Google's prototype autonomous car

Finally we replace the dumbest and most inefficient and dangerous part of the car: humans! No more irritations on roads, no more accidents or traffic jams! It all seems to be to good to be true. The future will prove if the autonomous car will solve all these irritations and problems? But one thing is sure. They are coming! Meet the first prototype of Google’s self driving car which will hit the roads in California.

Google about their prototype

This is what Google says about their own prototype: We’re now exploring what fully self-driving vehicles would look like by building some prototypes; they’ll be designed to operate safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention. They won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal… because they don’t need them. Our software and sensors do all the work.

The vehicles will be very basic—we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible—but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And that’s an important step toward improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people. They have sensors that remove blind spots, and they can detect objects out to a distance of more than two football fields in all directions, which is especially helpful on busy streets with lots of intersections. And we’ve capped the speed of these first vehicles at 25 mph.

On the inside, we’ve designed for learning, not luxury, so we’re light on creature comforts, but we’ll have two seats (with seatbelts), a space for passengers’ belongings, buttons to start and stop, and a screen that shows the route—and that’s about it. We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years.

New function for cars?

Almost all brands are working on the future of the autonomous car. For decades cars haven’t been innovative enough. They have become more efficient, saver and their is a lot more technology in cars today. Cars are for the biggest part technology. But the concept of cars and mobility stayed the same. Now we have to redefine this concept. And maybe this new prototype from Google will help with it. Of course it is still a car or is it a robot? Fundamentally it can change the function of the car. Mobility could become second nature for the car and maybe it will become more of an office or place to relax? Who would know. Everything is possible. The future is closer than we think and our future of mobility will be revolutionized by concepts like this Google car.

More information? See also the Google+ page of Google about their self driving cars.