Only days ago, Google announced they will commercialize its self-driving taxi by producing a few thousands of them in order to operate them as a cab service. The exact number of taxis is not yet known, but based on public knowledge, could be more than 3000.
In December 2017 Google attempted to “run” 500 autonomous cars, and consequently tripled that number in less than 3 months. If this latest commercialization attempt is successful, I believe there will be thousands of them on the road in the short term.
What does this say to us?
Google has broken down the technical barriers of car autonomy. Being able to operate large numbers of self-driving cars on the road requires advanced technology and a well-established system. And Google has proved its achievement from this announcement. With thousands of cars on the road, a tremendous amount of additional data will be at Googles disposal to improve this technology.
Google will soon surpass human safety standards. Stats show a human driver will kill a person every 1-200 million miles of driving. So the industry believes that the automatic driving system will have to be safe for over 200 million to pass the safety test. And up to February 2018, Waymo has reached 5,000,000 miles and the number is still going up. With the number of cars they are deploying in public, 200 million is going to be surpassed soon.
Is this important?
Yes:
With the internet world we are living in now, everything soon will be connected to each other to become a smart system – the Internet of Things. An autonomous vehicle soon could upgrade to a mini office, playground or KTV room with 4 wheels and a computer system.
Self-driving is a game changing technology. Not just because it releases human intervention from the steering wheel, but also it will become a big cake for the future car industry.
Who is not happy about that?
Baidu
HuaWei
Didi
Compared to Google, Baidu and Huaweis’ auto driving systems still have a long way to go. And Didi will have a tough period of time taking care of their drivers.
Competition back in the day was 2 dimensional, or within the same industry. Thanks to The Law of Acceleration, it is now 3 dimensional, or 4, or higher.
