This is the future. Google has announced plans to offer its own self-driving vehicle, with no steering wheel, no pedals, and a roof-mounted camera and sensor array that looks like it was ripped straight off a Street View car. This protoype city car is motoring at its most basic, but it’s no Lotus Elise — it doesn’t even have mirrors, a stereo or glove box.
Google has been refining its self-driving tech with a fleet of Lexus hybrids and Toyota Priuses (Priii?) around San Francisco and California over the last few years, and that technology has finally made its way into a bespoke vehicle. A huge array of environmental, camera and radar-based sensors help the self-driving car, which doesn’t yet have a name, get around with no intervention from the person sitting in what used to be the passenger seat.
The company wants to get these cars onto US streets ASAP, and plans 100 prototypes over the next two years — they’ll be going to volunteers, who hopefully won’t mind its restricted 25 mile per hour top speed. I can’t wait to see one of these little things on an Australian street in the (hopefully near) future.
[Re/code]