So far, all autonomous vehicles currently operating on public roads, including the self-driving big rig that Freightliner introduced last week, have been based on production vehicles. With the exception of the Mercedes-Benz F 015 concept that has made limited promotional runs on public roads, automakers, suppliers and even Google have taken off-the-shelf vehicles and retrofitted them with sensors and software to make them self-driving.
Google debuted its purpose-built self-driving car – sans steering wheel and brake and gas pedals – almost a year ago. Now the company is taking the two-seat pod-like vehicle from the lab and test track onto public roads for testing, and in the process creating a groundbreaking experiment in how self-driving cars will react in the real world.
The bulbous self-driving prototypes will be deployed this summer on "the familiar roads of Mountain View, California" near the company's campus, Google said in a blog post. It added that so far the company has built 25 self-driving prototypes and it "will roll them out a few at a time" over the summer.
To comply with DOT regulations, the prototypes will have Google "safety drivers" aboard to take the control if needed, which will consists of a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal. The top speed of the car will be limited to "a neighborhood-friendly" 25 mph.
Google noted that the prototypes will use the same software that's been tested in the company's fleet of self-driving Lexus SUVs on public roads over a course of almost a million autonomous miles. Google calculated that this averages out to about 10,000 miles a week – or "the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience."
During this testing phase, Google, said it's developing its "software’s ability to handle rare and weird situations on the road … the .001% of things that we need to be prepared for even if we’ve never seen them before in our real world driving. We dream up challenging scenarios to run the car through, and then we stage them on our test track," Google added. "We get inspiration from what we see or hear stories of on the roads every day...and then we make things even weirder and harder. This is important because we can’t wait months or years to encounter these things in everyday driving."
The company also said it wants to learn not only how the cars react to their environment, but also "how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles." To that end, Google will be launching a website that focuses on its prototype testing project and will include a section for residents of Mountain View to comment on the company's self-driving cars.
Google pointed out that it doesn't intend to sell its self-driving prototypes and that they are designed to "learn how people might want to use them." On the question of a business model for the technology, Google only said that "once you actually see a vehicle like this, you might start to think differently about how you’d want a vehicle in your life."
"The only way you're going to get people to buy into this technology is for them to accept the technology," David Strickland, a partner at the law firm Venable LLP and a former NHTSA Administrator, told Forbes.com. "Ultimately you have to put it out there to see how people interact with the technology, how they like it, how they don't like it."
Unlike most automakers, who have hedged their bets when discussing fully autonomous driving, with a few stating that they never want to take the driver out of the equation, Google said from the beginning its ultimate "goal was a vehicle that could shoulder the entire burden of driving. Vehicles that can take anyone from A to B at the push of a button could transform mobility for millions of people."
The company has also said from the start that its goal is to reduce the 94 percent of accidents caused by human error as well as reduce the billions of hours and dollars wasted in traffic each day. Avery Ash, director of federal affairs at AAA, said in an email to Forbes.com that, "AAA is excited for the potential safety, efficiency and mobility gains that autonomous vehicle technology can offer." And added that "as these prototypes continue to be tested, we encourage all parties to prioritize safety and think proactively about how drivers will interact with these new vehicles."
"Automated driving is really revolutionary when it comes to safety, productivity and gaining independence for seniors and others being able to have some autonomy in their lives again," Strickland added. "Google approach is how you can have this disruptive and transformative change.
And with the testing of its custom-built self-driving prototype on public roads, Google will be a few steps and thousands of miles closer to its goals.
