A car project seems complex enough that it demands its own org and will flounder as a division inside a company with other primary motivations (Google: Ads, Apple: phones).
Agreed, but the tension there seems to be that it also demands an org with enough money to buy small countries. Not just for the R&D either but also to sway public opinion, change existing laws and create favorable new ones, and for lawsuit armor. Probably a bunch more wetware-associated costs. In fact R&D might end up being a tiny slice of spending.
I'd find a company being able to do many of those things to be kinda scary/bad. If the technology can actually stand on its own and pass rigorous independent testing, law and opinion will follow.
The only reason you need to influence these things artificially, is if something isn't all there under the hood.
This is overly idealistic. Many people are afraid of technologies they don't understand, and self driving cars will certainly be a technology people don't understand. I can already imagine the scaremongering headlines about self driving cars "assassinating" their passengers or pedestrians. Countering fear and uncertainty may take effort, and effort = money.
The reason there's currently fear and uncertainty is because there's good reason to be. Tesla's troubles with people improperly understanding that their feature is a "beta" and watching Harry Potter on the highway aside, Google has routinely avoided mentioning their disengagement figures and "would-be accidents" avoided solely because they have professional test drivers, while repetitively citing how many total miles they've driven. The technology ISN'T there yet, but some PR departments are going full throttle that it is. This sort of disingenuous marketing is what causes these incidents, and causes these headlines to be blown out of proportion.
Nobody's flipped out about car manufacturers having cars that can parallel park themselves and brake themselves to prevent collisions. Reason why: It's tested, it's reliable enough for a Detroit company to advertise it, and it's not oversold as "autopilot" or "self-driving". It just is.
I disagree with your first sentence. I know at least two people who've flat out told me they wouldn't trust computers driving their cars or even other cars on the highway regardless of how pristine their driving records were. Don't underestimate irrationality.
I bet we can find at least two people in this thread who would ALREADY trust a Google Self-Driving Car. Clearly, the guy watching Harry Potter while his Tesla flew down the highway towards a semi truck trusted his Tesla... and it cost him his life.
For everyone you can find who will, without reason, be afraid of this technology, you will find someone who will, without reason, trust it implicitly.
These things aren't conspiracy theories or irrelevant. The fact that these are all driven (pun intended) by software which is highly proprietary, and not available for inspection by the consumers, is a major issue!
The fact that it's an US company, at the will of secret US courts only makes it worse. And I didn't get into any of the car hobbyists who might want to modify their devices, or environmentalists who want to make sure someone isn't cheating on their emissions.
Urmson quit? Wow. That's a bad sign. He was the guy who seemed to be keeping that project on track, making it better, more capable, safer, and not killing anybody. His boss, John Krafcik, came from Hyundai, and is an old-line car guy. He goes all the way back to the days of the old GM Fremont/NUMMI plant, the building Tesla now occupies. His statements are about "partnering" - he's saying that Google's place is to be a parts supplier to the auto industry.
Maybe Urmson just didn't want to move to Novi, MI, where Krafcik is moving the self-driving car effort.
Novi, MI is very different than Mountain View, CA! Convincing people to accept winter will be difficult. It's one thing if it's a "Let's change the world!" pitch from a technical genius. It's another if it's "Let's supply GM" from a business genius.
Oh that's silly. You drive to work you drive home. Maybe you go out to dinner then you go to bed. What lifestyle are you talking about? Sf would be one thing but sj and mv are really not so different from novi or farmington. Just suburbs
Uh, some people just don't like the cold? It does get very cold. And it's pretty insulting to just assume someone's like follows a pattern of "You drive to work you drive home. Maybe you go out to dinner then you go to bed".
Some people like to take a hike or run every week, for a example. Or have the ability to bike to work year round.
Neither Stockholm nor NYC have a winter anything like what parts of Michigan get - both are relatively temperate, coastal cities. Michigan is pretty much Canada!
"Parts of Michigan" is disingenuous because we are specifically talking about Novi, MI which is in SE Michigan rather than places like (e.g.) Houghton, MI.
Um, average temps in January are well below freezing, with temps below -20 C (0 F) a regular occurrence. It's not Fargo in midwinter, but it's definitely "winter".
I will never live where it snows. Ever. You couldn't pay me enough.
I grew up with 90 degree summers, and frankly, I find the heat to be amazing. Anything under 50 is downright unpleasant. I curse every moment of being outside when it's near or below freezing.
I realize this is only a personal anecdote, but I bet there are people out there just like me (and on all parts of the spectrum).
Part of the problem with winter is the availability of sunlight. "Seasonal Affective Disorder" is real and some people feel it more than others.
For me, living in the Northeast US, this is a sore point. Even more important than the cold temps or snow on the ground.
There are some alleviating actions one can take, like full spectrum lights, vitamins D etc., but they can never come close to the real deal. If sunnier places with dry, comfortable year around weather were a real and practical option, I'd move overnight, but am unable to move just yet due to family + affordability reasons.
I'm with you here. However, the summers are fantastic! Summer in the Boston area is as good as it gets anywhere I've been. It's just awfully short, and then it gets dark, and then I get dark.... :(
Different strokes, I guess.
I absolutely hate every minute the sky isn't a clear blue with that lovely unshielded fusion reactor in the sky bathing us in its mostly benign radiation :-)
I accept other people like it different - anything not resembling California (or central Italy) summer plain sucks in my view, while others would like 9 months of rain and winter.
My argument is that we first evolved to sweat, not wear the skins of dead animals. I'll always be more comfortable dripping in a humid summer heat (moisture feels so natural on the skin) than in shivering for warmth. Watching the cold, dry air of winter suck the energy out of my breath is a reminder that I'm out of equilibrium with my surroundings (more so than normal, anyway), and that the universe seeks to rectify this. Cold is bitter and like death.
I enjoy running in the baking heat, soaking in the sun. My lungs don't get seared from the biting cold, and I can breathe. The feeling of evaporating sweat is glorious and invigorating; the shirt is optional.
I appreciate your personal opinion and experience, though. :)
My argument is that we first evolved to sweat, not wear the skins of dead animals
We may have come from Africa, but it was during the ice age that we really got going as a species. Rapid climate change forced us to develop improved tools and technology to survive. This eventually led to farming, agriculture, cities and modern civilization.
Without the cold, we'd probably have been quite happy staying in the trees.
If you need the booze, you need the bees, if you need the bees, you need to stay for the summer. If you want a year round supply you need storage, if you have storage that is not transportable, you have settled.
If you cultivate plants, you can up the numbers and found city states- but for that you allready have to be half way settled. Else that nomadic sheep guy from across the fence will drive his cattle through your fields.
> I will never live where it snows. Ever. You couldn't pay me enough.
I wish there were more tech in places where it got cold in the winter, where you see fireflies and thundersnow* and deciduous trees. I like seasons. I like cold. I really miss the northeast.
I'm not arguing with your feeling. It's very valid. But, I've lived in the Northeast my whole life. If you live here long enough, you learn to discern between different types of cold. 20F with moisture in the air is awful, especially if there's a wind pushing it. The chill gets through the layers no matter how you dress. I think people from outside the region associate this type of cold with the whole Winter. It's not that way all the time.
20F with dry air and no wind is GORGEOUS. You can easily spend the day outside and, if you keep moving, wear only a long sleeve tee-shirt and long pants. (People who live here know enough to keep a sweatshirt or coat nearby for sundown.) Some of my most memorable outdoor experiences come in this type of weather where we'll be active by day and sit by a backyard fire at night.
The larger issues in the Northeast are the lack of sunlight and municipalities often don't handle the clean up of snow and ice well. My experience is that northern New England knows how to handle clean up, but southern New England is a deathtrap for walking and driving due to untreated ice and snow piled to the sides of already narrow roads.
A few years ago I travelled to Anaheim for a conference in Winter/early Spring. For the heck of it I took a short vacation in LA after the conference. For 3 days I walked around Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Echo Park. My energy levels soared. I can understand why people like living in that climate. I'd love to experience living in it sometime.
> Oh that's silly. You drive to work you drive home. Maybe you go out to dinner then you go to bed. What lifestyle are you talking about? Sf would be one thing but sj and mv are really not so different from novi or farmington. Just suburbs
Oh really? That sounds like a very sad life you have. After work, when it's warm outside, I take some colleagues and we go for a cold beer next to the river. Sometimes I'd go home and take my dog out for a long, nice walk. On weekends, my wife and I love going to the woods, enjoy ourselves. When not, I take my motorbike or bicycle and go find a quiet place to read an interesting book. Often times, I'll take my wife and we will go to a nice café and sit outside, drinking the best latte in town while sitting in the sun. Oh and I forgot going to watch the kids play with their local team - it's so much more pleasant when weather is warm.
I could go on, but I guess you get the idea. There IS life outside and reducing it to working and commuting seems the saddest thing ever.
Nope. It was a while ago so I checked Google maps for an idea of how long it took, 21 min from Novi to Mount Brighton. It is a small hill but was fine for something to do in the evening.
Mount Brighton is really tiny :-) As I recall, when my parents lived near there, You had snowmaking guns on towers at the base that could blow snow onto the "summit."
But really the Ann Arbor area isn't bad. I'm always a bit amused by discussions like this one in which so many voices seemingly argue that for reasons of weather, culture, and software engineering concentration, life really isn't worth living outside the Bay area even if you need to spend 4 hours a day commuting while sharing a 500 sq. ft. apartment with 2 roommates.
The idea that it's questionable for Google to establish a location in Michigan for automobile research rather than keeping it in the great Silicon Valley is beyond funny.
The groupthink at HN can be very severe at times. SE Michigan (especially Ann Arbor) is a lovely place! Lots of similarities to SV - smart people, culture, great schools. Plus, insanely cheap. The area is going to be a hotbed for tech companies with all the automotive talent around. It's ridiculously cheaper to open up offices in SE Michigan instead of constantly moving engineers elsewhere.
I don't know how the Bay area will ultimately play out. I do know though that even given current building and whatever changes to policy that may allow for more housing and supporting transportation and other infrastructure in future decades, not everyone in tech can/should/will squeeze onto one small seismically-challenged peninsula.
There are physical limits for the short- to mid-term and there's some upper limit to what even wealthy tech companies are going to pay for new CS grads to work in Mountain View or Cupertino.
I also moved from metro Detroit to the Bay Area, and no way I'd move back. The people there don't believe they can make any changes in their lives or the world, so they don't. I have a ton of friends with sad stories out there now. I've helped a few of them get out to California and they'd never go back either. It's a place that crushes all of your dreams. Everyone there tries to tell you that you're stupid, that your idea is stupid, and that you should just give up.
On the plus side, Ann Arbor is tolerable, but small. There are no real cities in Michigan. The closest is Chicago, and while I'd love to live there, the terrible winters (sub-zero temps with 40mph winds in the city corridors due to the Great Lakes and walls of skyscrapers), lack of mountains, and lack of sunshine would make it hard.
Rent and food are cheap, but you're in the middle of nowhere with not many interesting + motivated people to talk with, and there's not much actual good food (people there can't afford $50pp meals). The young people are mostly leaving (or they want to). There are a lot of crazy / malicious business people out there as well (I experienced many of them doing basically computer consulting). Mountain biking out there is great (look up MMBA if you're interested) but the mosquitos will eat you alive if you stop, even for 30 seconds. The lakes are nice and cottages (usually smaller homes on lakes, usually "up north") there are well within reach of the middle-class.
I'm done with nasty people with nasty attitudes. They can keep their murder mitten.
It's not just the winter bit --- it's the "tech desert" effect, where if you move somewhere and it doesn't work out, you feel trapped. Moving in general is difficult.
I've have been going through a very difficult decision myself. Do I want to move to a non-traditional (i.e., not Seattle, SF, or New York) city for an interesting and well-paying position? Maybe? Yes? No? Tons of tradeoffs.
I can certainly understand this guy deciding to stay home.
True. Plus its not like he will have an issue finding a job somewhere else (if not starting his own company with VC money). The thing Detroit doesn't get is that tech has a culture that is bound to geography. They used to have the same culture back when American cars were actually made in Detroit. But they killed it.
These folks are quite active in the startup autotech community, hosting hackathons and other events. I run an autotech related startup and find the OEM offices in Silicon Valley very receptive to new tech.
That is true. Thanks for pointing it out. My point is that outside of the techlabs, Detroit culture is very bland. Moving from tech to automotive is a big culture shock.
Also too true. Particularly because the "move fast and break things" culture is almost an inverse to what is traditionally required for building safety-focused goods for the general public.
Actually, that part is right. They do take that seriously. But aside from safety, their products are bland and built to last as long as the average toaster. Even the corvette, which is America's sports car darling, is having issues with its motor blowing up. Their culture is about pumping out products that are cheap to build, cheaply built, and will not last long because that boosts sales. Tech still does not suffer from that. Although we are getting there.
Don't confuse this with an attack against the many talented people that work in the auto industry. Detroit has amazing engineering and design talents. They are simply out ranked by the accountants and suits.
SE Michigan does have more engineering degrees per capita than any other area in the country. Amazon already has an engineering office there. Google moving is just them trying to get ahead of the curve. The longer they wait to establish a major presence in the Motor City means the greater they will have to pay people for an increasing COL.
There is actually alot of engineering talent in Michigan. I can understand the move. Not sure about Novi though.... Ann Arbor is great though! (I'm biased)
You might be right in that there is more mechanical/industrial/automative engineering going on in Michigan, but SV will definitely beat out any other area as Software Engineering's Mecca for the foreseeable future.
Google has contracted with FCA (Fiat-Chrysler) to convert 100 minivans to self-driving. That will be done at Novi MI.[1] This is apparently Google's idea, not Chrysler's.[2] The CEO's comments indicate that he's intimidated by Google.
There's a rationale for this. Google can either become an auto manufacturer, or become a supplier to auto manufacturers. Becoming an automaker is very expensive, very complicated, far from Google's expertise, and not highly profitable even if successful. Becoming a supplier of self-driving technology is likely to be profitable, but won't require huge amounts of capital or the risk of competing in a crowded auto industry.
So Google/Alphabet has apparently decided to become an automotive supplier. That means establishing a presence near auto companies. That's not a bad thing. The Google people need to be talking to auto stylists and engineers. Google has good self-driving technology, but their stylistic integration of the sensors with the vehicle is terrible. The sensor people and the stylists need to spend lots of time together arguing and fighting until the sensors are either invisible or attractive.
Then the Google people need to work with the hardcore auto engineers about dealing with the real world of automobiles, where there's ice, snow, slush, potholes, rust, dirt, and inept or nonexistent maintenance. They'll need self-defrosting sensors, washing sprays, automatic realignment at power-on, dirt detection, and all those real-world problems Google hasn't addressed yet. They'll need to drive over the bump road and skid on the skid pan, then make sure everything still works.
That's what needs to happen in Novi. That's the real non-fun engineering that needs to be done.
Sounds like a great opportunity for Tesla to expand its autopilot team, which is still located down the street from Google (unless they've moved from Palo Alto to Fremont and I'm not aware).
Why did they move the self-driving car operations to Michigan? It would make sense if there was a business, partnership or manufacturing group out there, but they still could have kept R&D in Mountain View.
Self driving cars eventually need to be able to work in places other than deserts and moderate coastal areas. You need "boots on the ground" so to speak; you can't really break new ground remotely, on the problems they need to solve, with any efficiency.
Hmm moving to Novi seems like a near-term move to generate a sure return on capital. It puts the team closer to its B2B customers and near manufacturing resources.
Yeah there's a lot of coordination for building vehicles that happens in Michigan, but the design engineering happens all over the world.
If you want to do something truly innovative, groundbreaking, or new you might want to consider how your choices about being near or far away from the incumbent OEMs and supply base may effect that.
I was just thinking about how the Google Self-Driving Car effort has become more aggressive recently. On a five-mile drive through Mountain View this afternoon (on El Camino and a residential neighborhood) I saw FOUR of the little bubble cars, and one of the Lexuses.
Of course, on each of the cars I saw closely, the operator had their hand on the joystick...
Gotta rack up those miles, man. They're all on the same stretches of road they've been driving for years, but Google sells that "miles driven" stat hard.
Obviously you do need to drive in other areas, particularly to get different weather conditions. However, even driving in the same area different incidents are encountered everyday - it is not a waste of training.
i think self driving cars will be a reality, but probably in no less than 50 years.
it's 2016 and we can't even keep websites up without armies of people tending to them 24/7. i don't know what reality everyone who is enthusiastic about this technology is living in.
A lot of "AI"/machine learning/etc. examples show impressive results on relatively narrow and well-controlled use cases. A lot of people look at those and extrapolate to much broader and less controlled environments with lots of messy corner cases and assume it's just a bit more incremental work to get there. Whereas, in fact, getting from essentially a demo to mostly just works in messy real world environments can easily be 90% of the work.
If that is the case, the vehicles might have a better chance at operating under winter conditions, but it likely still won't help them in the streets of Mumbai, Amsterdam, or Rome.
They probably realized that the incremental approach to self driving cars is getting to a very reasonable point, and if they want their big-bang approach to be feasible, they need to put the pedal to the metal, as they say.
Their hands probably always have to be on the joystick, following it's motion. That way if anything goes wrong, they can take over faster. That doesn't mean the car isn't in auto-drive.
Maybe they're testing convoy algorithms now. I can easily imagine autonomous vehicles forming convoys, using some short-distance communication to synchronize and thus optimize their movements.
I actually studied exactly that! The optimal calculations for headway distance get a bit involved, but I coded up a modest algorithm and simple simulator. https://github.com/dvbuntu/oddities
Ouch, I interviewed with Chris when I was looking around inside Google for a new gig. At the time he was "the guy", Sebastian had this great vision but Chris was the guy making it happen. I hope he does something new and exciting.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadThe only reason you need to influence these things artificially, is if something isn't all there under the hood.
Nobody's flipped out about car manufacturers having cars that can parallel park themselves and brake themselves to prevent collisions. Reason why: It's tested, it's reliable enough for a Detroit company to advertise it, and it's not oversold as "autopilot" or "self-driving". It just is.
For everyone you can find who will, without reason, be afraid of this technology, you will find someone who will, without reason, trust it implicitly.
The fact that it's an US company, at the will of secret US courts only makes it worse. And I didn't get into any of the car hobbyists who might want to modify their devices, or environmentalists who want to make sure someone isn't cheating on their emissions.
Maybe Urmson just didn't want to move to Novi, MI, where Krafcik is moving the self-driving car effort.
Thank you :)
In January, for example, Stockholm's average daily temp is -2.8C(27F) while Detroit's is -5.1C(23F).
Outside of the winter months, the rest of the year is warmer in Detroit.
Long term average is around -3, with 3 of the past 10 Januaries having an average above zero.
with temps below -20 C (0 F) a regular occurrence
Not since 2011 if SMHI is to be believed and that was only around Bromma and inwards, not around the city center and towards the coast.
I grew up with 90 degree summers, and frankly, I find the heat to be amazing. Anything under 50 is downright unpleasant. I curse every moment of being outside when it's near or below freezing.
I realize this is only a personal anecdote, but I bet there are people out there just like me (and on all parts of the spectrum).
Plus I can run way faster when it is 20 out vs 100. Snow running rocks. Sun running is awful.
For me, living in the Northeast US, this is a sore point. Even more important than the cold temps or snow on the ground.
There are some alleviating actions one can take, like full spectrum lights, vitamins D etc., but they can never come close to the real deal. If sunnier places with dry, comfortable year around weather were a real and practical option, I'd move overnight, but am unable to move just yet due to family + affordability reasons.
Have lived in Phoenix since 2003.
I curse at the Daystar about half the year
I enjoy running in the baking heat, soaking in the sun. My lungs don't get seared from the biting cold, and I can breathe. The feeling of evaporating sweat is glorious and invigorating; the shirt is optional.
I appreciate your personal opinion and experience, though. :)
We may have come from Africa, but it was during the ice age that we really got going as a species. Rapid climate change forced us to develop improved tools and technology to survive. This eventually led to farming, agriculture, cities and modern civilization.
Without the cold, we'd probably have been quite happy staying in the trees.
If you need the booze, you need the bees, if you need the bees, you need to stay for the summer. If you want a year round supply you need storage, if you have storage that is not transportable, you have settled.
If you cultivate plants, you can up the numbers and found city states- but for that you allready have to be half way settled. Else that nomadic sheep guy from across the fence will drive his cattle through your fields.
I wish there were more tech in places where it got cold in the winter, where you see fireflies and thundersnow* and deciduous trees. I like seasons. I like cold. I really miss the northeast.
* Yes, Buffalo has that
20F with dry air and no wind is GORGEOUS. You can easily spend the day outside and, if you keep moving, wear only a long sleeve tee-shirt and long pants. (People who live here know enough to keep a sweatshirt or coat nearby for sundown.) Some of my most memorable outdoor experiences come in this type of weather where we'll be active by day and sit by a backyard fire at night.
The larger issues in the Northeast are the lack of sunlight and municipalities often don't handle the clean up of snow and ice well. My experience is that northern New England knows how to handle clean up, but southern New England is a deathtrap for walking and driving due to untreated ice and snow piled to the sides of already narrow roads.
A few years ago I travelled to Anaheim for a conference in Winter/early Spring. For the heck of it I took a short vacation in LA after the conference. For 3 days I walked around Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Echo Park. My energy levels soared. I can understand why people like living in that climate. I'd love to experience living in it sometime.
Oh really? That sounds like a very sad life you have. After work, when it's warm outside, I take some colleagues and we go for a cold beer next to the river. Sometimes I'd go home and take my dog out for a long, nice walk. On weekends, my wife and I love going to the woods, enjoy ourselves. When not, I take my motorbike or bicycle and go find a quiet place to read an interesting book. Often times, I'll take my wife and we will go to a nice café and sit outside, drinking the best latte in town while sitting in the sun. Oh and I forgot going to watch the kids play with their local team - it's so much more pleasant when weather is warm.
I could go on, but I guess you get the idea. There IS life outside and reducing it to working and commuting seems the saddest thing ever.
But really the Ann Arbor area isn't bad. I'm always a bit amused by discussions like this one in which so many voices seemingly argue that for reasons of weather, culture, and software engineering concentration, life really isn't worth living outside the Bay area even if you need to spend 4 hours a day commuting while sharing a 500 sq. ft. apartment with 2 roommates.
The idea that it's questionable for Google to establish a location in Michigan for automobile research rather than keeping it in the great Silicon Valley is beyond funny.
There are physical limits for the short- to mid-term and there's some upper limit to what even wealthy tech companies are going to pay for new CS grads to work in Mountain View or Cupertino.
On the plus side, Ann Arbor is tolerable, but small. There are no real cities in Michigan. The closest is Chicago, and while I'd love to live there, the terrible winters (sub-zero temps with 40mph winds in the city corridors due to the Great Lakes and walls of skyscrapers), lack of mountains, and lack of sunshine would make it hard.
Rent and food are cheap, but you're in the middle of nowhere with not many interesting + motivated people to talk with, and there's not much actual good food (people there can't afford $50pp meals). The young people are mostly leaving (or they want to). There are a lot of crazy / malicious business people out there as well (I experienced many of them doing basically computer consulting). Mountain biking out there is great (look up MMBA if you're interested) but the mosquitos will eat you alive if you stop, even for 30 seconds. The lakes are nice and cottages (usually smaller homes on lakes, usually "up north") there are well within reach of the middle-class.
I'm done with nasty people with nasty attitudes. They can keep their murder mitten.
Sounds like you're the one with the nasty attitude. Currently live in metro detroit. Have had the opposite experience as you.
I've have been going through a very difficult decision myself. Do I want to move to a non-traditional (i.e., not Seattle, SF, or New York) city for an interesting and well-paying position? Maybe? Yes? No? Tons of tradeoffs.
I can certainly understand this guy deciding to stay home.
These folks are quite active in the startup autotech community, hosting hackathons and other events. I run an autotech related startup and find the OEM offices in Silicon Valley very receptive to new tech.
The OEM battleships are slowly turning though.
Don't confuse this with an attack against the many talented people that work in the auto industry. Detroit has amazing engineering and design talents. They are simply out ranked by the accountants and suits.
[1] http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2016/05/25/google-open... [2] http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2016/05/06/pa...
So Google/Alphabet has apparently decided to become an automotive supplier. That means establishing a presence near auto companies. That's not a bad thing. The Google people need to be talking to auto stylists and engineers. Google has good self-driving technology, but their stylistic integration of the sensors with the vehicle is terrible. The sensor people and the stylists need to spend lots of time together arguing and fighting until the sensors are either invisible or attractive.
Then the Google people need to work with the hardcore auto engineers about dealing with the real world of automobiles, where there's ice, snow, slush, potholes, rust, dirt, and inept or nonexistent maintenance. They'll need self-defrosting sensors, washing sprays, automatic realignment at power-on, dirt detection, and all those real-world problems Google hasn't addressed yet. They'll need to drive over the bump road and skid on the skid pan, then make sure everything still works.
That's what needs to happen in Novi. That's the real non-fun engineering that needs to be done.
Yeah there's a lot of coordination for building vehicles that happens in Michigan, but the design engineering happens all over the world.
If you want to do something truly innovative, groundbreaking, or new you might want to consider how your choices about being near or far away from the incumbent OEMs and supply base may effect that.
Of course, on each of the cars I saw closely, the operator had their hand on the joystick...
0 miles in snowstorms
0 miles in historic city centers with small mixed-use (pedestrian, bike and car) streets without lane markings
0 miles in mixed-used residential streets (basically, it's both a footpath and a street, usually with kids playing on it, and also used for cars)
etc.
They mastered only highway driving and driving on perfectly segregated roads.
That's the easy part that VW and Sony's cars had already working in 2008.
it's 2016 and we can't even keep websites up without armies of people tending to them 24/7. i don't know what reality everyone who is enthusiastic about this technology is living in.
I think the technology will eventually become a reality. The real car companies will be the ones to deploy it.