The idea with autonomous driving technology is that, eventually, the driver will be removed from the equation to do whatever they want while their car drives itself. That vision, however, is decades away from becoming reality, if ever. Yet the Koch Brothers, the billionaire libertarian oil tycoons known for unleashing…
Earlier this year, California’s department of motor vehicles rolled out a new set of regulations for companies that want to conduct driverless car tests on public roads. But despite the painstaking effort that went into crafting the regulations, the DMV says there is one company in the state that’s allowed to test…
The fledgling autonomous car industry is facing intense scrutiny right now, after two crashes last month involving an Uber-owned autonomous car and a semi-autonomous Tesla Model X ended with fatalities. Nevertheless, California is laying out a framework for companies to legally pick up passengers in driverless…
California motorists could be sharing the road with fully driverless cars as early as April, under new regulations announced on Monday by the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
Google’s self-driving car unit already has driverless cars on the road as part of a pilot project. General Motors says it wants to have cars without a steering wheel or pedals on the road by next year.
With every day we seem to inch closer to fully driverless cars in series production, but it’s still not clear if they’ll ever fully displace human-driven cars. One of the more cogent takes on the issue comes from, of all places, Toyota’s factory race program in Japan.
While automakers and tech developers race to deploy fully-autonomous cars on the road, one question that’s still being worked out is who’s liable in the event of a crash. Google’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, delivered one possible answer on Tuesday: it’s teaming up with an insurance provider to cover everything from…
I know this is weird to talk about for car enthusiasts, but the U.S. Department of Transportation says it wants to move the nation toward a Zero Death Future, where traffic fatalities become relegated to history. In theory, this sounds nice; in practice, it’s probably impossible—unless there’s a ban on driving. So how…
More and more semi-autonomous cars cruise on the road every day, and yet the more time I spend testing these driver-assisted vehicles, the more I think that full autonomy may never, ever happen.
Depending on whom you ask, our driverless car future will happen in five or 10 or 20 years, but no one is certain exactly what that future is going to look like. It may have us all owning cars that pilot themselves; it may eliminate car ownership altogether and shift to an Uber-style on-demand model, or some…
Waymo, the self-driving car project launched by Google, spent last week showing off the company’s autonomous vehicles to reporters. Now, Waymo said Tuesday, it’s deploying driverless cars for testing in Phoenix as part of a pilot program. Cars without actual people in the driver seat. Driving people around. It’s wild…
Autonomy and electricity are the future of the car industry, but not for Rolls-Royce. See, Rolls-Royce customers should not have to sit in a driver’s seat and tap a steering wheel to tell a car they’re still awake. The thought of it is absurd. They have chauffeurs for that, so long as future generations learn how to…
Oh my, oh my. The day has come. An advisory body to the Australian government brought up the thing legislators will probably be debating until there are no longer steering wheels or pedals in road cars: whether people should be allowed to “drive” drunk or on drugs in an autonomous car.
Late last month, Chinese police arrested a (drunk) man who stood on top of a car that traveled about one-third of a mile in the city of Bengbu, according to The People’s Daily. I don’t know, maybe sticking his head out the window and drunkenly screaming for joy wasn’t good enough. But at least he looks proud.
Ohio’s banking on a $218 million “driverless car” highway to get techies out of sunny California and test their autonomous tech alongside cornfields, cows and Cedar Point.
Cars won’t just be driving themselves one day—they’ll be communicating things like traffic conditions and the weather with everything else around them. Connected cars will be masses of sensors and outpouring radio signals, but if carmakers aren’t careful, this data sharing will open itself up to hacks and cyber…
A story from Bloomberg this morning details one of the myriad issues that need to be addressed before driverless robotaxis can be deployed by the likes of General Motors and Uber: how to clean up a passengers’ puke. A start-up in San Francisco offers one idea—a 24/7 cleaning service—but I think there’s a much simpler…
At a hearing today, Republicans in Congress made clear they want to drastically increase the number of semi-autonomous and autonomous cars tested on American roadways. It’s a proposal that should make driverless car developers giddy but could potentially pose safety risks if not done correctly.
Congressional hearings tend to be dull, but it’s encouraging to see lawmakers actively approaching how to create legislation for self-driving cars. And while there’s considerable debate on how to do that, one industry panelist at a Senate hearing Wednesday offered a welcomed reality check: it’s going to take decades…
We’re barely a year removed from the fatal crash that killed Tesla owner Joshua Brown, whose semi-autonomous vehicle was traveling in its hands-somewhat-free Autopilot mode at the time of the accident. And still misleading bullshit about the current capability of autonomous tech continues to be floated: on Wednesday,…