Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

They were supposed to be the future. But prominent detractors—including Anthony Levandowski, who pioneered the industry—are getting louder as the losses get bigger.

Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere 600x-1

Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere 600x-1

The first car woke Jennifer King at 2 a.m. with a loud, high‑pitched hum. “It sounded like a hovercraft,” she says, and that wasn’t the weird part. King lives on a dead-end street at the edge of the Presidio, a 1,500-acre park in San Francisco where through traffic isn’t a thing. Outside she saw a white Jaguar SUV backing out of her driveway. It had what looked like a giant fan on its roof—a laser sensor—and bore the logo of Google’s driverless car division, Waymo.

She was observing what looked like a glitch in the self-driving software: The car seemed to be using her property to execute a three-point turn. This would’ve been no biggie, she says, if it had happened once. But dozens of Google cars began doing the exact thing, many times, every single day.

King complained to Google that the cars were driving her nuts, but the K-turns kept coming. Sometimes a few of the SUVs would show up at the same time and form a little line, like an army of zombie driver’s-ed students. The whole thing went on for weeks until last October, when King called the local CBS affiliate and a news crew broadcast the scene. “It is kind of funny when you watch it,” the report began. “And the neighbors are certainly noticing.” Soon after, King’s driveway was hers again.

Waymo disputes that its tech failed and said in a statement that its vehicles had been “obeying the same road rules that any car is required to follow.” The company, like its peers in Silicon Valley and Detroit, has characterized incidents like this as isolated, potholes on the road to a steering-wheel-free future. Over the course of more than a decade, flashy demos from companies including Google, GM, Ford, Tesla, and Zoox have promised cars capable of piloting themselves through chaotic urban landscapes, on highways, and in extreme weather without any human input or oversight. The companies have suggested they’re on the verge of eliminating road fatalities, rush-hour traffic, and parking lots, and of upending the $2 trillion global automotive industry.

.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere

nonsense

Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

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