Remember when the car companies were talking down the idea of driverless transportation? Remember when, maybe a year and a half ago, or two years ago, they were saying it is a few decades away? Well, Google, Tesla and others have changed the tune of almost every company.
Here's the recent evidence.
* GM finalizes contract for purchase of Cruise Automation, which will remain in San Francisco.
* BMW to have iNext, a fully autonomous car, on the road in 2021. There's also a new car in 2018, but I could not tell how advanced that vehicle will be.
* Audi is testing a driverless car, its A7, on the autobahn. It plays well with others and does not exhibit any road rage. The article reports that its driving style is very human like, actually like a nice human who does not drive too fast or weirdly.
* Renault is committed to introducing an affordable driverless car in 2020. The company is sponsoring a design competition at an arts college in London. The college, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, will have groups of students working on designs for the interiors of totally driverless cars.
And now, after years of speculation, the first solid evidence of Apple's driverless situation and plans. Seems that Apple's previous efforts in this direction were fruitless or showed that Apple was way too far behind in this race to catch up on its own. Now, taking advantage of the shared use model of transportation - sans drivers - Apple has bought up China's version of Uber, Didi Chuxing, commonly called Didi. Testing and operations in China have the benefit of a supportive government that is presently doing more to pave the way for driverless than the United States. That's the benefit of no democracy, though there are serious and depressing downsides.
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