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GM Says Driverless Cars Will Be Ready By 2018
Gregor Stipicic writes "Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. 'This is not science fiction,' Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018."
This coming from the same company that can't seem to get fleet-wide fuel economy out of the low 20s.
Work on getting a car that gets decent gas mileage first, THEN make them drive themselves. Baby steps now...
Like all American car companies, GM has earned a reputation for technical incompetence, building cars that are unreliable, unsafe, and behind the curve. Rather than actually fix what's wrong, they think the solution is to change their image. So they keep coming up with fancy projects that are supposed to make us think they're looking to the future. Fuel cell cars, plug-in hybrids (this from a company that can't even do an ordinary hybrid!) and now driverless cars. Does anybody really think these will ever be more than "concepts"?
by 2018, GM will be a giant empty husk of a parts supplier.
The problem GM faces is that it's pushing tin at a time that people don't want tin.
We don't want chrome.
What we really want are inexpensive reliable plug-in biodiesel hybrids that get more than 100 mpg (60 mpg highway after 50 mile battery range).
What we want is not living our lives for ever faster speeds (performance), but instead our nation to invest in high-speed passenger trains like those in Europe and Japan that can get 200 or more mph and generate one-tenth the global warming emissions and pollution that flying does.
We don't need extra devices that shade the sun depending on where it is - we need a car that just works.
That's the problem.
And automated driverless cars aren't the solution for the problem - they're the solution to a problem that doesn't exist, unless you live near LA where the commute is 2-3 hours to get to work or get home.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, as a cyclist and a car driver I'd say the most unsafe road users are motorcycle drivers, what other road users overtake at 70 mph on a narrow road, and accelerate at unsafe speed out of corners, if bikers didn't cut between lanes of traffic, and go round corners on the wrong side of the road constantly, maybe they wouldn't be in more accidents than any other road users. And if it really is the fault of car drivers, constantly hitting bikers, how come cyclists don't have the same appalling accident rate that motorbikes do?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Driverless cars are just the prototype. What GM is really developing is buyerless cars to save it from bankruptcy. Plan B? Carless cars.
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make install -not war