The self-driving car is here … in 2017
I apologize: I got it wrong. For some time now I have been saying to anybody who will listen that the horizon for the arrival of self-driving vehicles would be around 2020. But this week, on November 7, 2017, to be precise, Waymo announced that fully autonomous driving vehicles, with no human behind the wheel, are now available for testing in real traffic conditions, on real streets and highways, in Phoenix, Arizona, for those who want to apply as volunteers to their early rider program. Nothing short of a major milestone.
A modified Chrysler Pacifica minivan pulls up, you get in the back, and the driverless vehicle takes you where you want to go.
For the moment, the service is free, but the company says if all goes well, it will scale up and start charging. Initially, most vehicles will have an employee in the back seat observing the vehicle’s behavior and able to stop it at the press of a button, but in the coming months, users will be able to access vehicles completely free of supervision. After this testing phase, Waymo will launch an autonomous taxi service in Phoenix and its environs. The robotaxi is here.
In addition to being a triumph for the company that opted to develop the autonomous vehicle without the progressive replacement of humans, the announcement is also a great moment for the governor of the state of Arizona, Republican Doug Ducey, who clearly and unequivocally bet on making his state a hospitable place with friendly regulation for the companies that tested this technology. When Uber, which is testing at a much slower pace than Waymo, was forced to leave California due to differences with the state’s administration, Ducey publicly invited the company to test drive in Arizona, although he was criticized for putting these companies’ profits before public safety.
Now, however, Arizona and Phoenix can capitalize on becoming the first city in the world with a fully autonomous taxi service, highlighting the need for lawmakers to consider the need to facilitate rapid technological progress and to anticipate the advantages it can bring (and no one has been hurt). Countries or territories that create pro-technology regulatory environments allow their inhabitants to enjoy the advantages of services that until recently were the stuff of science fiction.
I was mistaken in predicting that 2020 would be the year we saw self-driving vehicles on the roads because I failed to take into account the speed with which development cycles move. Similarly, adoption cycles, based on social, regulatory and other factors, may also speed up, meaning that by 2020, fully independent taxi fleets could well be a part of the usual landscape of a good number of cities around the world.
Waymo’s strategy has never been to market vehicles, but instead to make car ownership obsolete and move toward a model where cars are simply a service that we access when we need them. Once the development is properly tested, the idea will most likely be to convert it into a development platform open to car manufacturers along the lines of Android, which could speed up adoption by the public. Other brands, such as Daimler, GM, BMW or Volkswagen also seem to be leaning toward the idea of developing and managing their own fleets, possibly in alliance with other companies, while Tesla or Volvo may try mixed models.
If the estimates of the skeptics, all those who said that autonomous driving will never happen, were completely wrong, those carried out by the strategists of the automobile industry were equally skewed.
If you make your living from driving a vehicle, start thinking about a new career. In Phoenix a fleet of autonomous vehicles already routinely moving people around, blending in with the city’s traffic. It’s called disruption, and it’s already here.
(En español, aquí)
