Tech Blog: Mass produced driverless cars in 10 years?

Most people have already heard that Google, among others, has developed and raced a car in the driverless DARPA challenge in 2007. The driverless car was able to drive 96 km in an urban course and reach its destination without a hitch.

Well, Google, which has been developing its driverless car for regular city life in the hope that the technology will remove the impact of human errors in accidents, has received the first 'autonomous' licence from the state of Nevada to allow further testing of Google's small driverless fleet. Nevada state laws have recently changed to allow for these autonomous cars on Nevada roads and California and Florida are also following with their own similar legislation.

Although the term 'driverless' is a bit misleading as by Nevada law, the cars are not entirely driverless as they require someone to sit in the driver seat and passenger seat, but already we can see that the technology and the potential of partially or completely driverless cars is incredible. A quick Youtube video shows how a blind man can drive Google's driverless car and how far much this technology has achieved so far. It might even take less than 10 years to mass produce these...

Still in its ugly stage, but it is really cool nonetheless.... and apart from the radar on top, the car looks completely normal

How it works.... 

Many other companies have also been developing different versions of driverless or cruise control plus technologies but from what I have found, no company has gone as far as Google to develop a truly autonomous car. Google was awarded a patent for 'Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous' in the US. This basically means that the patent covers how drivers can give control to vehicles and vice versa, but it also covers the use of radars and sensors for this specific purpose.

What it sees...

Driverless taxis?
I believe that driverless cars will revolutionise modern society, not strictly on technological grounds but more on the sociological effects of this technology. Cars will continue to exist and people will continue to use them, but society will interact with cars quite differently than how it does now. Imagine the impact on taxi companies without taxi drivers. Take this a step further and you could see a whole fleet of driverless cars parked by the side of the road waiting to be shared. In this way cars would become commoditised, much like taxis, and car companies would need to differentiate themselves in other ways. If this network of car sharing reaches critical mass, people would not need to buy their own cars. It will also blur the line between mass transportation such as busses and trains and individual transportation. Driverless shared cars will become incredibly convenient. And for a small country like Denmark, where I currently reside, and where car ownership is extremely expensive - somewhat limiting the number of people who own cars - such driverless car sharing makes perfect sense. Car sharing actually exists, it is called Zipcar (Nasdaq:ZIP), although you have to drive the cars yourself, but driverless car sharing is not far off.

High level of safety may hurt insurers
And in case you are wondering about safety issues, the Google driverless car is extremely safe. Over 300,000 kms have been traveled by the Google car, with only one accident which was ironically caused by a human driver actually driving the car. Nevada state officials have noted that the car gets a lot of honks and attention because the car actually obeys the traffic rules, as it does not speed and it makes its full stops. Already we can imagine what would happen if car accidents simply disappeared, eliminating the need for personal car insurance and eliminating the need for car insurance providers, at least in their current form. 

Tech company benefits
Imagine the economic benefits to companies that manufacture radars and infrared sensors should these companies start developing sensors and radars for 100 million cars. Additionally, chip makers and designers such as Intel and ARM would greatly benefit from the heavy computing needs of driverless cars. If you imagine that Intel charges around $200 to $600 per advanced PC processor and more than $2,000 for server processors, then the need for multiple chips per cars would result in a massive cash cow for these companies.

Driverless cars have the potential to impact our lives in so many ways, but they also present potential for savvy and visionary investors. And if you are wondering when you can actually buy one of these cars, well you will have to wait until 2018...