There are fully self driving cars on the road today. They don’t have even close to global coverage, but empty cars are driving on public streets.
Extending these limited trials to every road in the world isn’t going to be fast, but a few cities with zero human taxi drivers could happen surprisingly quickly.
In the more advanced cities, self-driving taxis are here.[1] Shenzhen, where else? Watch it make an unprotected left turn through an intersection cluttered with motorcycles, tuk-tuks, cars, and a mobile crane.
WeRide has many videos of their self-driving cars. The production ones have no driver and are used on major roads. The experimental ones have a safety driver and struggle through urban villages with people, bikes, and cars all over the street.
I just came here to say that we already have autonomous "someone-else's" vehicles out there.
If you're in a bar and want to go back to your place, you call one if such autonomous vehicles. Or you want to go from home to work without needing to care about parking. They are called taxis.
I can imagine a self-driving taxi , for shared rides, that's designed for privacy , so you don't feel like riding with others, except for a bit of an extended trip.
I wonder why nobody have build such a car yet, but there's good likelihood it will happen in a huge self driving market.
Even if self-driving is AI complete , a taxi that knows how to self drive in the highway and easy areas of the city, but is remotely operated otherwise is extremely useful.
Add the ability to remotely drive a platoon of cars and it's even more interesting.
I'm sure self driving will happen. But on that hardware, in a short time, and it's going to pay for the cost of the car??? This seems quite unlikely to me.
Any early taxicab self-driving (e.g. no responsible operator present) is almost certainly going to be bristling with additional sensors for safety CYA.
I’ve been using self-driving cars for a while in SF. I just order one in the app, it comes, drives me to where I want to go. It’s like uber except that it’s for free (for now) and no driver.
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/cities-testing-self-driving...
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