Self Driving Car Google

They are telling us what they need for adoption. 

There's also the issue of trust, apparently, people trust them more and more over time.


From MercuryNews -- More at the source

Exactly how much closer to commercial release the cost-cutting pushes Waymo depends on the firm’s capacity to mass produce LiDar, said Michael Pack, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory.

“It’s like the Ford Motor Company: people didn’t start buying cars until Ford created the assembly line and dropped the prices through mass production,” Pack said. “The same thing has needed to happen for self-driving technology.”

Waymo has already applied that principle in its partnership with Fiat Chrysler, in which about 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans are being equipped with self-driving systems, reportedly for ride-sharing.

“Now, as we get ready to scale, to serve more people and drive on all types of roads and at all speeds, using mass-produced vehicles becomes an imperative,” Krafcik said.

Waymo, a stand-alone company under Google’s parent firm Alphabet since December, has seen the rate at which human drivers have to take over from the robot drivers drop four-fold, to one incident every 5,000 driving miles in 2016, from four incidents per 5,000 miles in 2015, Krafcik said.

“As our software and hardware becomes more robust through our testing, we’re driving this number down further,” Krafcik said.