 2020 but 2015 seems a bit early.
In spite of Google's fudging the delicate bits (see my comment on the drive thru non-experience) they have done a tremendous amount of work that a car company would be hard pressed to duplicate quickly. That and Lidar or their functional equivalent systems are still darn expensive.
That being said, I think it is AWESOME that we've got a major car company putting this stake firmly in the ground. If nothing else it will motivate a response from the others.
Self-driving is an engineering problem so I think a good guess is that a strong engineering company will get it to market first: Google. If that happens, wouldn't Google just start their own ride-sharing service, and drop it right into google maps so customers never even try uber?
"Imagine a Tesla that was powered by a Google self-driving system."
That will NEVER happen. Ever.
Other car companies -- Mercedes, Audi -- are already ahead of Google on what matters; external packaging, car integration, and vehicle dynamics.
Just because Google can strap a 3-foot-tall spinning LIDAR to the top of an Lexus RX doesn't mean they have any sort of product ready to be put into any production car.
Oddly I'd trust Google more with a self-driving car than say Uber or Tesla. Kind of glad they're making progress and expanding. The industry as a whole seems reckless to me tho.
You do realise that Google didn't invent self driving cars and that they aren't even leading the industry.
Mercedes Benz demoed the technology nearly 20 years ago and will be shipping cars along with Audi, Volvo etc en masse over the coming years. In fact every single notable car manufacturer has had their own program in place for decades.
in the form of airport shuttles between terminals maybe. but as great at tech as Google are, they haven't even thought about the real world issues. Even something as simple as who the technology puts out of work. And aside from the hn community who aren't even all for this, I wonder if this is something that regular people even want. if they don't the economics wont work out. you need mass demand to drive down price, and i am not sure there is mass demand.
I bet the next quarter century will see this come to high end cars, not as self-driving, but as augmented safety, like a glorified cruise control that tracks other vehicles, intervenes when the driver is txting and fails to notice the cars in front are stopped, that kind of thing. Then very slowly the car will take on more and more of the role of driver and the cars the tech is installed in will eventually make its way down to the family Honda and computer augmented driving will be the norm. But that's probably mid century.
Their car will be a failure/footnote. Car manufacturers are already doing far more interesting things than Google is in the space. While Google is obsessed with replacing human drivers, and telling people to just trust the car, companies like Volkswagen have worked on self-driving UI that works with the user, telling them before the car makes a maneuver and such. While Google hasn't tested in snow, other car makers (like Ford) have.
Google's really only power in the self-driving car space is that Google is rolling out Apple-level marketing on the topic. People associate "self-driving car" with "Google" by default, because that's where all the media hype is.
But when it comes down to market time, car manufacturers know how to make cars. They know how to make vehicle interfaces people are comfortable and familiar with. They know how to built reliable, relatively bug-free products that don't need a software update every week to work correctly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
I think with something like this, if it isn't Google then it will be one of the large car manufacturers first. I just don't see a random company popping out of nowhere and bringing something like this to the market as the costs involved in the production are going to be huge.
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