Autonomous driving: we’re entering a new era
As it had announced through its movements in the job market, Google has closed the phase in which its division dedicated to autonomous driving was considered an experimental technology within Google X, and has launched a spin-off within Alphabet: the new company is called Waymo, and will market the vast experience accumulated in autonomous driving and speed up the arrival of such vehicles to the market, from the point of view it always held: that is not in the business of building cars, but building better drivers for them by relieving humans of the task of driving.
I think it is perfectly fair to attribute Google ushering in this new era: the company’s announcement in 2010 it was entering the field marks the moment when most people became aware of the possibilities of self-driving. Six years later, at least in terms of the technology, self-driving cars are ready to take the roads, with more than three million kilometers behind them already.
But Google’s spin-off is not enough in itself to mark the beginning of this new era: more evidence is required. Not that it is lacking: new entrants such as NuTonomy, which after entering the Singapore market, has begun tests in Boston, close to where it was incubated at the MIT. There is also the company created by Chris Urmson, the former director of Google’s initiative. And Uber, which announced the deployment of a fleet of autonomous Volvo XC90 in San Francisco. And of course there are traditional automotive players such as GM, which has revealed details of its autonomous vehicles strategy, while its CEO, Mary Barra, in a long and fascinating interview, speaks of a future within “five years in which we will see more changes than in the previous fifty” in an industry in which its business model will change drastically to offer services and supply fleets of vehicles that will have to be updated more frequently because they will be used practically all the time. Ford, meanwhile, is not far behind, saying it will begin tests with autonomous vehicles in Europe at the beginning of 2017.
States, territories, and cities in North America such as Ontario, Canada, or Michigan, in the United States, are falling over themselves to become autonomous driving laboratories, although as Otto points out these permits actually matter little because tech companies ignore them anyway. Meanwhile Apple, adhering to its usual strategy of secrecy, has yet to say anything about its intentions, asking the US government to grant it the same rights to carry out tests and trials in this area as the big players in the industry.
We are entering a new era. Self-driving vehicles are no longer the stuff of speculation, but are now tangible realities. We have gone from disbelief along the lines of “this cannot be and what’s more it’s impossible”, or “that will only work in some very specific places,” and “oh, my God, what am I going to do if an algorithm decides to kill me?” to a time in which transport has been redefined, with options such as car pooling becoming so successful in some markets that companies are asking users not to use their vehicles for dating :-)
In markets where institutions have an open and change-oriented outlook, adoption will be faster, and we will see much more efficient use of public roads and vehicles, fewer traffic jams and accidents, and less pollution. In countries where governments refuse to look to the future, life will continue as it did in the last century, with people using their vehicles 3% of the time, burning diesel as if there was no tomorrow, stuck in endless traffic jams, breathing and having to impose restrictions whenever high pollution levels are triggered. A new era in transportation and automotive is being defined: we will see just how many people really understand that.
(En español, aquí)
