Google Unveils New Self-Driving Car Prototype

colinneagle writes In May, Google released a teaser image showing a mock-up of the autonomous vehicle it planned to build. Today, the company followed up with an image showing the finished product. Google says the first edition of its self-made self-driving car will feature "temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn." When Google introduced its prototype back in May, the company claimed its self-driving cars "won't have a steering wheel, accelerator pad, or brake pedal because they don't need them." Apparently, it still has yet to reach that point. The development is an important step forward for Google's driverless car efforts, which have been deemed impractical by many of late. Last year, the Financial Times reported that Google had difficulty finding manufacturing partners that would build vehicles featuring the self-driving capabilities used in its Prius. In that light, maybe Google's willingness to build its own hardware just to get the technology on the road means that its self-driving car team knows something the rest of the industry doesn't."

Comments

The Oatmeal Review

[SydShamino]

The Oatmeal posted a review of the car and state of Google's technology in general:
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/goo...

controls

[technical_maven]

Actually, the controls were added because of a California state law requirement for them, not because Goggle thought they were necessary...

Butt Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

Why Google? WHY? Why does every manufacturer of cutting edge vehicles, like EVs, have to make them so damned ugly? Why can't we get a car flavored car?

Re:Butt Ugly

[Ralph Wiggam]

Electric vehicle range is hugely affected by aerodynamic drag, particularly a highway speeds. What looks aerodynamic is surprisingly unrelated to the drag coefficient. So modern car designers do things to actually improve drag, which seem weird and ugly to you.

The Ferrari F40, a triumph of car design in the late 80s, has a drag coefficient of 0.34. The Koenigsegg CCX has a Cd of 0.30. A 2001 Toyota Camry has a Cd of 0.29. And my Nissan Leaf has a Cd of 0.28.

My most notably odd feature on the Leaf is the big bug eye headlights. At highway speeds, those headlights create a bubble of low pressure around the side view mirrors, significantly decreasing drag. I'm a function over form kind of guy, so I think it's awesome.

Re:Butt Ugly

[AK Marc]

Cd isn't a useful measure. If you reduce the cross section, you lower drag. So you need to measure the total. The little squarer cars have a worse Cd, but better overall aerodynamics.

Re:Butt Ugly

[justthinkit]

A good point. The Cd is just one part of the Fd. And in the Fd equation, Cd (inversely related to A) is multiplied by A so that the frontal area is removed entirely from the final equation. There should be a (Cd * A) term (although even that would not be quite right...Reynolds number being yet another factor).

It should just be Fd...

Re:Butt Ugly

[fractoid]

Remember that the F40 and the CCX are both designed as much with down-force and high speed stability in mind as they are for low drag.

Re:the rules changed, that's why the manual contro

[AK Marc]

Realistically, if the car has been driving on auto with the passangers not paying constant attention (in which case, why do you have the auto controls? and people are really bad at paying constant attention to something that they can't control), do you really think that having someone grab for the wheel in an emergancy is going to do more good than harm? the big red panic button to stop the car is about all that is meanignful in any case.

The situation they require manual controls for is when you drive into a blizzard/flood, and the car drives until it's unsafe to stop and unsafe to continue. When you give the computer the choice between two bad things, something bad will happen. The regulators would rather that bad choice be in the hands of a human, when the "fix" is to work out as many "unsafe to continue, unsafe to stop" conditions, and improve stopping before them. It's not about the instant hand-over, but the impossible situation.