Google Reveals Its Electric Self-Driving Car Prototype

[Shdwrnr]

Will it take me to the presidium? I have an appointment with the asari consort.

 

[Strazdas]

I would want a manual ovveride just because of other drivers. a robot can anticipate traffic, it cant anticipate lunatics controlling other vehicles. sometimes you have to break the rules to avoid some idiot crashing into you and killing you. a robot does not have such cognition.

of course there will be the dirty hipster who will get one ironically because driving is too mainstream.

Or me. I think driving is a chore and is necessary to go from point A to B. if possible, i prefer train or bus, that way at least i can spend that time productively, like reading a book. if my car drove itself i would be enjoying driving much more. Or, rather, not driving but being driven. the comfort of personal car without the chore of having to actually drive it.

ahem...you could, one supposes, crawl into this thing completely rat arsed after a night out and say "[small]hoooome[/small]" and it would drive you home...legally...and without giving you a hard time for making a mess of the upholstery and/or waking it up at 4am...i predict widespread alcoholism as a societal result

so i guess i will stop getting free rides then. you know, when we organize an out of town party i always get a free ride there because i dont drink so im able to drive the person home when hes shitfaced after the party, thus i end up spending nothing on travel.

I question how these'll be paid for, since I doubt Google's doing this for free. Cities buy them, then raise taxes? Or what?

who pays for your car? thats right, you guessed it, YOU DO.

Also, as the world is largely market driven (forgive the pun) it won't happen. People like cars, they like them enough to spend ridiculous amounts of money on them, all over the world. You won't get people to give them up

if i could exchange my current car into self driving one now i would do it without a second thought (assuming the self driving one is fully functional of course).

I'm more interested in what this would do to the economy. Cab drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, etc... Just what we don't need is 10 million more unemployed people.

lets bash these assembly lines because they are better and more people would have work if we did everything by hand
-workers at the turn of industrial revolution

Except that logic is flawed as it does not allow progress. no, we dont need 10 million people being cab drivers. very much rather we had them working something more useful. Oh and yeah we can easily lower working hours per month AND keep same pay per month. they 1% would get less rich, yes, but thats not a problem at all.

And I know it's a prototype but Google has how many designers in it's employ? They still would have paid someone with a design degree to come up with that initial look. The only way I can make sense of this is by assuming the marketing department got involved and decided to make it look as ridiculous as possible to grab everyone's attention.

a prototype is supposed to be functional, not to be good looking. thats why many prototypes you see are bare bones most of the time. prototype often does not reflect final looks at all.

I would not trust that thing. What if something happens and it gets out of control? I wouldn't get in unless it had a manual override.

what if a person gets angry and gets out of control? a machine is less likely to get out of control than a human.

 

[lunavixen]

yyyyyyeah... I wouldn't get in it, I'd much rather drive myself. Especially since there are no manual overrides or backup controls, I mean, it's not a bad idea and certainly has potential, but I can't really see it going into widespread use yet.

ever been on a plane ? or a train ? or a ship ? you've probably already been conveyed somewhere by "a robot".

They have manual overrides and backup controls, all of those vehicles also have pilots/drivers who maintain control of the vehicle, automatic control is mostly (and pretty much only) used in emergency situations.

 

[Strazdas]

There are a lot of issues this brings up.

lets try to resolve them then.

1) For this to even be a viable option there is going to have to be Billions upon Billions of dollars spent in infrastructure for these things. They cant just use the roads we use for manual cars. Considering there are still parts of the U.S. that dont have internet, computer cars are a long freaking ways away.

this is prototype proof of concept. duh, of course its a long way off. as far as billions upon billions, we already spend that in current road infrastructure, and US spends FAR FAR more on military than that. its not like you lack money, what you lack is will.
And these cars can use existing roads if they are using sattelite signals to see where they are. and there is always sattelite signals on the roads. your phone has a reciever strong enough to contact them, car is certainly going to.

2)For this to be useful as a normal travel vehicle it would have to cover EVERYWHERE. As it stands, at most it would be useful for drunk people to get home, basically just replacing taxis. And if thats it then whats the point? There is already trains and buses and taxies, why do we need this if thats all its going to be used for?

coverage is going to be a problem, but just like GPS, navigation is almost everywhere now. true coverage in rural areas can be a problem however this is going to be more than buses and taxis. its also going to be much cheaper than overpriced taxis we got now.

3) How would it handle things like tolls or tickets at parking decks?

Wifi?

[qoute]4)In my case, My truck goes into places that arent normally accessed by cars. How could I do this with a computer car?[/qoute]
That is a fair concern and would need a solution such as setting manual route.

5)What happens to recreational vehicles like 4 wheelers or motorcycles?

Nothing, i guess. there is going to continue being stupid people who are going to risk their lives driving these.

6)If you have to call this thing every time you need to go somewhere, how long would it take to get to your house? Otherwise you would have to buy a personal one. How would that work? How expensive would that be?

you have to call a taxi if you wnat to go home now as well. or buy a personal car. that is expensive. its really not much of a difference.

7)What happens to all the manual cars?

they would become obsolete for daily use and only enthusiasts continue using them?

I vote we actually educate people on driving skills instead of the laughable system we have now.

100 years of driving history has proven to us that its impossible to both educate people on driving skills and allowing acess to cars to more than a chosen few. as long as we got a "anyone can get a license" system this is not possible. because "Anyone" cant drive.

 

[Verlander]

People like cars, they like them enough to spend ridiculous amounts of money on them, all over the world. You won't get people to give them up

People love horses. They love them far more than they love cars. They spend much more ridiculous amounts of money all over the world. But by and large, they do not ride them to work.

Convenience wins markets. Handily.

Not even close! What metric did you use to come up with the statement that people love hoses more than cars? Sorry, but that's the silliest comparison. There are horse lovers dotted around, as well as a large portion of preteen girls, but even they don't prefer them as a reliable mode of transport. It's like saying people prefer BMX's (which, incidentally, there are probably more BMX lovers in the world than horse lovers). Also you're suggesting that the love of horses and cars is mutually exclusive - every family in the west that owns a horse owns a car, bar perhaps the very rare exception. Horses are recreational, cars are useful.

Convenience is important for sure. Self driving cars aren't any more convenient than normal cars - you still need to store them and keep them fuelled. The only convenience is "not driving it" which would leave more than a few people nervous. They haven't even managed to create a satellite navigation system that can keep up with roadworks or new roads. The infrastructure upheaval that would be needed to make this viable would be prohibitively expensive, and for nothing. The current system isn't broken, and the bits where it's failing can be resolved more cost effectively. Convenience doesn't win markets, profit does.

 

[Kaymish]

this is great we HAVE to get people out from behind the wheel AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people cant drive i do heaps of traveling for my job and the amount of stupid stuff people do is beyond me
though nothing is with out its flaws and i can see this going the most screwed up route everywhere there better be an option to tellit how to get some where because i have had GPS units take the most weird and roundabout routes probally because they dont have human intuition
but that is a small price to pay to get the idiots out of the driving seat and a safer road network for everyone

next thing is to get rid of cyclists or write some legislation so they have to obey the road rules too

 

[Raziel]

I'm more interested in what this would do to the economy. Cab drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, etc... Just what we don't need is 10 million more unemployed people.

lets bash these assembly lines because they are better and more people would have work if we did everything by hand
-workers at the turn of industrial revolution

Except that logic is flawed as it does not allow progress. no, we dont need 10 million people being cab drivers. very much rather we had them working something more useful. Oh and yeah we can easily lower working hours per month AND keep same pay per month. they 1% would get less rich, yes, but thats not a problem at all.

And just what more useful work do you think there is? Last time I checked there was no brand new industry looking to hire millions of people.

Sure we could absolutely share the business profits more equally so everyone worked less for more money. But in what world do you think thats going to actually happen? Whats going to happen is bottom wages are going to drop even lower because there will be so much more competition for any job that business can do whatever the hell they want. You see this clearly right now. Most any min wage job pays only 15-20 hrs and week, and forces you to work off the clock. And that trend is spreading to what used to be good jobs. I have relatives that are nurses in hospitals, all the nurses there (thousands of them) are now on 3 12 hr shifts MAX. There are no full time nurses aside from management. And if there are not enough patients that day nurses are told not to come in. A 3rd of their weekly pay, just gone at any random time. And this is still one of the best jobs available were I live.

For my entire life productivity has been sky rocketing. More stuff is made more cheaply now by fewer people than in any time in human history. And whats happened? Average household income for middle and lower class families has steadily decreased adjusted for inflation.

And its even worse than that. When my father graduated high school a high school diploma was enough to get a job that not only paid well enough to have a family it also came with benefits. Now you have to have a college degree for that. So you start out with tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt to pay off and only 27% of people with degrees actually get jobs in their field. So a huge portion of people who take on that debt don't even get jobs that let them pay it off. 53% of college grads are unemployed or underemployed. So getting a degree is no guarantee of success. Its actually a huge gamble of time and money that could leave you way worse off than just getting that retail job without a degree.

 

[briankoontz]

So what happens when someone hacks the programming?

 

[Ragnar47183]

There are a lot of issues this brings up.

lets try to resolve them then.

1) For this to even be a viable option there is going to have to be Billions upon Billions of dollars spent in infrastructure for these things. They cant just use the roads we use for manual cars. Considering there are still parts of the U.S. that dont have internet, computer cars are a long freaking ways away.

this is prototype proof of concept. duh, of course its a long way off. as far as billions upon billions, we already spend that in current road infrastructure, and US spends FAR FAR more on military than that. its not like you lack money, what you lack is will.
And these cars can use existing roads if they are using sattelite signals to see where they are. and there is always sattelite signals on the roads. your phone has a reciever strong enough to contact them, car is certainly going to.

Nononono. We dont have the money for it. Who do you think will pay for it? You think the government would? What politician would say, "I want to replace the roads and put millions of people out of a job so we can have these cars!" I dont even know why you think we have the money for that when we dont even have the money to keep the roads we have fixed.

They CAN NOT use existing roads unless manual drivers would no longer be using them. Also you apparently have never been outside of a major city. You can't get a sattelite signal anywhere, you cant even get SATELLITE signals everywhere. Not even close.

2)For this to be useful as a normal travel vehicle it would have to cover EVERYWHERE. As it stands, at most it would be useful for drunk people to get home, basically just replacing taxis. And if thats it then whats the point? There is already trains and buses and taxies, why do we need this if thats all its going to be used for?

coverage is going to be a problem, but just like GPS, navigation is almost everywhere now. true coverage in rural areas can be a problem however this is going to be more than buses and taxis. its also going to be much cheaper than overpriced taxis we got now.

Yes its going to be a huge problem outside of metro cities. The price difference remains to be seen and is just speculation at this point. Im not sure it would be cheaper.

3) How would it handle things like tolls or tickets at parking decks?

Wifi?

What does that even mean??

[qoute]4)In my case, My truck goes into places that arent normally accessed by cars. How could I do this with a computer car?[/qoute]
That is a fair concern and would need a solution such as setting manual route.

The ability to manually drive a car would defeat the purpose things like this are trying to achieve. (I.e. to take human error mostly out of the equation) But it brings up issues like this and things like emergency vehicles; how would they be able to get where they need to be when often they are required to drive off road, or navigate damaged sites. Which brings up another issue, lets say a river floods and covers the bridge. Would the car be able to detect this water and stop and find a new way or would it just keep going because it wouldn't have a sensor for water?

5)What happens to recreational vehicles like 4 wheelers or motorcycles?

Nothing, i guess. there is going to continue being stupid people who are going to risk their lives driving these.

Right. Everyone who rides recreational vehicles are stupid. Guess im stupid then. But either way, you cant have man controlled vehicles mixed it. It makes to many variables and I doubt a computer controlled car would be programmed to have contingencies for every single situation.

6)If you have to call this thing every time you need to go somewhere, how long would it take to get to your house? Otherwise you would have to buy a personal one. How would that work? How expensive would that be?

you have to call a taxi if you wnat to go home now as well. or buy a personal car. that is expensive. its really not much of a difference.

You can pick up a cheap personal car for a few grand. Youre telling me this thing would be anywhere in the ballfield of a few grand? I have a personal vehicle because I dont live in a metro city. Public transit is near impossible here. There are many people out there that have the same issue and cant afford expensive new cars. What are they going to do? Call one of these things and pay outrageous amounts of money every time you need milk or have to go to work or anything at all? Again, this is only viable for people living in places like Atlanta or New York.

Nevermind the fact that I actually meet clients using my truck. How would something like this change my ability to give an estimated time? How much time would I spend waiting around for a car to show up?

7)What happens to all the manual cars?

they would become obsolete for daily use and only enthusiasts continue using them?

Refer to above comments.

I vote we actually educate people on driving skills instead of the laughable system we have now.

100 years of driving history has proven to us that its impossible to both educate people on driving skills and allowing acess to cars to more than a chosen few. as long as we got a "anyone can get a license" system this is not possible. because "Anyone" cant drive.

Where do you live that everyone can get a license? Here you have to be 18, have to be able to see, have to past a written and driving test, cant have any medical conditions that would effect your ability to drive a car, and have to have a learners license for 6months before you can drive alone.

I suggest making the written and driven tests a lot more in depth and comprehensive.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Excellent, start replacing all the cars with these and outlaw the old pieces of junk, make this thing mandatory for everyone. You can also get rid of busses now, yay! And taxi driver is now a obsolete job, double yay!

It can't happen soon enough.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

 

[Ragnar47183]

this is great we HAVE to get people out from behind the wheel AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people cant drive i do heaps of traveling for my job and the amount of stupid stuff people do is beyond me
though nothing is with out its flaws and i can see this going the most screwed up route everywhere there better be an option to tellit how to get some where because i have had GPS units take the most weird and roundabout routes probally because they dont have human intuition
but that is a small price to pay to get the idiots out of the driving seat and a safer road network for everyone

next thing is to get rid of cyclists or write some legislation so they have to obey the road rules too

Yeah everyone is a stupid driver besides you huh? Funny how that works.

How about we improve our education system and process for getting license instead of going to this extreme?

 

[briankoontz]

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

That doesn't matter, as long as they are able to have equal income through some other dignified means. Since Google impacts everyone everyone should already be receiving compensation from the company (through tax redistribution), which should logically increase if Google's profits increase as a result of this.

The reason people are worried in the first place about technology displacing jobs is that governments are owned by high capital (corporations and banks), with the corresponding lack of taxation of corporate entities and distribution to humans. The solution then is not to refuse to allow technology to displace jobs but for humans to enforce proper taxation on the wealth of capital entities, so that people will be safe, secure, and have food on their plates regardless of their employment status.

There isn't a problem with Google becoming a galactic overlord as long as humanity as a whole controls Google. If control of Google is instead in the hands of a few fabulously wealthy individuals with lesser control in the hands of big investors and zero control in the hands of regular people, humanity won't survive the overlordship. While the few fabulously wealthy individuals see this as a solution, the members of the Escapist should view it as a problem.

 

[Ragnar47183]

bla bla

That's the price of progress baby! Pay it or get left in the dust of everyone who does.

Do you have any idea of how much money and lives you'd save?

Im all for progress but it has to be actual progress.

How you think this would save money at all is astounding. This would cost an outrageous amount of money.

As far as saving lives go, you may have less car accidents but putting thousands of not millions out of work would cost more.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

That doesn't matter, as long as they are able to have equal income through some other dignified means. Since Google impacts everyone everyone should already be receiving compensation from the company (through tax redistribution), which should logically increase if Google's profits increase as a result of this.

The reason people are worried in the first place about technology displacing jobs is that governments are owned by high capital (corporations and banks), with the corresponding lack of taxation of corporate entities and distribution to humans. The solution then is not to refuse to allow technology to displace jobs but for humans to enforce proper taxation on the wealth of capital entities, so that people will be safe, secure, and have food on their plates regardless of their employment status.

There isn't a problem with Google becoming a galactic overlord as long as humanity as a whole controls Google. If control of Google is instead in the hands of a few fabulously wealthy individuals with lesser control in the hands of big investors and zero control in the hands of regular people, humanity won't survive the overlordship. While the few fabulously wealthy individuals see this as a solution, the members of the Escapist should view it as a problem.

Because everyone knows that a company getting larger profits means bigger paychecks for its employees right? -.-.... Seriously this wont happen. Also how do you propose these people find alternative employment? How many jobs would this create compared to how many jobs are lost by its implementation?

So you propose the top 1% pay for everyone to live? Also what do you mean by 'lack of taxation of corporate entities?" last I checked my business is taxed damn near into the ground.

"Humanity controls Google" What the hell does that even mean. Do you understand how business works? Do you understand how life works in this day and age? I dont think you do....

 

[Qizx]

Excellent, start replacing all the cars with these and outlaw the old pieces of junk, make this thing mandatory for everyone. You can also get rid of busses now, yay! And taxi driver is now a obsolete job, double yay!

It can't happen soon enough.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

Taxi Drivers Yes
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)Maybe
Companies like Grey Hound Maybe
Emergency service drivers No. There will still be emergency vehicle drivers to get from A to B ASAP. Those will be manned.
Every car insurance company and the people their employees. No, these things will certainly have/need insurance as well.
By and large most car manufactures would close. Except the ones making these cars?
People that run any kind of driving courses. Yes.
Semi drivers Maybe, hard to tell if they'd automate those as well.
Most mechanics and repair shops Wut? Like seriously, wut? Are you saying these things won't ever need mechanical support? I didn't know the Jesus Car was coming out.
Most dealerships Cept the ones that sell automatic cars.
Things like Biker clubs/bars Cause people will stop going to them... They like the atmosphere they'll go for it.
Traffic guards Maybe?
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones. Possibly, I could see those still being around though.

All in all not THAT many jobs would be lost and of those jobs that would be lost they could go into another field. These are literally the same arguments that came from the argument against automation of factory lines.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Excellent, start replacing all the cars with these and outlaw the old pieces of junk, make this thing mandatory for everyone. You can also get rid of busses now, yay! And taxi driver is now a obsolete job, double yay!

It can't happen soon enough.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

Taxi Drivers Yes
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)Maybe
Companies like Grey Hound Maybe
Emergency service drivers No. There will still be emergency vehicle drivers to get from A to B ASAP. Those will be manned.
Every car insurance company and the people their employees. No, these things will certainly have/need insurance as well.
By and large most car manufactures would close. Except the ones making these cars?
People that run any kind of driving courses. Yes.
Semi drivers Maybe, hard to tell if they'd automate those as well.
Most mechanics and repair shops Wut? Like seriously, wut? Are you saying these things won't ever need mechanical support? I didn't know the Jesus Car was coming out.
Most dealerships Cept the ones that sell automatic cars.
Things like Biker clubs/bars Cause people will stop going to them... They like the atmosphere they'll go for it.
Traffic guards Maybe?
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones. Possibly, I could see those still being around though.

All in all not THAT many jobs would be lost and of those jobs that would be lost they could go into another field. These are literally the same arguments that came from the argument against automation of factory lines.

Why would companies pay for bus drivers or even have buses at all if these cars were around?

Wouldn't it be faster and safer to have an emergency vehicle operate with a computer to get to point b from a? Why would a person still be needed for this?

Why would these need insurance? Warranty from the manufacture yes but not insurance. They wouldn't have accidents like manned cars.

Thats why I said by and large. You think we would have as many car manufactures with these cars? Why? I dont see the reason or the ability for this to happen.

Why would they not automate semis? You think semis would be the only cars left manned for some reason?

Again "Most" is the key word here. Maybe read what is written before making a reply? You dont pay for taxi repairs. If you have one of these as a personal vehicle I am positive it would be sent back to the manufacturer or a technician would be sent out to repair it. Also its spelled 'what.'

Again keyword is "most"

Right. I want to hop in my computer car to go to a biker bar to remind me that I can't ride my bike anymore.

Why would we need traffic guards if cars arent human controlled?

What purpose would traffic lights and such be to a computer?

This is not the same as the assembly line. Not even close. The assembly line didn't require millions of dollars in infrastructure, The complete shut down of companies, or job loss on this scale.

 

[FPLOON]

So what happens when someone hacks the programming?

Blame Aiden Pearce?

OT: The more I think about this, the more I remember the first book of The Remnants[footnote]Wow... It's been a while since I've read THAT series...[/footnote], where you can drive manually if needed to...

Regardless, if this becomes really common to the point that anyone can own one, they're bound to be people complaining that they still have to get a driver's license just to own one of these kinds of vehicles... or that they can't be in one [alone] if their license was suspended or something like that...