In the past few days I’ve seen predictions that we will have self-driving cars by October, 3 years, 5 years, and probably a few more dates.

The question depends on what we mean by “self-driving”.

Elon Musk was just reported to have predicted fully-autonomous cars in 3 years, although in the quote he hedges a little bit, “My guess for when we’ll have full autonomy is about three years, approximately three years.”

Another interesting question is how widespread driving autonomy will be, when it launches.

Both the iPhone and the fully electric car, for example, were luxury goods when they launched, but decidedly mass-market luxury goods. Not $100,000 toys that only the super-rich could afford.

Tesla, however, has yet produce to a mass-market luxury vehicle (let’s define that as a car in the $40,000 range). So far, Tesla’s strategy has worked, and it has moved steadily down-market from the $100,000+ Roadster. But it will be interesting to see where driving autonomy hits on the price scale.

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Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 28, 2015.

USA Today ran an article entitled, “Autonomous car future will demand tech company and automaker collaboration”.

Amusingly, the text of the article does not mention any such collaboration, or why the future will demand it.

Still, it’s worth thinking about the friend and foe relationships.

A helpful analogy is to the mobile phone industry.

On the Android side, the software itself is owned by Google, but the phone manufacturers are separate entities, who try to add value through a combination of superior hardware, distribution, pricing, and some proprietary software.

On the iPhone side, almost everything is branded and owned by Apple, except for the manufacturing, which is done by a variety of largely-anonymous Asian firms. Perhaps the most famous of these is Foxconn.

Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Daimler, recently said, “We do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple.”

How do they feel about becoming the Samsung of Google?

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Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 24, 2015.

Clearpath Robotics just announced the name of an autonomous vehicle whose sole purpose is to move inventory around warehouses.

I am curious whether we will see a lot more of this, and whether these more focused efforts will launch faster than more generalized autonomous vehicles.

Lots of industries have specific purposes for autonomous vehicles — shipping, manufacturing, agriculture, defense, aviation. And presumably it is easier to develop automation within the more narrow confines of a niche industry.

Against that, there is the weight of the auto industry — both incumbents and new entrants — who see an enormous market for self-driving cars.

My guess is that we will see the industries develop in parallel, with successful innovations from one field being cross-purposed in other fields. That warms my heart and makes me thing that self-driving cars are coming even faster.

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Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 23, 2015.

The self-driving car revolution is mostly being led by big companies — Google, Uber, Tesla. Outside of the tech companies, there are traditional auto manufacturers like Audi and BMW, as well as a host of suppliers ranging from nVidia to Mobileye to Continental Automotive.

One of the few small startups that is emerging in the driverless car space is Cruise. They just raised another $12MM+ to fund hardware that turns a normal car into an autonomous vehicle.

That’s pretty awesome, and I wish them luck.

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Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 21, 2015.

I recently wrote about how self-driving cars will revolutionize the world, for the better. Of course, not all changes will be for the good, although I believe the overwhelming effect of self-driving cars will be positive.

But here are some of the potential negative consequences of self-driving cars. For this list, let’s focus on externalities — that is, let’s assume that the self-driving cars work well enough that individual drivers still want to use them, and then let’s think about what kind of societal costs that might entail.

Unemployment — There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US, plus 0.2 million taxi drivers. That’s a lot of jobs to lose, even though self-driving cars will likely provide even more new categories of jobs.

Infrastructure — Self-driving cars will lower the cost of driving, which should lead to people driving (really, riding) a lot more. This will cause a lot of wear and tear on America’s road system. And if self-driving cars enable travel speeds of 100 mph+, that will make the problem even worse.

Pollution — Assuming self-driving cars increase the number and velocity of car trips, that will require a lot of energy. Ideally, self-driving cars will develop in tandem with cleaner electric cars, but even electric cars cause pollution.

Urban Design — We have optimized our cities for people-driven cars (think lots of traffic lights, intersections, and parking spaces). This design may not be ideal for self-driving cars in ways that we can forsee (too much parking) and ways that we cannot yet envision.

Traffic — With more cars on the road, rush hour could get really bad. My hope is that the volume of cars is offset by their throughput (if cars are moving twice as fast, we can get away with approximately twice as many cars on the road without increasing congestion). But it’s not totally clear how that will play out, especially if self-driving cars reduce the human cost of being in a traffic jam.

Fatalities — Self-driving car accidents might start to look like airplane accidents — rare, but when they happen, everyone dies.

I’m sure there are additional costs that I have not considered here. My strong belief, however, is that the benefits of self-driving cars will far outweigh the costs.

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Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 17, 2015.