Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

Forbes ^ | 1/22/2013 | Chunke Mui

[TalonDJ]

Google claims it can reduce the number of cars by 90%, since “a car sits unused some 95% of the time.”

This is utterly brainless 'logic'. If they are reducing the number of cars... but only the ones NOT driving then it will do nothing to reduce the amount of miles driven and the number of cars ON THE ROAD. And since each car will be driven more miles in its life they will wear out faster... so the numbers of cars being built will not go down as much as they claim.

[Eye of Unk]

Suddenly one day your driverless car will lock the doors and deliver you to a re-education center to eliminate any right wing aggressions.

[VRWC For Truth]

We already have such a device. It’s called a train. The train isn’t profitable due to gov’t intervention.

[no-s]

You could also pack a car full of explosives and send it on its way. It would be an undetectable 70mph cruise missile.

Or a truck. probably we'll find that vehicles left unattended will be subject to more stringent security. People will want to exercise control over the street in front of their house or business to prevent anonymous autonomous delivery. Vehicles driving about without supervision and/or improper credentials might be subject to arrest.

Considering how much trouble people have with malware on phones and PCs, there's probably some depth backlash possible if the gov't tries to backdoor everything.

[Jeff Winston]

You raise a good point, and I believe you are correct. The one issue I see here is typical humanity - people let their cars go without maintenance until they are too dangerous too drive. I doubt the automated systems will detect loose or broken sway bar links, worn tires, loose ball joints, worn tie rod ends, and so forth. Or maybe they will and prevent the car from being used, but if so, people will be furious that they actually have to fix their cars instead of driving their dangerous sh!t boxes on same roads as me.

If they don't already have automated systems to monitor key mechanics, they will.

You have to remember that adoption of this technology won't be instant. Right now they have around a dozen test vehicles that have driven around 300,000 miles. They will take the feedback from those miles and consider that in fielding maybe 20 or 30 initial "real" vehicles, then gradually expand things.

A lot of maintenance issues on these cars won't be that much different from those of regular vehicles. Bad problems usually make a noise.