Google Pairs With Ford To Build Self-Driving Cars

[Wretched]

Google and Ford will create a joint venture to build self-driving vehicles with Google’s technology, a huge step by both companies toward a new business of automated ride sharing, Yahoo Autos has learned.

According to three sources familiar with the plans, the partnership is set to be announced by Ford at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. By pairing with Google, Ford gets a massive boost in self-driving software development; while the automaker has been experimenting with its own systems for years, it only revealed plans this month to begin testing on public streets in California. Google has 53 test vehicles on the road in California and Texas, with 1.3 million miles logged in autonomous driving.

By pairing with Ford, the search-engine giant avoids spending billions of dollars and several years that building its own automotive manufacturing expertise would require. Earlier this year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company was looking for manufacturing partners that would use the company’s self-driving system, which it believes could someday eliminate the roughly 33,000 annual deaths on U.S. roads.

While exact details of the partnership were unclear, it’s understood the venture would be legally separate from Ford, in part to shield the automaker from liability concerns. Questions of who will be responsible for any crashes involving self-driving cars have been seen as a major hurdle to putting them on the road; earlier this year, Volvo said it would accept responsibility for crashes in autonomous mode, a pledge followed by Google and Mercedes-Benz.

The deal is understood to be non-exclusive; Google has been talking to several other automakers for some time about using its self-driving systems. Most major automakers and several auto parts suppliers are developing their own self-driving controls as well, with a few—Nissan, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz among them—promising advanced vehicles for customer sales by 2020.

Google declined to comment. Ford spokesman Alan Hall said the automaker works with many companies on its Ford Smart Mobility plan, adding: “We keep these discussions private for obvious competitive reasons, and we do not comment on speculation.”

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Google’s parent firm Alphabet would move the self-driving car business under its own unit, with a goal of eventually launching a taxi or car-sharing services in urban areas that would compete with Uber and others. The company has tested its systems with modified Lexuses and custom-built, low-speed electric cars assembled by Roush Industries, a Ford supplier.

Google already has several links to Ford; the head of the self-driving car project, John Krafcik, worked for 14 years at Ford, including a stint as head of truck engineering, and several other ex-Ford employees work in the unit as well. Former Ford chief executive Alan Mulally joined Google’s board last year.

And Ford executives have been clear for years that the company was ready to embrace a future where cars were sold as on-demand services. Ford CEO Mark Fields has repeatedly said Ford was thinking of itself “as a mobility company,” and what that would mean for its business.

https://www.yahoo.com/autos/google-p...237400118.html

[carwant.com.au]

Sounds like a viable partnership, and if they focus on a key segment (such as ride sharing services around the city), I think they will have a stronger chance of success (instead of targeting every drive like others want to)

[RANGEREST]

I'm pushing 50 but still enjoy driving cars too much to get excited about this.

[Franco Cozzo]

Give it 10 years time and when you say I drive a manual car all that will mean is it has a steering wheel.

RIP car enthusiasm

[CyberWasp]

I can't wait for an Automated Car for the Drive to and from work.
I love driving as much as anyone, but sitting in peak hour in traffic in Sydney for over an hour each way has an effect on you after many years. It won't take much to program a car to drive in City peak hour conditions at 10km/h.
The sad thing is it is only going to get worse. So many new housing estates / unit blocks are being built but no changes to the roads are being made.

[flooded one]

I think driverless cars are a great idea for city driving. I'm not sold on driverless cars on the highways outside of metropolitan areas yet in saying that. What would a driverless car do if a kangaroo etc jumps out in from of it??

[98TLS]

Much like everything else really Other than my wife and a Border Collie called Sam the more pleasurable things in my life are a love of all things Falcon and motorcycles...they have made even motorcycles so mundane with crap like ABS and traction control blah blah that they may just as well build in a computer rider.Tis the future i guess,think we have seen the last of the best of years give or take.

[simon varley]

Originally Posted by flooded one

What would a driverless car do if a kangaroo etc jumps out in from of it??

probably react 1000 times quicker than a human driver

[Brazen]

This will also be amazing for the disabled and the elderly.

[flooded one]

Originally Posted by simon varley

probably react 1000 times quicker than a human driver

Hope so. I can see this being a very good thing for safety as well and would help more people get around. Maybe one day I'll see one in action at highway speed were something unpredictable such as that happens. If I see it. I'll be happy for them to be on our highways and major roads in the bush/outback.

[flooded one]

Originally Posted by Brazen

This will also be amazing for the disabled and the elderly.

Might even help curb the drink driving problem in many decades time?? I don't condone drink driving, owners of these vehicles could just let the car take them home instead of paying for a cab or walking.

[HO 3]

Originally Posted by flooded one

Might even help curb the drink driving problem in many decades time?? I don't condone drink driving, owners of these vehicles could just let the car take them home instead of paying for a cab or walking.

I'd say because there is still a certain amount of input from the occupant that they would be subject to the drink driving laws of the day and held accountable.

Cheers Mick

[Burnout]

Couldn't think of anything worse than sitting passively in an unreliable machine, driven by an unreliable machine over unreliable conditions and unreliable terrain.....
A totally unreliable idea.

[Maka]

Nice partnership only if it doesn't eventually lead to future national transport legislation here calling for a ban on all non cyber ic cars off the road permanently... No thanks!!!

cheer's, Maka

[Express]

Originally Posted by Maka

Nice partnership only if it doesn't eventually lead to future national transport legislation here calling for a ban on all non cyber ic cars off the road permanently... No thanks!!!

cheer's, Maka

By the time self-drivers become common place and they need to legislate against those who drive their own, this’ll probably be the people they’ll be removing from the roads.

[Express]

If it stops my wife from gutter rashing the rims all the time I’m all for self-drivers for some people.

[HO 3]

It will be interesting if sometime in the future we wind up a generation that no longer have the skills to self drive..................


Cheers Mick

[Express]

Originally Posted by HO 3

It will be interesting if sometime in the future we wind up a generation that no longer have the skills to self drive..................


Cheers Mick

Lost along with our horse riding skills.

[HO 3]

Originally Posted by Express

Lost along with our horse riding skills.

.................and classic cars relevance/ownership value outside motor museums?


Cheers Mick

[98TLS]

Originally Posted by flooded one

Might even help curb the drink driving problem in many decades time?? I don't condone drink driving, owners of these vehicles could just let the car take them home instead of paying for a cab or walking.

Govt could cure the drink driving if indeed it mattered to em enough to do so,all the ads/promises to get tough over here in NZ years back we listened to the "3rd strike your out" bull**** but pick up a paper on any court day and pound to a penny you will see yet again a 6 or so time convicted drink driver receive nothing but community based work.Only time they get serious is when they kill someone.

[blackf6]

These blokes are a bit late. My car already drives itself. Chuck the auto box in drive. And nek minute, no foot on the accelerator car drives forward. What's the fuss?

[Ratmick]

Originally Posted by CyberWasp

I can't wait for an Automated Car for the Drive to and from work.
I love driving as much as anyone, but sitting in peak hour in traffic in Sydney for over an hour each way has an effect on you after many years. It won't take much to program a car to drive in City peak hour conditions at 10km/h.
The sad thing is it is only going to get worse. So many new housing estates / unit blocks are being built but no changes to the roads are being made.

Hey I have one of them, it's called a train, and I can sleep all the way into work

Seriously though you're right, if you're forced to drive to work it's only going to get worse...and that goes for any capital city. The more they widen the roads the more people drive on them.

[new2ford]

This was completely predictable

http://www.watoday.com.au/technology...22-gltebr.html

The self-driving car, that cutting-edge creation that's supposed to lead to a world without accidents, is achieving the exact opposite right now: The vehicles have racked up a crash rate double that of those with human drivers.

The glitch? They obey the law all the time, without exception. This may sound like the right way to program a robot to drive a car, but good luck trying to merge onto a chaotic, jam-packed highway with traffic flying along well above the speed limit.

As the accidents have piled up – all minor scrape-ups for now – the arguments among programmers at places like Google and Carnegie Mellon University are heating up: should they teach the cars how to commit infractions from time to time to stay out of trouble?

"It's a constant debate inside our group," says Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab in Pittsburgh.

"And we have basically decided to stick to the speed limit. But when you go out and drive the speed limit on the highway, pretty much everybody on the road is just zipping past you. And I would be one of those people."

Last year, Rajkumar offered test drives to members of Congress in his lab's self-driving Cadillac SRX sport utility vehicle. The Caddy performed perfectly, except when it had to merge onto I-395 South and swing across three lanes of traffic in 150 yards (137 metres) to head toward the Pentagon.

The car's cameras and laser sensors detected traffic in a 360-degree view but didn't know how to trust that drivers would make room in the ceaseless flow, so the human minder had to take control to complete the manoeuvre.

"We end up being cautious," Rajkumar said. "We don't want to get into an accident because that would be front-page news. People expect more of autonomous cars."

Turns out, though, their accident rates are twice as high as for regular cars, according to a study by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. Driverless vehicles have never been at fault, the study found: they're usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes by inattentive or aggressive humans unaccustomed to machine motorists that always follow the rules and proceed with caution.

"It's a dilemma that needs to be addressed," Rajkumar says.

It's similar to the thorny ethical issues driverless car creators are wrestling with over how to program them to make life-or-death decisions in an accident. For example, should an autonomous vehicle sacrifice its occupant by swerving off a cliff to avoid killing a school bus full of children?

California is urging caution in the deployment of driverless cars. It published proposed rules this week that would require a human always to be ready to take the wheel and also compel companies creating the cars to file monthly reports on their behaviour.

Google – which developed a model with no steering wheel or gas pedal – says it is "gravely disappointed" in the proposed rules, which could set the standard for autonomous-car regulations nationwide.

Google cars have been in 17 minor crashes in 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometres) of testing and account for most of the reported accidents, according to the Michigan study. That's partly because the company is testing mainly in California, where accidents involving driverless cars must be reported.

The most recent reported incident was occurred on November 2 in Mountain View, California, Google's headquarters, when a self-driving Google Lexus SUV attempted to turn right on a red light.

It came to a full stop, activated its turn signal and began creeping slowly into the intersection to get a better look, according to a report the company posted online. Another car stopped behind it and also began rolling forward, rear-ending the SUV at 4 mph. There were no injuries and only minor damage to both vehicles.

Ten days later, a Mountain View motorcycle cop noticed traffic stacking up behind a Google car going 24 mph in a busy 35 mph zone. He zoomed over and became the first officer to stop a robot car. He didn't issue a ticket – who would he give it to? –but he warned the two engineers on board about creating a hazard.

While Google rejects the notion that its careful cars cause crashes, "we err on the conservative side," says Dmitri Dolgov, principal engineer of the program. "They're a little bit like a cautious student driver or a grandma."

Google is working to make the vehicles more "aggressive" like humans – law-abiding, safe humans – so they "can naturally fit into the traffic flow, and other people understand what we're doing and why we're doing it," Dolgov says. "Driving is a social game."

Google has already programmed its cars to behave in more familiar ways, such as inching forward at a four-way stop to signal they're going next. But autonomous models still surprise human drivers with their quick reflexes, coming to an abrupt halt, for example, when they sense a pedestrian near the edge of a sidewalk who might step into traffic.

"These vehicles are either stopping in a situation or slowing down when a human driver might not," says Brandon Schoettle, co-author of the Michigan study. "They're a little faster to react, taking drivers behind them off guard."

That could account for the prevalence of slow-speed, rear-end crashes, he adds..

"They do behave differently," says Egil Juliussen, senior director at consultant IHS Technology and author of a study on how Google leads development of autonomous technology. "It's a problem that I'm sure Google is working on, but how to solve it is not clear."

One approach is to teach the vehicles when it's OK to break the rules, such as crossing a double yellow line to avoid a bicyclist or road workers.

"It's a sticky area," Schoettle says. "If you program them to not follow the law, how much do you let them break the law?"

Initially, crashes may rise as more robot autos share the road, but injuries should diminish because most accidents will be minor, Schoettle says.

[Streets]

Originally Posted by Burnout

Couldn't think of anything worse than sitting passively in an unreliable machine, driven by an unreliable machine over unreliable conditions and unreliable terrain.....
A totally unreliable idea.

Don't worry, they won't all be Fords ;)

Besides, we've all ridden in taxis...

[mik]

Reading that article it sounds like they have their work cut out for them trying to make the robot cars drive to stay alive/keep the occupants alive , some humans wont even do that.
I`m thinking if i was going to buy an autonomous car , it had better be built like a tank , because i envisage panel damage in the short term.

[Carrion]

I really hope this car will fill out claim from and contact insurance company as well.