You gotta love fark.com. Anyway, I've resisted the urge to blog this story because, frankly, who cares what GM's CEO thinks about driverless cars? While the media is all abuzz with Wagoner's forthcoming speech to the Consumer Electronic Show, is there anyone out there with even the slightest knowledge of GM's current technological chops who believes that the same automaker that's struggling to get their electric – gas hybrid Volt onto the streets before the next generation Prius arrives to kick its ass is about to launch a successful initiative to create the driverless car of tomorrow? Sure, we agree with the speech's basic premise– our spiritual advisor Stephan Wilkinson has convinced us that it's only a matter of time before humans are denied accelerative access (excess?). But comments like this (via foxbusiness.com) just make me laugh: "'This is not science fiction,' Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview" and ""Just imagine all the funerals that won't take place." Sorry guys, but I'm Jewish. I imagine non-existent funerals all the time, and they don't have driverless cars in the cortege.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
At least we know how they’ll move more Buicks once their last customer dies.
The news to me isn't what GM thinks about driverless cars, but merely that they are thinking that far ahead at all.
GM and driverless cars? They have that now: hundreds of thousands of unsold vehicles.
GM is going to build driverless cars? LOL, reminds of one my employee’s recent situation with her 2007 Impala SS. The tire pressure light repeatedly came on and the car was in the shop on sixteen occasions to “repair/replace” the faulty mechanism. Finally my employee contacted an attorney and GM had to buy the car back and label it a lemon. The dealer attitude was “so what it is just a tire pressure sensor”.
Makes one wonder, if, after sixteen attempts, they can’t get the tire pressure senson correct, well, the the talk of Buck Rogers future they envision will certainly not include them.
This is a great idea…I remember when the horseless carrriage industry employed it. And it would have worked too, if it hadn’t been for that staged Dateline story where Stone Phillips fed Beano to the horses off-camera.
I say quick picking on GM. Those of us in the used car market who have no self-respect rely 2-year old, 1/2 price Chevy’s and Pontiacs to get through life. If GM starts getting all fancy pants about technology and benchmarking, I’m screwed.
BTW: Nice link to FBN. Every referral from here must double their readership.
When I saw this news earlier (on Autoblog, maybe, can’t remember for sure) I thought the same thing: How in the hell can they put an autonomous vehicle on such a timeline (that we are expected to believe) when they keep pushing back the Volt?
Truth be told, I’d rather see the autonomous vehicle make it to production before the Volt. But if that is GM’s plan, axe the Volt now and put more effort into this driverless vehicle. Then, in two years come out and say “Actually, we’ll have the Provoq here in 2016!”
BTW I’m guessing the Caddy Provoq concept will be an autonomous vehicle.
GM is already a driverless company, so at least they have the right philosophy to produce a driverless car. Producing a driverless car is no big deal. I have a whole collection of driverless cars I bought when I was a kid. Even has some GM cars–a ’64 Grand PRix (matchbox), a ’59 Chevy (corgi), a ’62 Caddy, a ’63 Sting Ray (Corgi), and more. I guess my big problem is that I can’t imagine GM will be able to improve much on these driverless cars.
GM has already demonstrated its mastery in the field of ownerless cars. Driverless cars are a logical next step.
If GM can go one further and make a passengerless car, then it will have established complete independence from the fickle whims of the market. Let Toyota and Honda keep building cars that people want to buy. GM will build cars that nobody buys, nobody drives and nobody rides in.
So why does RF keep saying GM doesn’t have a plan?
It’s an infectious concept! Planless management … workerless plants … paymentless GMAC loans … worthless securities …
Burns and his cohorts at GM better get back to earth right away or there’ll be a corporate funeral they won’t have to imagine.
It’s just the next logical step of taking control away from the driver. First you had your electronic nannies to make sure you don’t get too crazy with your car, then there’s the self-parking system in the LS600, next we have DSG’s and SMT’s that take any real input away from drivers. It’s only inevitable that you get a car that takes the driving out of driving.
How great is that, now you can shave, read the morning paper, and have your doughnut and coffee without worrying about running people over!
You see failure, I see forward thinking. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pair of carburetors that needs adjusting.
Love the humor guys, but I want one.
I presently own, and want to sell, a small airplane. I enjoy flying, but the collective governments (with public support/apathy) are working hard at taking all the fun and utility out of it. Increasing administrative hassles and costs combined with reduced airport availability topped with constant threats to limit free use of the airspace (thus turning my expensive plane into a worthless pile of metal bits).
If I had a robotic car, I could leave the house, watch tv, go to sleep, and wake up half way across the country without paying for a hotel on the way. That’s the way to go. Think of all the possibilities. Cars could safely draft behind big rigs and save a lot fuel. No car rental on the other end either. It would still be less efficient than flying a light plane, but it would cost less, and certainly be less hassle.
Kudos to Rick Wagoner for responding to the market.
GM’s market research keeps telling him people don’t want to drive GM cars.
[riff]
Hey why not? GM’s already producing the buyerless car.
Thank you, I’ll be here all week.
I agree, Landcrusher. I just hope that cars don’t become completely autonomous. I love driving. Yesterday I drove from Norfolk to Richmond to pick up my brother from the airport just so I could drive. And in good time, too: 2 hours and 20 minutes there and back! Google says it should have taken 85 minutes to get to the airport, so I effectively dropped 30 minutes off the whole trip. Would an autonomous vehicle be able to pull that off?
B-Rad, You could have sent an autonomous car to pick up your brother and spent your afternoon at home.
Suppose he could have ridden down from Richmond to Norfolk by bus or train? That would have saved a lot of fuel.
OK, maybe driving is recreational for you but driving an hour or more to pick someone up at the airport isn’t something that appeals to me.
We’ve used airport shuttle services a few times in the last few years; saves a lot of driving time, fuel, wear and tear on the car, etc. I’d love to see more train and bus options around the countryside.
Here is why you should not panic about losing the ability to be your own driver (at least for a few decades).
First, autonomous cars will never happen until they can mix. You can’t shut down all the existing cars, nor will people want to pay for autonomous abilities if they can’t use them. Look for more and more driver assistance to start becoming available to the point where you are managing the car rather than driving if you wish. (this is the danger zone because the cars may not yet be ready for a sleeping driver, but people will try it anyway.)
Second, once cars are able to mix with human drivers, there will be no need to mandate use of the bot. Since the computing power to do this is getting cheaper daily, they can’t use cost as a reason to get rid of drivers.
OTOH, they could become much more strict about who can drive their own car legally, and they will likely have nanny-ware keeping you from speeding on public roads.
Sorry about the last one, but if you want to speed go to a track. I predict tracks will become much more popular and numerous if we go this route.
I, for one, welcome our robotic driverless car overlords.
In all seriousness however, I think this will have its biggest benefit for elderly drivers, the numbers of whom will only continue to increase. By the time most current baby boomers hit their 80s, self-drive should be practical and affordable, which should definitely make things safer at the farmer’s market.
It will be many decades before you see fully autonomous cars on the roads. We already have fully autonomous airplanes with triple redundancies yet we still have 2 pilots sitting there baby sitting the controls to make sure the computer doesn’t flub up.
Would anyone trust GM to build a car like this when they can’t even successfully build a reliable small car, Toyota maybe. I personally wouldn’t want to be anywere near a driveless car GM produced, in the driver seat or within a mile of it on the road. I could seriously see the fatality rate going up.
I would sure love to see all those people who don’t want to drive being driven by their cars so I can ride my motorcycle without the fear of some old lady trying to run me off the road like what happened a few hours ago.
Kixstart, my brother may have been able to find a bus if he’d tried, but I should clarify. He hitched a ride up to Ohio with my Aunt (who drove down to visit us but lives up there) to visit some of our extended family and returned to Richmond by plane. He didn’t fly into Norfolk because he was able to get a really cheap flight into Richmond. He figured he’d drive a car up to the airport on the way to Ohio and leave it so he could drive himself down on Sunday (yesterday). Because I enjoy driving, I offered to just go get him. Except for some slight difference in gas mileage, depending on what car he would have driven, I don’t think I wasted any gas going to go get him. If his original plan did not include him driving back from the airport, I wouldn’t have gone and gotten him.
# Frank Williams :
January 7th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
At least we know how they’ll move more Buicks once their last customer dies.
Frank, you owe me a keyboard. Thanks for the laugh.
–Bill.
I think driverless cars are a very interesting development. One of my favorite bloggers wrote this:
“The killer app for this technology is old people, as anyone who has a relative who should not be driving anymore can tell you. However, it seems to me that this technology could change ordinary life at least as much as cellphones. Self-piloted vehicles remove labor from retail delivery. This would make more of a difference to small retailers than to large ones.
Then there is this: the technology could mean the end of the city-as-parking-lot. There is no need to keep your vehicle curbside if it can look after itself while you are about your business. Actually, it could even mean the end of the privately own car. You could subscribe to a ubiquitous car service as you would to a phone service”
This won’t happen soon. But driverless cars could make our streets very different 2 or 3 decades from now.