Fully autonomous self-driving cars by 2018?

Self-driving cars (SDC) are anticipated to become increasingly integrated into the driving population in the coming years; greatly reducing accident rates, giving driving independence to the impaired, and reducing fuel consumption are a few major benefits (see more here and here.) Google and Tesla in the U.S. and Baidu in China lead the race to bring their SDC technology to market, and other companies like Nissan and Mobileye are also invested in autonomous vehicle technology.

Tesla's Elon Musk marked 2018 as the due date for fully autonomous Tesla vehicles in a recent interview. Meanwhile, Google does have autonomous SDC prototypes being live tested in cities. Still, economic and regulatory obstacles have to be overcome.

Will there be a car commercially-available in at least two US states with an MSRP of less than $75,000 and delivery date within 2018, that can autonomously carry its passenger between two generic drivable destinations that are 20-100 km apart via public roads in those states?

(updated 2/20 to clarify resolution criteria of two US states and public roads)

Categories: Technological Advances, Computer Science – AI and Machine Learning, Technology – Automotive

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