Self-Driving Cars

Not too long ago self-driving cars were thought of as possible in the way faraway future or in futuristic cartoons like the Jetsons or in science fiction movies. Well, the way faraway future is here. Both Volvo Car Group and Google Inc. said that they have begun testing self-driving cars on city streets. Google has been testing self-driving on freeways for years. Freeways provide more predictable driving conditions than city streets. On Monday in a post on Google’s official blog the company stated that in the past year Google has shifted its focus to city driving. Also on Monday’s blog, Chris Irmson, director of Google’s self-driving car project wrote that “A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area."

Google said while in self-driving mode its cars have not caused any accidents. The cars have driven more than 700 miles in self-driving mode in Mountain View, CA since 2009. Google did say that they still have many “problems to solve” one of which is teaching the car to drive more streets in Mountain View, before venturing out to the streets of a another town.

Volvo’s project “Drive Me” is a test program in which Volvo has begun testing 100 cars on streets close to its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden.  Erik Coelingh a technical specialist at Volvo stated that the test cars are now able to handle speed adaption, lane following and merging traffic all on their own. Coelingh also stated, “"This is an important step towards our aim that the final ‘Drive Me’ cars will be able to drive the whole test route in highly autonomous mode. The technology, which will be called Autopilot, enables the driver to hand over the driving to the vehicle, which takes care of all driving functions.”

In addition to Google and Volvo there are several other companies that are testing self-driving cars, including Toyota Motor Corp. Volkswagen AG’s Audi and Nissan. Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler Ag and Nissan both say they are planning to start selling self-driving cars by 2020.