Google Has Stopped Developing Its Own Self-Driving Car - Report (techcrunch.com)

Google has reportedly shelved its long-standing plan to develop its own autonomous vehicle in favor of pursuing partnerships with existing car makers. From an article on TechCrunch: The Information reports that Google's self-driving car unit -- known internally as Chauffeur -- is working with established automotive names to develop cars which will include some self-driving features, but won't ditch the steering wheel and pedal controls. The firm is already working with Fiat Chrysler, per a partnership announced in May, and that could be the start of others to come. Google first set out to do away with the steering wheel and pedals approach, but this backtrack is from Alphabet CEO Larry Page and CFO Ruth Porat who found the original approach to be "impractical," according to the report. That's despite Google's autonomous vehicles clocking over two million miles of tests on public roads.

Comments

Colour me suprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Like everyone is going to abandon a well-proven UI just like that, on Google's say-so.

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

There are simply too many conditions in which a self-driving car could occasionally need a human pilot, and the vast majority of those are when a quick decision that is not safety related is required, and the rest are when the vehicle is operating on something other than conventional roads.

For example, if I'm going to an event in a rural area I'm probably going to have to park in an improvised parking area on an unimproved or only marginally improved surface. I may have to drive down a trail that itself is unimproved or only marginally improved, either following the directions of humans waving at me or else following something like the occasional orange cone or even the tracks of previous vehicles. A self-driving car is probably not going to interpret the directions of a teenager with a yellow safety vest and will instead see the person merely as an object to avoid colliding with. It will not see bits of orange tape on the ground or ruts as a path. It probably won't handle being told to enqueue to park in rows, peeling off after the next vehicle to park per human-guided hand signals.

In this kind of scenario, which is common to outdoor concerts, festivals, campgrounds, renaissance festivals, theme-parks, lodges, and many other situations, a car that cannot be directly driven by a human being would not be able to function. The vehicle may well drive the vast majority of the time on its own, but it still needs to be capable of being occasionally human-operated or at least very directly human-instructed. Entirely eliminating the conventional driver controls makes that difficult.

Furthemore, having owned many vehicles in various states of repair and condition for around twenty years now, I do not want a vehicle to be stranded when its autonomous systems have malfuctioned. Flat out that's a non-starter. Vehicles break. This is a fact of life. I don't want a vehicle with no issues with the powertrain to strand me because the controller can't figure out how to drive on the road. If nothing else, in general emergencies it may be necessary for me to make decisions that the vehicle is not capable of making itself, like in having to drive in the aftermath of a hurricane or tornado when the roads are messed up with debris.

Don't get me wrong, the idea of a vehicle functioning as a hackney carriage, getting in and telling it where to go and it does that, has appeal, but I don't want it to only function that way.

Re:Colour me suprised

[TWX]

Yeah. One of my neighbors works for Intel and has been working on their autonomous vehicle project and we've talked about it. Basically in an urban environment where The Authorities are closing or modifying the route of the street it is expected that they would have to use some kind of barricade with the ability to instruct the cars that the road does not match the original configuration and to follow an alternate path, and the police officer or other traffic-control person would have to have some kind of similar technology in traffic-control devices.

Thing is, while it *might* be possible for a venue to obtain the cones or other barricades from a rental place, I would not expect that the human-held devices would be generally available if only to prevent them from being abused for things like stopping vehicles to rob the occupants or for carjacking. I would expect that tight controls would be necessary, and even the cones themselves might be subject to close regulation and scrutiny if they're capable of actively communicating with vehicle controllers. Otherwise it would be far too easy for someone to do something malicious.

Dumb idea

[Geoffrey.landis]

Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.

Steering wheels are useful.

Re:Dumb idea

[MightyYar]

Unless you know otherwise, the steering and brakes always have mechanical fail-safes. In particular I'm familiar with the Infinity Q50 system.

What!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google abandoned a project?! No!

I worked for them for three years.

Behind the scenes it's a fucking catastrophe of half-assed and half-finished projects, with literally thousands of abandoned services that nobody knows anything about, because all the hot-shot college hires moved up or out after proving how badass they were to get hired by Google.

Nobody there wants to maintain anything, and their age discrimination practices prevent them from finding anyone who comprehends what that entails.

Fuck em.

Re:What!?

[TWX]

If I sanitize this for polite company, it sounds like you're describing a company that has ideas that are greater than its ability to follow-through with, and is short-sighted enough that it doesn't perform the kind of maintenance that brings the product to a state of long-term maturity.

Given their abandoning and shutting of several APIs throughout the years I happen to agree and I find it annoying that they do this. It's also definitely colored my view on trusting a third-party to continue to maintain services on my behalf that are not locally-hosted on my own equipment. After all, I don't really know when they'll yank the rug out from under me.