Much ado has been made recently
about Google’s focus on developing
consumer-friendly self-driving cars in
the next five years. Now, Elon Musk
has confirmed that he is interested
in the potential of bringing this
same kind of technology to the
electric cars made by Tesla Motors.
The race is on to see who can bring
self-driving cars to market first.
In a report today from Bloomberg,
Musk says that he has been
discussing the self-driving car
technology with Google, but he has
different opinions about
implementation. Google’s system
relies on expensive LIDAR sensors
to help make steering and braking
decisions, but Musk contends that
using optical cameras is the best
way forward. Either way, it all comes
down to developing extremely
reliable software to parse the data
quickly, and keep the passengers
safe. If Musk and his team can
deliver the goods cheaper and faster
than Google, Tesla could ride this
technology into mainstream
acceptance.
It’s not just the sensors that Musk
doesn’t like; he doesn’t much care
for the phrase “ self-driving car”
either. Instead, he seems to prefer
“autopilot.” While it might seem like
trivial semantics, it does make it
clear that this technology is
intended as a tool for drivers — not
a replacement for drivers. For safety
and liability purposes, a human will
still need to be paying attention
when these cars hit the market.
Don’t expect to be able to play
Draw Something on your phone, or
take a nap on the way to work.
Governments all over the globe are
now tasked with figuring out how
this technology works logistically and
legally, and even big car companies
like Audi and Toyota are getting in
on the land rush .
As it stands now,
Google’s self-driving tests can only
be carried out in three US states,
and there are still mountains of red
tape that needs to be dealt with
before we see self-driving cars
available for the masses. As
enthusiastic as people like Elon
Musk and Google’s Sebastian Thrun
are, this tech is still years, maybe
even decades, away from taking off.
To be clear, Tesla hasn’t announced
anything official quite yet. After the
Bloomberg interview, Musk took to
Twitter to explain himself: “Am a
fan of Larry, Sergey & Google in
general, but self-driving cars
comments to Bloomberg were just
off-the-cuff. No big announcement
here.” Even so, it’s clear that a
company as progressive as Tesla will
want to be on the cutting edge with
self-driving cars. Since Google is
targeting five years, it wouldn’t be a
bit surprising if Tesla is internally
targeting four. That kind of chutzpah
is exactly what we’ve all come to
expect from Elon Musk in all of his
endeavors.
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