We’ve all been hearing about autonomous, or driverless, cars for some time now. But it always seems like something those techies are playing with that we may not see for decades, if ever. Remember flying cars? Remember hoverboards? Okay yes, both of those things came from Back to the Future Part 2, but they were also things that were talked about for a long time and yet never came to be. (And no, those things they called hoverboards don’t count because They. Didn’t. Hover.)
Well, it looks like autonomous cars are not only going to happen, they’re going to happen soon. Waymo, Uber, and GM are all planning on having a fleet of autonomous vehicles on the road in multiple cities in the U.S. by the end of 2019. That seems a bit ambitious for having entire fleets when there are none at all now, but the fact that they’re even throwing that timeline out there must mean they’re pretty darn close.
They’ll be on demand like Uber, but supposedly they’ll be much cheaper (cutting out the human that needs to be paid will do that). Time will tell how comfortable people will be with riding in a car driven by… the car itself.
