Monthly blog by senior staff on public policy + updates.
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“it’s unlikely that any on-road vehicles will feature “fully autonomous” drive technology in the short term (for instance, by 2020–22)”
–McKinsey, June 2015
Possibly jealousy of its eye-watering fees, I enjoy seeing McKinsey proved wrong. All of punditry has been caught off-guard by the neck-snapping acceleration of autonomous vehicle (AV) adoption.
Uber made the headlines last year when it unleashed a fleet of self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh. The Regulatory Capital of America, the State of California, approved true driverless AVs in April, joining a number of other states, all eager to become the center of a new industry. While Uber’s expansion has been stalled by a fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona, the level of investment in AVs across a number of firms is very significant. The apparent industry leader, Google-spinout Waymo, reports 7 million miles of impressive performance. The question is no longer “if autonomous vehicles?” but “when?” Read more »