Google Self-driving car

[StillAWarrior]

How will driver-less cars work during storms? Will there be 4WDriverless vehicles in the snowbelt? Will driver-less cars be smart enough not to drive into high water in Houston this week?

Will there be pools of commuter driverless cars vs. pools of interstate/longhaul driverless vacation cars you would book differently? book a car to take the family to Disney World, does the car wait in the hotel parking lot until your week is up.

What about visiting other countries that still (God forbid) have only driver-cars, young people would soon never have learned to drive and couldn't rent a car in a foreign country.

Sorry but I cannot see everything being worked out very quickly.

Who is going to clean the driverless car when some drunk pukes in it?  And when the driverless car with the fresh puke in it comes to pick me up, how long will it take to get me another driverless car?  Will I get a discount?

I'd have to imagine that unsupervised people in driverless cars would treat them like crap and there would be a lot of vandalism.  Of course, the answer to that would be 24/7 surveillance cameras in millions of driverless cars.  Who will monitor that?  Where will it be stored?  Etc.  These are honest questions; I haven't heard/read too much about the driverless car "model" where everyone would be using "cars for hire."  Is the thinking that for-profit companies similar to taxi companies will spring up with fleets of cars that they will deploy and maintain?

Obviously, none of these issues are insurmountable, but I think that even if widespread adoption of driverless cars become a reality (I should probably say, "when" it becomes a reality), lots of people will still prefer to own their own cars rather than rely solely on community cars.

[Tugg Speedman]

Who is going to clean the driverless car when some drunk pukes in it?  And when the driverless car with the fresh puke in it comes to pick me up, how long will it take to get me another driverless car?  Will I get a discount?

I'd have to imagine that unsupervised people in driverless cars would treat them like crap and there would be a lot of vandalism.  Of course, the answer to that would be 24/7 surveillance cameras in millions of driverless cars.  Who will monitor that?  Where will it be stored?  Etc.  These are honest questions; I haven't heard/read too much about the driverless car "model" where everyone would be using "cars for hire."  Is the thinking that for-profit companies similar to taxi companies will spring up with fleets of cars that they will deploy and maintain?

Obviously, none of these issues are insurmountable, but I think that even if widespread adoption of driverless cars become a reality (I should probably say, "when" it becomes a reality), lots of people will still prefer to own their own cars rather than rely solely on community cars.

The are going to have detailed records of who used them.  If a crap filled car shows up, you will push a button and another will show up.  The last person that used it is going to pay in a big way.

Driver-less cars will also have many cameras on them, both recording inside and the surroundings.  (remember these are private corporations, they can do this as the bill of rights does not apply.  Also, current taxi companies have been recording passengers for years.)

I might add that these are not new questions.  When hotels and rental cars were invented the same fears popped up.  People feared this about rental apartments too.

Here is what you have to remember.  A driver-less taxi is your PRIMARY source of transportation.  It is not an amusement ride, it is how you get to work and live your life.  It is critical important to you.  Just like having the ability to rent a car or an apartment.  

You puke and crap in it and you can spend the rest of your life walking or taking the (driver-less) bus.

[Tugg Speedman]

How will driver-less cars work during storms? Will there be 4WDriverless vehicles in the snowbelt? Will driver-less cars be smart enough not to drive into high water in Houston this week?

Will there be pools of commuter driverless cars vs. pools of interstate/longhaul driverless vacation cars you would book differently? book a car to take the family to Disney World, does the car wait in the hotel parking lot until your week is up.

What about visiting other countries that still (God forbid) have only driver-cars, young people would soon never have learned to drive and couldn't rent a car in a foreign country.

Sorry but I cannot see everything being worked out very quickly.

The technology has already been worked out.  Google alone has 10,000 hours of driver-less car testing in all kinds of scenarios.  

And yes their will be dozens of versions.  It will not just be millions of Google eggs buzzing around.  They will be large, small, luxury, basic, vans, trucks, buses and so on.  You can request what you need.

This brings up another cost savings.  Request what you need.  Going to the story to buy furniture?  Have a pick-up or van take you there.  Want to impress a date, luxury car.  Get together with many friends, a party bus or van.  This is far better than now, one car that is forced to meet all these needs.

[chapman]

Obviously, none of these issues are insurmountable, but I think that even if widespread adoption of driverless cars become a reality (I should probably say, "when" it becomes a reality), lots of people will still prefer to own their own cars rather than rely solely on community cars.

Agree.  They'll never sway people away from giving up the option to have their own car.  You can store things in it, hook up your Xbox and play since you'll be driven around anyway, even have your own fridge, only worry about your own bodily fluids being in it, etc.  In major cities where it's already impractical for most to have a car, it'll be even less practical, more rural areas you'll not have to rely on your own car for everything.

[Tugg Speedman]

Agree.  They'll never sway people away from giving up the option to have their own car.  You can store things in it, hook up your Xbox and play since you'll be driven around anyway, even have your own fridge, only worry about your own bodily fluids being in it, etc.  In major cities where it's already impractical for most to have a car, it'll be even less practical, more rural areas you'll not have to rely on your own car for everything.

That is true, you ban own a driverless car.  But outlays tens of thousands for an asset (car) that is unused 95% of the time.  For about a 1,000/year in taxi fees, you can do the same thing (detailed in long post above).

Remember, driverless means no parking.  No parking much better traffic flow.  Commute times way down.

35 years ago people were arguing that the PC was a toy for hobbies the that had no practical application in the work place.  In 1998 Paul Krugman argued the Internet would be as significant as the fax machine (post above).

People have been epicly wrong about the adoption of new technology.  It is always much faster than you think.

[Tugg Speedman]

Latest self-driving Google car heading to public streets

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102685464





MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — The latest version of Google's self-driving car — a pod-like two-seater that needs no gas pedal or steering wheel — will make its debut on public roads this summer, a significant step in the technology giant's mission to have driverless cars available to consumers in the next five years.

This prototype is the first vehicle built from scratch for the purpose of self-driving, Google says. It looks like a Smart car with a shiny black bowler hat to hide its sensors, and it can drive, brake and recognize road hazards without human intervention. It has more capabilities than the prototype Google introduced last May, which was so rudimentary it had fake headlights.

The new pod isn't designed for a long trip, or a joyride. It lacks air bags and other federally required safety features, so it can't go more than 25 miles per hour. It's electric, and has to be recharged after 80 miles. And the pod can only drive in areas that have been thoroughly mapped by Google.

At first, it will likely even have a steering wheel and gas pedal — current California regulations require them. Those regulations also require a driver to be able to take back control of the car at any time. But Google is lobbying for more flexible regulations.

Google will initially build and test 25 pods, mostly in neighborhoods surrounding its Mountain View headquarters. It will eventually build between 50 and 100, and will broaden testing to sites that are hillier and rainier.

The ultimate goal, says Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is computer-controlled cars that can eliminate human error, which is a factor in an estimated 90 percent of the 1.2 million road deaths that occur worldwide each year. Self-driving cars could also improve traffic congestion and transport the elderly and disabled.

Google shocked the auto industry in 2010 with its announcement that it was working on a driverless car. Brin insists Google doesn't aspire to be a car company, but wants its technology to be adopted by automakers.

"We want to partner to bring self-driving to all the vehicles in the world," Brin told a group of journalists and community members gathered earlier this week to take rides in the prototype.

For now the traditional automakers are pursuing their own self-driving technology, but with less ambitious timeline of 10 to 15 years for a truly driverless car.

Chris Urmson, who directs Google's self-driving car project, says the slow-moving, friendly looking prototype — his young son thinks it looks like a koala because of the nose-like black laser on the front — is a good bridge between the company's current test fleet of 20 specially outfitted Lexus SUVs and the more advanced, higher-speed driverless cars of its future, which might not even look like anything on the road today.

"This vehicle is really all about us learning. This vehicle could go on a freeway, but when we think about introducing the technology, we want to do that very thoughtfully and very safely," Urmson says.

Convincing drivers that driverless technology is safe is one of the hurdles the company must overcome. Earlier this week, in response to questions from The Associated Press, Google acknowledged 11 minor accidents in the six years it has been testing autonomous cars. Urmson says the company is proud of that record, and notes that Google's vehicles have completed more than 1.7 million miles of testing. He says all but one of the accidents were caused by drivers in other cars; in the only incident caused by a Google car, a staffer was driving in manual mode.

Consumers question whether they can trust self-driving cars to work all the time, who will be liable if there's an accident and how self-driving cars will interact with regular cars, says the consulting firm J.D. Power and Associates. In a 2013 survey of U.S. drivers, J.D. Power found only one in five was interested in a fully autonomous car.

Urmson says Google needs to do a better job of educating people about self-driving technology and updating them on Google's progress. It's building a Web site to teach people about the technology, and the site will feature a monthly report that will include details of any accidents involving Google cars. The site will also have a section where people can send feedback when they interact with the cars.

The prototype cars — assembled in suburban Detroit by Roush Industries — have the same array of radars, lasers and cameras as Google's fleet of Lexus SUVs, which allows them to share data. If one car's camera spots orange cones and construction signs, for example, it will alert all the others to slow down in that area or reroute around a lane closure.

Dmitri Dolgov, the head of software for the self-driving car project, says Google's software has gotten much better over the last year at classifying objects, like trees and mailboxes, and predicting behavior of pedestrians and other cars. For example, Google's cars will slow down if they sense that a car in the next lane is speeding up to cut in front of them. And in one recent test, a Google car paused when a cyclist ran a red light. Another car, driven by a human, went ahead and nearly hit the cyclist.

The system isn't perfect. On a test drive, one of Google's Lexus SUVs seemed momentarily confused when a mail truck partially blocked its path. Later, during a demonstration drive in Google's parking lot, the prototype — without a wheel or pedal — braked when it spotted a row of folding chairs. It had to figure out that the chairs wouldn't move before it proceeded.

Dolgov says it's impossible to predict everything its test cars might see, so they're programmed to act in the most conservative way when they confront something unusual, like the time a Google SUV stopped and waited while a woman in a wheelchair chased a duck with a broom.

Google isn't alone in developing self-driving cars. Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and other brands already have advanced driver assistance systems, like lane keeping and adaptive cruise control, that can pilot the car on the highway with minimal input from the driver. Unlike Google, automakers think self-driving cars will arrive feature-by-feature instead of all at once, giving people plenty of time to adapt to autonomous driving.

But Urmson says that approach is "fundamentally wrong."

"We believe that's like saying, 'If I work really hard at jumping, one day I'll just be able to fly,'" he said.

Egil Juliussen, the principal analyst of infotainment and advanced driver assist systems for the consulting firm IHS Automotive, says Google's "moon shot" strategy is difficult and riskier than just adding features to existing cars. But he thinks it could ultimately be successful. Google could make self-driving urban pods for universities or urban centers, for example, or sell its technology to automakers.

Brin says the company is still refining its plans for self-driving cars, but he's excited about their potential.

"Our goal is to create something safer than human drivers," he said.

[hepennypacker5000]

The technology has already been worked out.  Google alone has 10,000 hours of driver-less car testing in all kinds of scenarios.  

And yes their will be dozens of versions.  It will not just be millions of Google eggs buzzing around.  They will be large, small, luxury, basic, vans, trucks, buses and so on.  You can request what you need.

This brings up another cost savings.  Request what you need.  Going to the story to buy furniture?  Have a pick-up or van take you there.  Want to impress a date, luxury car.  Get together with many friends, a party bus or van.  This is far better than now, one car that is forced to meet all these needs.

No self driving car has been tested in bad weather. All 10,000 of those hours have been logged on sunny California days. I don't think winter weather is insurmountable for the tech, but we're not there yet, and it isn't even close to being "all worked out." A self driving car can't drive on roads where all of the lines, and half the signs, are covered in snow.

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

No self driving car has been tested in bad weather. All 10,000 of those hours have been logged on sunny California days. I don't think winter weather is insurmountable for the tech, but we're not there yet, and it isn't even close to being "all worked out." A self driving car can't drive on roads where all of the lines, and half the signs, are covered in snow.

this didn't sound right but its absolutely true... just read about it this morning.

[Tugg Speedman]

Delphi self-driving car goes coast-to-coast, autonomously

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/203216-delphi-self-driving-car-goes-coast-to-coast-autonomously

It’s 1903 all over again when it comes to creating firsts in cross-country driving. This time, it’s not just to make it cross-country by car, but to make the longest autonomous drive cross-country in car. A team of Delphi engineers covered 3,400 miles, San Francisco to New York City, over a span of nine days. The trip was accomplished with “99 percent of the drive in fully automated mode,” Delphi says, using an Audi Q5 SUV modified with all manner of cameras, radars, and laser scanners.

The specially outfitted Q5 would still be ridiculously expensive, more than $500,000, if you counted the price of all the electronics. There are six lidar sensors to measure distance backed up by six radar sensors for bad weather, and multiple to cameras to watch the road plus one focused on the driver and his or her attentiveness. But the coast-to-coast car, which was previewed at CES in January, doesn’t look out of the ordinary (other than the graphics). The sensors are small, many are recessed, and none are big and obtrusive, as opposed to the rooftop laser scanner on a lot of self-driving cars.



Shorter hops came first, before Delphi’s coast-to-coast run

In January, a self-driving Audi A7 nicknamed Jack, set up by Audi, was driven more or less autonomously to CES covering 560 miles. This car, piloted by journalists, drove itself on highways and used humans to navigate through cities and towns. Now a car has gone cross-country. If Delphi’s claim is numerically accurate (99% self-driving), humans were required for no more than 34 miles of 3,400 traveled. Delphi got to 3,400 miles traveled (San Francisco-to-New York by the most direct interstate highway route is 2,900 miles) by driving a southerly route and stopping at SXSW in Austin on the way.

Self-driving with a few learning experiences

The SF-to-NYC trip went well. For the most part. There were a few areas where Delphi gathered useful information for the next trip based on encounters they didn’t fully expect, according to Phys.Org. Passing or being passed by tractor-trailers, the car wanted to move over a bit farther than necessary (perhaps just as humans are wont to do. Conversely, it didn’t want to move to the left lane to give space to an emergency vehicle on the shoulder, something that’s becoming law in many states. At one point weaving through a construction zone, the hands-off driver in the driver’s seat decided to get hands-on to get through the area.

The variation in lane markings also presented some confusion to the software: yellow and white, narrow and wide, visible and faintly visible, flat and raised. Some of that can be laid at the feet of America’s crappy road infrastructure and the shortfall in federal gasoline tax receipts. The federal tax on gas has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993; to keep pace with inflation it should be 29.9 cents. It’s also taking a hit because Americans are driving more, but they’re doing it in more-efficient cars, so revenues are down further.

Delphi estimates that the electronics on the car could cost as little as $5,000 in just a few years. Variants of what’s on the testbed Audi will appear on production Audis in a couple and a radar/camera subset will be on the much-anticipated Volvo XC90.

1903? That was the first cross-country trip by car by Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker, also starting in San Francisco. They suffered the first breakdown 15 miles into the journey and took 63 days. Gasoline usage was reported as 800 gallons, or 4 miles per gallon.

[Tugg Speedman]

this didn't sound right but its absolutely true... just read about it this morning.

There is not one self-driving car.  Every major car manufacturer is racing to build one (the are terrified to be left behind), as well as Google and other Silicon valley firms.

They all have their strengths and weakness.  Google's technology is struggles with bad weather.  Audi's is much better (above).

Like 5000 said, this can and will be solved.

Remember the first idea of making a driver-less car was 2010.  They were on the roads in limited testing in 4 years!  So to go from zero to something that works in four years is an amazing pace.  They are not 20 years from perfecting it.

[MUCrew]

http://y105fm.com/car-safety-demonstration-ends-with-incredibly-ironic-crash/

[Tugg Speedman]

http://y105fm.com/car-safety-demonstration-ends-with-incredibly-ironic-crash/

http://www.muscoop.com/index.php?topic=47609.msg732446#msg732446

30 second video of the car running over journalist
https://youtu.be/_8nnhUCtcO8

The accident may have happened because owners have to pay for a special feature known as “pedestrian detection functionality”, which costs extra. The cars do have auto-braking features as standard, but only for avoiding other cars — if they are to avoid crashing into pedestrians, too, then owners must pay extra.

-----------

Note this is a self-parking car, not self-driving.  Self-parking features have been available from auto makers for years.

Want to know why the driver-less car means current auto markers are going out of business because a new set new set of auto makers are going to take over?  See the highlighted part below.  Probably one of the dumbest business strategies I've heard of in some time.

"Oh, you wanted the version that does not kill people?  That's extra money.  But you're welcome to buy the version that does kill people for less money.  Your call!"

[Tugg Speedman]

Excellent PowerPoint ...  worth a look if you're interested in driverless cars

THE COMING DRIVERLESS CAR AND ITS IMPACT ON REAL ESTATE
Why Driverless Cars Will Change the World While Driverless Real Estate Investing Will Leave You Behind

http://www.necanet.org/docs/default-source/2014-NECA-IBEW-Employee-Benefits-Conference/6-jeff-kanne-driverless-cars.pdf?sfvrsn=2

This was prepared by National Restate Advisors with almost 10 million square feet and $2 billion under management.  They are concerned that driverless car will have a big impact of their portfolio of properties.

I think they are correct to worry about this.

-----------

Again this PowerPoint is full of interesting history and stats.  

Here is one to ponder (page 22), 15% of the surface area of Milwaukee is parking spaces, 39% is streets.  So 54% of Milwaukee is devoted to cars!

[Tugg Speedman]

This is somehting I argued above, the auto industry has no choice but to push head-long into developing driver-less cars and that will wind up destroying it.  Fiat Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne agrees and gave a presentation earlier this week that said as much (link below)  FYI - Marchionne has always been an outside the box "frank" speaker.  You never get corporate-speak from him.

Restated, the era of the modern car, now 100 years old, is ending.  Everything that goes with it is ending as well.  See the presentation is the post immediately below from National Restate Advisors.  They do a good job of showing how the driver-less car will change everything.

---------------------

A self-driven road to capital destruction: James Saft
By James Saft May 28, 2015

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-saft/2015/05/28/a-self-driven-road-to-capital-destruction-james-saft/

What happens to an industry which develops a new offering so fantastic that ownership of its
product is cut in half?

Investors in the carmakers may in coming decades find out, as the advent of driverless cars disrupts (there really is no better word) an industry already suffering from over-investment and poor long-term performance.

Cars that drive themselves will do just that, allowing owners to keep a given vehicle working more of the time. That will lead to a more than doubling in annual mileage per car over the next 25 years but bring vehicles per household down by nearly 50 percent, argues Barclays auto analyst Brian Johnson.

That will translate to an annual drop in U.S. auto sales of about 40 percent and a 60 percent cut in the national car fleet, according to Johnson. To ‘survive,’ General Motors would need to cut North American production by 68 percent and Ford by 58 percent.

“A historical precedent exists: horses once filled the many roles that cars fill today, but as the automobile came along, the population of horses dropped sharply,” Johnson wrote in a recent note to clients. The U.S. horse population dropped from a peak of more than 21 million in 1915 to six million in 1949.

It isn’t just that the family car will be able to handle more of our needs, allowing for lower vehicle ownership.

Shared self-driving vehicles and pooled self-driving vehicles (think a self-driving Uber) will further cut back on
demand. Johnson estimates that whereas Uber can offer shared rides at $3 to $3.50 per mile today, ultimately that service might fall in price to as little as 8 cents a mile if the car is doing the driving.

For those of us stuck chauffeuring our offspring from school to activities to playdates this may all seem a dream, but for investors in the automotive business, not to mention the car companies and suppliers themselves, it could be a bit of a nightmare.

It isn’t that there aren’t strategies to manage and profit from transformation and decline, it is that these are difficult to pull off, and are a game not every player can win.

Fiat Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne has been unusually frank, not just about the poor performance of
the industry, but about the need for combinations to bring costs, notably of research and development, under control.

“I am absolutely certain that before 2018 there will be a merger,” Sergio Marchionne said on Thursday in the wake of reports he’d explored a deal with GM.

BAD BUSINESSES AND GOOD STRATEGIES

Marchionne titled a recent presentation “Confessions of a Capital Junkie,” arguing that the industry won’t be able to make acceptable returns on capital without mergers and joint ventures. Ironically much of the capital will feed the investment in demand-killing, self-driving cars.
http://www.fcagroup.com/en-US/investor_relations/events_presentations/quarterly_results_presentations/SM_Fire_investor_presentation.pdf

You don’t often see industry titans not only admitting that their sector hasn’t covered its cost of capital but more or less begging to be put in rehab.

Aswath Damodaran, a valuation expert at New York University, says the auto industry qualifies as a “bad business.”

Not only is the industry globally not generating a return on invested capital equal to its cost of capital, which Damodaran calculates at 7.53 percent in 2015, but has only done so once in the past 10 years.

There are, according to Damodaran, four main strategies for bad businesses: sell up; starve it and take cash out; close your eyes and hum; or, finally, restructure aggressively.
http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2015/05/no-light-at-end-of-tunnel-investing-in.html

The last, which Marchionne is advocating, has the potential for high rewards but also carries high risks. It is very easy to get the execution wrong and to make your outcome even worse.

As an investor, of course, it isn’t so much about the business model as it is about price. Pay the right price and you will do handsomely out of even a quickly dwindling industry.

But many investors, not to mention executives, are slow to recognize that the business they steer or own is on the slide and mark it down accordingly.

“If we attach large values to the disruptors of existing businesses, consistency requires us to reassess the values of the disrupted companies,” Damodaran writes.

“Thus, if we are bidding up the values of Tesla, Uber and Google (driverless cars) because they might disrupt the
automotive business, does it not stand to reason that we should be bidding down (at least collectively) the values of Volkswagen, Ford and Toyota?”

That itself may be the biggest impediment to Marchionne’s vision coming good.

[jesmu84]

Self-driving car related...

http://www.businessinsider.com/technology-is-destroying-jobs-and-it-could-spur-a-global-crisis-2015-6

[mr.MUskie]

Is the self driving car going to tow my (self-driving?) boat to the lake?

[rocket surgeon]

and that's not all-how about a "drunk-proof" car?    but it sounds like they are trying to make it more complicated then they have to.  just put a damn hose in front of the dash board and blow away while you have your ass in the chair-bada bing bada boom.  all these laers, infra red gyroscopes, eyeball sensors, testicle wires...cheezus man, next thing ya know, your car is doing a colonoscopy, clips your toe nails, combs your hair, brushes/flosses your teeth all while your driving to grandmas

[Tugg Speedman]

The Self-Driving Car and the Coming Revolution in Auto Insurance
Google seems to be laying the groundwork to underwrite its own policies, displacing traditional carriers.
By Valerie Raburn
June 7, 2015 6:18 p.m. ET

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-self-driving-car-and-the-coming-revolution-in-auto-insurance-1433715535

Google ’s new foray into the American auto-insurance market will likely bring in a good chunk of revenue, but what’s really valuable to the Silicon Valley giant is the mass of data it will be able to collect.

In March the company launched a U.S. version of its Google Compare auto-insurance site, which has been up and running in the United Kingdom since 2012. The U.S. site allows consumers to get quotes from a dozen auto-insurance companies, including MetLife and Mercury Insurance. The rollout is starting with California, but Google says the site will be open to residents in other states soon.

At first glance this appears to be simply another enticing revenue stream for the company. Google Compare aggregates insurance quotes from more carriers than any one consumer could possibly juggle on his own, which will draw shoppers looking for the best deal. Google gets paid each time a user on the site clicks through and buys a quoted policy.

Yet consider how all this sifting of auto-insurance rates will position the company: Could Google turn this revenue-generating learning experience into a more lucrative opportunity to underwrite its own insurance policies and displace traditional carriers—especially once driverless cars become a reality?

Consumers using Google Compare enter their demographic and vehicle information, just as they would to get a quote on the website of a big-name carrier. Google then is able to see—and subsequently analyze—the rates that more than a dozen insurers return to that customer.

This broad understanding of how auto-related risks are priced in the competitive market could allow the company to insure tomorrow’s vehicles, or simply roll the cost of insurance into the retail price of Google’s own driverless car once it hits the market. That’s one way for Google to become the exclusive insurer of its driverless cars, firmly slamming the door on any would-be competitors.

There’s a reason that Google Compare went live in the United Kingdom, where it now presents quotes from 124 companies, before it was introduced here. The U.K has already approved testing of driverless cars on public roads. U.S. regulators are being more conservative, taking time to think through the implications of the new technology.

For example, government representatives and several companies—including Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and Xerox, where I work—have joined with the University of Michigan and the Michigan Department of Transportation to build Mcity, a 32-acre simulated town that will test various types of connected and autonomous vehicles. Mcity, which includes several miles of roadway, roundabouts, crosswalks and other obstacles, is slated to open in July.

It’s not difficult to imagine how driverless cars will change consumer habits and choices. Fewer people will buy cars, as ordering a vehicle from an unmanned car service will be cheap and convenient. In some ways, this will bring the luxury of a chauffeur to middle-class families and convert drive time into bonus time. Google reportedly has invested $258 million in the app-based ride service Uber, which recently announced its own initiative to research autonomous vehicle technology.

All this will upend the auto-insurance market, which has annual revenues north of $150 billion. For one thing, the businesses that own and furnish cars for just-in-time transport will be responsible for insuring them. For another, the accident rate with self-driving vehicles will be but a fraction of what it is today, since human error will be eliminated from the equation. That will push insurance payouts and prices way down. After an accident, the onboard computer and sensors will be able to determine whether it was caused by a poorly designed algorithm or a parts failure.

Since often fault won’t be an issue, auto insurance could come to resemble general product liability insurance, similar to that held by manufacturers of everything from stovetops to trampolines. Hence the opportunity for Google, armed with mountains of data on the evolving market, to confidently bundle insurance into the price of its driverless vehicles.

The bottom line: In the short term, insurance carriers participating in Google Compare might draw consumers away from the big-name players. In the long term, not only could personal auto insurers struggle to stay afloat, but commercial insurers could be muscled out of the market as well if Google—tomorrow’s auto maker—gets into the business of managing what happens when cars collide.

Today’s traditional insurance carriers might want to explore alternate lines of business. The velocity of change over the next 10 to 15 years will be unprecedented. It will be interesting to see how the insurance industry responds.

Ms. Raburn is chief innovation officer of insurance services at Xerox.

[classof2k]

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road

[ChicosBailBonds]

This was funny

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-cars-hit-the-road-almost-hit-each-other/

[GooooMarquette]

This was funny

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-cars-hit-the-road-almost-hit-each-other/

Wonder if the non-driver in one car flipped off the non-driver in the other.

[77ncaachamps]

I like what this offers!

There can be driverless RVs: I can sleep in my bed to work, brush my teeth, shower and change and STILL get to work on time!

Who needs a house with a lawn to maintain or with exorbitant rent? Driverless mobile homes will fill the housing gap!

[Tugg Speedman]

I like what this offers!

There can be driverless RVs: I can sleep in my bed to work, brush my teeth, shower and change and STILL get to work on time!

Who needs a house with a lawn to maintain or with exorbitant rent? Driverless mobile homes will fill the housing gap!

I get what your trying to say ... But in a world of driverless cars all connected to each other and no parking, going from Mequon to Mitchell airport on a Friday at 5pm in the rain will take 15 minutes. 

You will no longer have a commute that will take much time.

[Tugg Speedman]

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road

I like the first line of this story ....

Statistically, the least reliable part of the car is ... the driver.

Once you understand how true this is you'll then understand why it is so important to eliminate the concept of a driver.

[ChicosBailBonds]

I get what your trying to say ... But in a world of driverless cars all connected to each other and no parking, going from Mequon to Mitchell airport on a Friday at 5pm in the rain will take 15 minutes. 

You will no longer have a commute that will take much time.

By the time this happens, most of us here will be drooling on a pillow if we are still kicking