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How Tesla's Autopilot and Google's Car Are Entirely Different Animals (robohub.org)

Hallie Siegel writes: Developers and futurologists have long talked of two paths to autonomous cars: the incremental path (where autonomous features such as adaptive cruise control, autonomous parking etc are slowly added to make the car increasingly autonomous) and the revolutionary path that abandons the human driver altogether — the Google car approach. Robocar expert Brad Templeton compares Tesla's latest autopilot technology to the approach Google is taking, explaining why some people think autonomous cars are still decades away, while others believe they are just around the corner.

3 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Still not interested by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I love driving, I hate driving with all the drooling morons on the road that cant do safe lane changes or drive with any semblance of skill.

    So I want everyone else to get self driving cars.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. Re:Very different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    One looks like it was designed for adults, the other for toddlers. The google car couldn't look any more childish if had pedals inside and coloured wheels.

    The Google car is designed for American adults. The look like Weebles and act like toddlers.

  3. Re:I saw a TEDTalk about this . . . by Richard+Kirk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nice.

    Google and Tesla are doing different things for good reasons. Tesla makes electric cars, and it needs to go carefully or it will lose its core business and customers. So they start from an electric performance car and gradually work up to an autonomous performance car. Google doesn't make cars, so it is not risking a core business; and their potential customers are mostly people who can't drive or don't trust their eyesight any longer, so anything that lets them potter to the shops is better than nothing. So they start from a new antonomous car, and work up to an autonomous performance car that can play chicken with the Audis on the autobahn.

    Two different approaches. One of them is not necessarily wrong.