Automakers are slowing their self-driving car plans and that could be a good thing

[FrodosNewPet]

Automakers are slowing their self-driving car plans — and that could be a good thing

http://www.businessinsider.com/self-driving-cars-not-feasible-in-5-years-automakers-say-2017-1/

Danielle Muoio | Jan. 8, 2017

It was barely two years ago that self-driving car companies were putting forth a Utopian vision of driverless cars whizzing through streets allowing passengers to sleep in steering-wheel-less cars.

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"I need to make it perfectly clear, [full autonomy is] a wonderful, wonderful goal. But none of us in the automobile or IT industries are close to achieving true Level 5 autonomy. We are not even close," Gill Pratt, the CEO of the Toyota Research Institute, said at CES. Level 5 is an industry term for cars that are fully autonomous and do not require human supervision.

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Nissan also thinks full autonomy is still ways off. Maarten Sierhuis, Nissan's head of research and development, told Wired that fully self-driving cars aren't going to happen in the next 5 to 10 years.

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Autopilot isn't a fully autonomous system, but it highlights a real tension in the industry: should automakers release autonomous systems before they're fully ready? Should regular human drivers be expected to monitor them effectively? If the answer is no, then when can we say the tech is ready enough, and can we really expect that level of confidence in 5 years?

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