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Google City, CA - May 28, 2014: Ever since we started
the Google self-driving car project, we’ve been working toward
the goal of vehicles that can shoulder the entire burden of driving. Just
imagine: You can take a trip downtown at lunchtime without a 20-minute
buffer to find parking. Seniors can keep their freedom even if they
can’t keep their car keys. And drunk and distracted driving?
We’re now exploring what fully self-driving vehicles would look like
by building some prototypes; they’ll be designed to operate safely
and autonomously without requiring human intervention. They won’t
have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal… because
they don’t need them. Our software and sensors do all the work. The
vehicles will be very basic—we want to learn from them and adapt them
as quickly as possible—but they will take you where you want to go at
the push of a button. And that's an important step toward improving road
safety and transforming mobility for millions of people.
It was inspiring to start with a blank sheet of paper and ask, “What
should be different about this kind of vehicle?” We started with the
most important thing: safety. They have sensors that remove blind spots,
and they can detect objects out to a distance of more than two football
fields in all directions, which is especially helpful on busy
streets with lots of intersections. And we’ve capped the speed of
these first vehicles at 25 mph. On the inside, we’ve designed for
learning, not luxury, so we’re light on creature comforts, but
we’ll have two seats (with seatbelts), a space for passengers’
belongings, buttons to start and stop, and a screen that shows the
route—and that’s about it.
We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later
this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these
vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we’d like to
run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years.
We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the
technology develops as we hope, we’ll work with partners to bring
this technology into the world safely.
If you’d like to follow updates about the project and share your
thoughts, please join us on our new Google+ page.
We’re looking forward to learning more about what passengers want in
a vehicle where their number one job is to kick back, relax, and enjoy the
ride.