Looong Road Ahead For Driverless Cars?

The driverless car canard literally runs over the chicken crossing the highway as Pollyanna auto industry finally admits the technology is nowhere near ready to push the metal to the pedal as once promised …

The WSJ tech report asked “When Will Cars Be Fully Self-Driving?” and most car enthusiasts won’t want to hear what three industry experts told them about the prospects for autonomous vehicles ... after all. It comes down to this: “After billions of dollars in research-and-development spending [not to mention PR & propaganda campaigns to back it up], the technology isn’t anywhere near the point where it needs to be to replace human drivers.” Some car companies & tech startups, we’re told, have even ”scaled back their ambitions or pushed out their timelines as a result.” Ford Motor Co & Volkswagen AG shut down their driverless-car company, Argo AI. Ford’s CEO Jim Farley went so far as to concede to analysts “we will have a very long road” to developing autonomous vehicles.

Finally, the federal regulators have taken notice and are “weighing in.” GM, for instance, is being investigated by fed safety authorities who want to know how & why several of its self-driving taxis caused rear-end crashes. Meanwhile, Tesla’s driver-assist technology also has been implicated in a number of incidents. One expert told the WSJ cars will not reach a fully self-driving status until “human-level AI” is reached “and there is no commonly accepted theory on how to get there.” Another expert was more blunt: “This may in fact never be possible – or, it is at least many years or decades away.” A politician in the trio of experts wondered if “the promise of full autonomy at a given time leads to unrealistic expectations” and should be looked at as being “incremental” in “nature.” Translated: Don’t hold your breath, bub.

Davd Soul