
Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype - justhw
https://plus.google.com/+GoogleSelfDrivingCars/posts/9WBWP2E4GDu
======
amckenna
A lot of people are bashing the car's appearance, but I think people forget
that putting the first driverless cars on the road is as much a PR challenge
as it is a technological challenge. Truly autonomous driverless cars is a huge
shift in the way we have operated for almost 100 years. There will be a lot of
caution and resistance from political groups, concerned citizens, entrenched
interests, etc. The car that they put forward first needs to be non-
threatening, safe, and easy to adopt.

Given Google's stake in Uber the car will be part of a fleet that can be
summoned by a mobile app, not some product you go out and buy. Because there
will be no dealerships and individual owners, they don't care about attracting
buyers for the vehicle - it doesn't need a cool factor. What it needs is to be
non-threatening and safe so you will feel comfortable getting in one and going
for a ride.

Additionally, the first car on the roads will just be making in town trips and
will be limited to 25mph - no highways or major arterials. This means it makes
more sense for the car to be compact, light, and similar to a Smart Car, than
a Camry or SUB.

~~~
derefr
> The car that they put forward first needs to be non-threatening, safe, and
> easy to adopt.

Moreover, I think Google wants their car to be _recognizable as a driverless
car_. They don't want it to blend in, because people would (at least for now)
think that was "spooky"—that any car anywhere around them could be being
secretly driven by a robot.

Instead, the visual distinctness means that it's instantly clear that these
are their own thing, in much the same way that golf carts, scooters, and
backhoes are—despite all being wheeled vehicles that can be driven in car
lanes—their own thing. Because they're recognizable, it makes it possible for
you to build a separate autonomous response into your subliminal "driving
event loop" for the class of "driverless car", the same way that you will
react separately to seeing any of the above in your lane. Which is exactly
what people want, in order to feel in control: the ability to notice and
compensate for the driverless cars around them if they all encounter some
pathological edge-case.

(Just as an example of what I'm talking about—and this is a completely
untested hypothesis on my part—I bet that driverless cars come to a complete
stop a lot more frequently, in surprising places, because their sensors tell
them something is standing in front of the car—e.g. a pigeon. A regular driver
knows a pigeon will just sit there minding its own business as the car
approaches it, but fly away right before the impact would happen; a driverless
car might not know that. Because of this, your driving algorithm for being
behind a driverless car will likely have a component similar to driving behind
a school bus: "this vehicle makes frequent sudden stops, and I need to be
ready to stop too. I should be more car-lengths away from it than are strictly
necessary.")

~~~
iandanforth
Plastic bags actually. A plastic bag looks pretty solid to most sensors and
cars have been known stop suddenly when one flies in front of the car.

~~~
kuboa
And they _should_ stop, and err on the side of caution. An anecdotal
digression, if you'll allow me: I'll never forget the time when a plastic bag
was gently flitting across the highway a friend and I was traveling on, in
that nonchalant manner plastic bags usually do, and how we, not giving it even
a second thought, drove right through it... Except we couldn't, since it
turned out there was actually a small picnic-type propane tank inside the bag,
rolling on the asphalt, and our car's motor was totaled by the impact, though
thankfully we didn't suffer any serious injuries.

~~~
sitkack
This is why you never run over anything in a car. Ever.

------
nichodges
My initial reaction was dismay that Google seemingly didn't consult any decent
auto designers on this. But then I wonder if that's actually fine.

My kids will likely be baffled by the idea that we attached so much of our own
identity to our cars. The financial investment in cars to make a statement
about ourselves (over and above getting us from A to B) is immensely
irrational.

With self driving cars ownership will likely disappear, and be replaced with
time sharing. At that point the connection between our view of ourselves, and
the car we ride in disappears.

I'm not sure that completely excuses the lack of modern car aesthetic here,
but it could go some way to explaining it.

~~~
wahsd
Forget your kids... I'm baffled. I'm baffled that people are willing to
squander so much money on cars, especially people who have relatively little
of it. If you think about it I'm sure you pay tens of thousands of dollars on
a thing that moves you around but ultimately, sits around way more than not.

I am somewhat anxious to see how this plays out financially and economically
otherwise. Will these cars cost the same as a car that every person now buys
for themselves with maybe a little higher cost of maintenance and operation
(M&O)? Will there essentially be one manufacturer because one vehicle can
support 10 people and we don't need millions of these things pumped out? And
will the collapse of competition mean that there will be a monopoly (dare I
say it, Über) that over-charges all of humanity after they have essentially
captured the market in the exact way that an evil empire like Über would?

An even bigger question I have, will this kind of development essentially mean
the doom for anonymous movements? We can all imagine that there will
essentially be no way that you will be able to ride in one of these without
identifying yourself and at some point manual vehicles will be banned; very
likely in most of our lifetimes. At which point you, the guy who rides his
bike or walks will be highly suspect if you are even able to at all, since you
must be hiding something since you don't want to use the government tracker
transporter.

~~~
brc
All possessions are fundamentally irrational. I'm baffled why people would
collect vinyl, buy overpriced designer clothing, pay for expensive tickets to
sport, buy expensive kitchen implements - and on and on and on.

I like cars. I like driving. There are some cars I'd be happy to own, even if
they didn't go. I spend money on buying, maintaining and driving cars because
it's something I like doing.

This is no more or less irrational than any number of other discretionary
spends. So you shouldn't be baffled anymore.

------
LukeB_UK
Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal got to have a ride in one and shared his thoughts
here:
[http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car](http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car)

~~~
brianstorms
It actually looks like a car that would fit in well with the overall design
motif of The Oatmeal.

~~~
zanny
He also owns a Model S.

[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s)

------
bane
Lots of people are point at this being Uber's future "auto-car". Here's an
alternative idea:

\- You can buy this car. It costs $100,000. But that's okay.

\- When you aren't actively using it, you tell it to go "Uber mode" and pick
up and drive people around as part of the "Uber Network of Cars"

\- You split the fee with Uber/Lyft/whoever. They get 30%, you get 70%.

If the average ride pays you $7, over 5 years that's like 8 rides your car has
to "sell" per day to be effectively "free" to you (except for financing,
insurance, etc.).

\- At the end of the workday, Google Now summons your car to pick you up in
front of your office and whisk you home.

\- After dropping you off at home, your car goes back onto Uber mode and does
night-time service (if you opt-in).

You could probably pay your car off much earlier than 5 years with more
rides/higher average ride fare, after which your car is making you money.
Clever people will use this extra to finance more cars to run small fleets and
effectively live without working.

~~~
TranquilMarmot
Google Now summons your car to pick you up in front of your office... ...and,
upon entering, you're met with a horrific scene of blood, urine, and feces
left behind by the previous person the car picked up.

You sigh as you clean up the mess, "At least it feels like I'm living in the
future now..."

But, most likely, the cars will keep track of who is riding in them and you
could hunt down whoever made the mess and make them clean it up. Or maybe it
has cameras installed? Talk about an invasion of privacy! Plus it's not like
they ever signed a waiver saying they WOULDN'T shit in the car.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Google Now summons your car to pick you up in front of your office...
> ...and, upon entering, you're met with a horrific scene of blood, urine, and
> feces left behind by the previous person the car picked up.

Well, self-cleaning cars don't take a whole lot of new technology. But, sure,
that's one of the reasons that I think that self-driving taxis, while clearly
one of the long-term applications, probably aren't the _first_ use of self-
driving cars. And, particularly, the personally-owned self-driving vehicle
whose owner is the primary user but rents it out on the off hours use is,
while it might be something people _try_ early on in the self-driving vehicle
era, likely to not be a big thing even _after_ self-driving taxis are.

> Or maybe it has cameras installed?

Conveyances used by the public often do, yes. I would rather expect this.

------
jasonwilk
The way Google seems to be approaching self-driving cars is the right one in
my opinion. Self-driving cars will be on-demand, booked through something like
Uber and will not be owned by the end-user.

I feel that the other car companies working on self-driving car technology for
consumers are wasting their time. The main reason I enjoy owning a nice car is
that I like driving it. If I wasn't in control of driving my car, what would
be the point? Vanity of course has to be considered but in the future, I see
self-driving cars which we don't own will the the status quo in cities, and
owning a manual operating a car will be either a novelty or something for
people outside of major city hubs.

~~~
threeseed
> Self-driving cars will be on-demand

Nonsense. That's just like saying taxis/cabs will negate the need for your own
car.

Sometimes you need a car now to goto the shops, drop your kids at doctor etc.
without having to wait 10-30 minutes for a car to arrive from the other side
of town.

~~~
olalonde
Waiting time for a cab where I live takes less than a minute on average (in
fact, I'd say the median is around 20s). In a driverless world, it's possible
that the cab market where you live will be a lot more efficient/cheaper and
the assumption that waiting for a cab takes 10-30 min won't hold anymore.

------
kandalf
Given that as far as I know, roads must be extensively mapped in advance of a
self-driving car going on them, there is a nice bonus of doing self-driving
cars exclusively through Uber at first. Uber can know the exact route the
passenger wants to take in advance, and only send cars to passengers whose
routes are already mapped. Furthermore, they can choose to only send them out
when the conditions are good (no snow, etc. assuming conditions are still a
problem when these go into fuller production). A nice way to roll the cars out
incrementally without some of the problems they might otherwise have...

~~~
eru
Good point! People are working on the extensive pre-map requirement, though.

------
click170
One of the aspects of this that I've been getting concerned about is the
invasion of privacy that they will pose, especially if it's one or a handful
of companies owning an operating the autonomous vehicles.

It's true that if you carry a cell phone you already carry a personal tracking
device and offer this information up freely to your cellular provider, but I'm
interested in reducing instead of increasing the amount of information I'm
leaking in that way.

What kind of information will these cars track? They'll have to track who
rides in them for accountability purposes, which I already find troubling.
Your average cabby isn't going to be compiling a profile about you based on
where you catch rides to. Who has access to the information such as who rides
in which cars? Is this available via an open API? I'm already peeved at
companies like FitBit which hold my data ransom, is this going to be another
of those situations?

There's a lot of privacy questions that I feel aren't being adequately
addressed, but I still look forward to the possibilities this will bring. The
privacy questions are answerable and any problems should be correctable.

------
vinkelhake
To those that get hung up on the design: remember that this car is limited to
25 mph for regulatory reasons. Having a design that is closer to a bumper car
than a model S seems fitting with that in mind.

~~~
dragonwriter
> To those that get hung up on the design: remember that this car is limited
> to 25 mph for regulatory reasons.

Which might explain exactly why it looks very similar to many NEVs [0] or
Motorized Quadricycles [1], which tend to have similar constraints.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorised_quadricycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorised_quadricycle)

------
kin
A lot of people are bashing its appearance. I think it looks cute. So, to each
his own on the regard. But seriously guys, this is happening a lot sooner than
I thought and I really could not be any more excited to have these on the
road.

------
billsossoon
Reminds me of the Cozy Coupe [1] I had as a child. Perhaps that's not by
accident. The fear is that these machines will be unsafe, either to their
passengers or to other cards on the road. Making it cute my reduce the
perceived threat level.

[1]:
[http://www.littletikes.com/content/ebiz/shop/invt/612060/612...](http://www.littletikes.com/content/ebiz/shop/invt/612060/612060_cozy-
coupe-30th-anniversary-edition_xalt5.jpg)

------
Animats
They've got to make more progress on the sensors. They still have that
overpriced Velodyne HDL-64E scanner (about $100K) on top of the prototype. The
new vehicle has a slightly smaller device on top, probably the HDL-32E. Google
doesn't seem to be making progress on flash LIDAR or millimeter microwave
radar, which are going to be needed for reasonable-cost production vehicles.

CMU/Cadillac have a self-driving car. They have a number of long videos taken
with a back-seat camera.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXhvQeArwWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXhvQeArwWM)

It's good enough that it's been driven around downtown Washington. It doesn't
seem to sense turn signals or infer much intent from other-driver behavior.
The driver has his hand on the auto/manual switch at all times; clearly
there's not much confidence in this thing yet.

------
jastanton
Google has had much more PR about it's revolutionary tech and that has a LOT
going for it. When tesla comes out with their self driving car, if it looks
100x better than this prototype, I still might pick Google. Better aesthetics
with comparable functionality will win the majority of time in my book (think
Android devices vs Apple devices), however when it comes times to putting my
life on the line, I will go with something I feel is safer 100% of the time
regardless of how it looks. And like always, Google will dominate with it's
superior functionality (backed by their PR over the last couple of years) over
any tesla any day.

~~~
millstone
"Much more PR" than what? The only ads for self-driving cards I've seen are
Ford's ads for its automatic parallel parking.

And far from "dominating," Google is a small player in any market for physical
goods in which it competes. They're much more likely to license their
technology to other manufacturers than sell it directly to consumers.

~~~
eru
> "Much more PR" than what? The only ads for self-driving cards I've seen are
> Ford's ads for its automatic parallel parking.

Ads are not the only form of PR. (They are actually some of the weakest.)

------
soyiuz
[http://assets.blog.hemmings.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/06/t...](http://assets.blog.hemmings.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/06/totalrecallbooniebug_03_resized.jpg)

Where can I take you sir?

~~~
JetSpiegel
The question is when will self driving cars go beyond that Johnny Cab.
Remember, Arnie had to rip the driver off in order to escape human pursuers.

------
yRetsyM
I thought this was quite a good commentary on it:
[http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car](http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car)

------
davidw
I wonder if these things could be used in potentially 'easier' niches like
long-haul trucking: you'd create a loading/unloading port near the freeway,
and send the truck to another port across the country.

Naturally, I don't know anything about trucking, and you'd want to be really
sure something so big and bulky is safe, but the idea would be, rather than
"do everything a car does all at once" to do something relatively simple.

------
3apo
From an economic standpoint, I would be interested to see how many OTC parts
this system. That is, does it need a $1000 lidar or would it get a similar
performance with a cheap $100 sensor? From a technical point of view, 25mph is
very limiting IMO. You probably do not need a very sophisticated controller to
navigate at 25. If you reach speeds of 60-70MPH with varying road curvatures,
the controller design gets trickier.

~~~
venaoy
I disagree. City driving at 25 mph is a lot more complicated and needs a lot
more computing power than highway driving at 60-70 mph. City driving involves:
handling the "dead zone" of intersection (square of pavement with no marking),
poorly marked roads, pedestrians/cyclists/cars getting in your way, complex
turn lanes, etc. By comparison highway driving is a piece of cake: clearly
marked lanes, no sharp turns, no intersections, clear entry/exit ramps, all
vehicles moving in the same direction, no pedestrians.

~~~
greeneggs
On city roads, if your car gets confused it can just stop, even without
pulling over. This will annoy a lot of people but nobody will die.

On a highway, you can't safely just stop. And there are still difficult
driving situations. For example, construction zones often have poorly marked
lanes (or multiple, contradictory lane markings), construction workers to
watch out for, and nowhere to pull over. Exit and entry ramps may be clear,
but merging at speed and in traffic is a difficult and unsafe problem. And any
failure at highway speeds is far more dangerous than at 25mph.

------
jvagner
Cute, adorable, non-threatening... could have been achieved and still looked..
better, methinks.

------
jedunnigan
I don't have a firm enough understanding of how the LIDAR and laser's work in
these vehicles, but it occurs to me that it might be possible for a malicious
actor to confuse the cars and cause accidents. That's concerning.

~~~
icelancer
This is true now with our current optical recognition devices. Try shining a
laser in your eyes while you drive.

~~~
jedunnigan
Don't bother with the laser, just drive down the street and pass a car with
HID headlights that aren't pointed directly towards the ground. At least in
that situation your response will be to slow down (and hopefully the people
behind you will see your brake lights).

But if someone can manipulate a LIDAR signal to confuse the car into thinking
the road ahead is clear when it is not, well then the attack becomes much
different.

------
dogeye
Nobody who has used Adwords believes Google will ever make a self driving car.

~~~
ericd
It's a lot easier to work on a greenfield project than to change an existing,
extremely heavily used project.

And, different group.

I see their modified self-driving Lexus SUVs driving around Mountain View all
the time.

------
bbayer
What is the purpose of Google here, to develop a platform that car
manufacturers want to integrate or producing driverless cars under Google
brand?

------
pinaceae
i guess it has a strong appeal to the hardcore android crowd. people that get
excited about utility, but have no sense at all for style. not a bad thing,
mind you, but it is already obvious that it will take a company that gets
style, like Tesla and yes, Apple, to make this appealing to people on the
other side of the spectrum. people who cannot unsee ugliness, assymetry and
disproportion.

personnally i just hope roads stay open for motorcycles in the future. self-
driven transportation can be massive fun.

------
danblick
What's with the side-view mirrors?

------
brc
What, exactly, are the mirrors for?

~~~
dragonwriter
FTFA: "Our safety drivers will continue to oversee the vehicle for a while
longer, using temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test
and learn."

So, they need all the driver-used mirrors, etc., that any manually-operated
vehicle has (plus, the applicable safety regulations probably still require
them, since, while provisions allowing self-driving cars to operate exist in
some jurisdictions, I don't think that exceptions to the usual equipment
requirements, particularly the federal ones, for them actually exist yet.)

------
productcontrol
Edit: Google staff and fanbois have far too much time to downvote, but less
time to articulate why it seems!

I tried to use Google's driverless car, but everytime I asked it to search for
rival services, it kept driving me to their search and adsales offices. Was a
bit weird. Like they told the car to prefer their services first! My eurotrash
friends promised to investigate though, so that's nice.

~~~
alimoeeny
Part of the aggressive downvoting comes from people who have actually lost
loved ones or lost money and time in road accidents and really really want
this technology to get somewhere. If I had downvote powers I would have
downvoted you too.

------
manticore_alpha
Unfortunately, these things just don't have a cool factor. Here's to hoping
Tesla moves forward much more quickly (and regular car manufacturers as well.)

It's something Google probably just doesn't "get" \- but a lot of people's
identities are tied to their cars. It's why we have colors, shapes, brands,
options.

This car may be "perfect" algorithmically, but it doesn't mean it stirs the
soul.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Tesla doesn't have any technology to speak of. They sell a sled filled with
thousands of flashlight batteries. The only thing Tesla has is their car looks
cool.

So Google doesn't have cool, and Tesla doesn't have technology. Could be some
synergy maybe.

~~~
jsolson
Have you actually driven or in fact spent any time in a Tesla?

~~~
thrownaway2424
I own two.

------
soupcancooloff
don't worry guys, its only a matter of time until Uber adds another service
called UberGrandma/pa and starts targeting senior citizens with this car.
(Google Ventures has a stake in Uber)

------
sparkzilla
This thing looks like a clown car. Perfect for those who think Glass is the
height of fashion.

~~~
zzleeper
Indeed. Looks "cute", but cute doesn't sell with cars..

~~~
toomuchtodo
Surprise, I don't care what the car looks like if I'm paying per trip to get
me from A to B.

Do you complain about the fashion sense of the BART?

~~~
JetSpiegel
Aluminium Grey is the new Black.

------
nodata
It looks crap.

Google, please don't release that.

(OR: Google, I will pay more not to ride in that.)

~~~
closetnerd
Thank you.

