2 visions emerge for getting self-driving cars on road - Dallas Morning News
Traditional automakers like Mercedes and Toyota already make vehicles equipped with systems that keep cars within their lanes, apply the brakes or park by themselves. Their plan is to gradually automate more functions of driving until, perhaps by 2025, some cars will be fully capable of driving themselves. But Google, Alibaba, Baidu and other tech companies are aggressively working on their own self-driving vehicles and could leapfrog the car industry in bringing them to market. Google, for instance, promises to deliver a self-driving car in five years. Some experts predict that car companies will continue to make the cars consumers buy and park in their driveway, and eventually some will be driverless. When the tech companies roll out driverless cars, they will likely be self-driving taxis for urban areas. Tech companies could go into the business of making cars for consumers, or automakers could choose to develop and operate their own fleets of self-driving taxis. They’re also not new to semi-autonomous driving: Mercedes-Benz pioneered adaptive cruise control in 1999, while Nissan introduced lane-keeping in 2001. Automakers also have the manufacturing capacity to make the vehicles and the dealerships to... Source: www.dallasnews.com
