Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

How is the ability to leave at your own time, have your own dedicated cabin, and ability to stop nearly anywhere, even in the same ballpark as a Tram...?

>The problem with complete automation is how accidents are perceived

I don't think so. Airplane autopilot automates away the safe, boring parts of air travel, much like highway driving, so in that sense I agree with you. Truly autonomous landing is still a big deal, and planes that the benefit of ATC, and I don't think there are any planes that taxi or takeoff autonomously. Furthermore, accidents involving autopilot are always at the edge, when control changes from computer to human unexpectedly or when the human has to take over the autopilot in less than ideal conditions. I don't think there's much perception in the public eye of "robot pilots killing people"

I think once autonomous driving accidents go through the courts a few times, the same will happen to cars. After another decade of development and legislation, people will die not because the robot made a mistake per-se, but because it encountered a situation it can't cope with and the human wasn't ready to take over in an emergency, or because the robot tried to cope with the emergency situation the wrong way and the human didn't notice in time and took over too late (if at all). This may still sound like the computer making a mistake, but the subtle difference is that the mistake is made in an extraordinary situation, as opposed to the current accidents that happened in regular driving conditions. I think this subtle distinction will be enough for the PR people to spin the blame away from the manufacturer.

Call my cynical, but I can also see successful lobbying efforts in the future by corporations to reduce liability in class-4 and lower autonomous car accidents involving unusual situations, citing the fact that the driver should have been paying attention and taken over.

That aside, road safety is better than ever these days, with a lot of what would have been fatal accidents being merely property damage due to modern safety systems, and highway driving is probably the safest kind of driving out there, thus it is not clear to me (and I have no data either way, I don't think a study has ever been done) that current offerings (Tesla et al.) are any safer compared to similarly priced modern luxury cars per mile driven, and I'm not sure that will change in the future. The only reason I see for adopting highway autopilot is not safety but comfort. You might argue that comfort contributes to safety and enables longer driving times, but driving for 8 to 12 hours is pretty safe regardless, and I don't think I could do more than that even if I was a passenger.

This is a bit of a controversial opinion, but I don't think we will see a meaningful reduction in fatal accidents or serious injuries due to self-driving cars for a long time, but I do think we will see a reduction in accidents involving only property damage or minor injuries from low to medium speed accidents, and I see a sharp decrease in parking-lot scrapes and dings in the near future. Low to medium speed streets and tight maneuvers is where I see most "bad" human drivers have the most trouble and already things like parallel parking assist are a godsend to these people.

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the cars can talk to each other, and make special lanes for self-driving cars only, among other improvements that will make it easier for the cars. Eventually non-self-driving cars will not be allowed on the road, and will be a niche hobby on race tracks.

>We could say that now about automobiles.

Indeed we can which is why some cities on the planet have gone carless and more and more opposition is mounting in the face of traffic deaths, pollution and so so on. Even in the US, maybe the most car dominated country in the world, there is a political revival of talks about high speed rail and alternative forms of transportation.

The other important difference being that the step from having no cars at all to having cars was one of the largest leaps in mobility in human history. Self-driving cars are nice, but not that much of a leap, and they have much more ambiguous implications when it comes to the job-market. They will face significantly larger hurdles with significantly less payoff in sight.

I don't know about Israel but VWs ride-sharing service in Germany is MOIA