Self-driving cars won’t happen this year no matter what Elon says
Found on I, Cringley on Sunday, 24 March 2019
The idea today is to eliminate drivers from door-to-door, which is way harder. But we could do that, too, if it wasn’t for interacting with millions of drivers who are still controlling their vehicles the old fashion way, which is often in a barely competent fashion.
I’m guessing that most cars from 2020-on could be self-driving with only a software upgrade, which is why Elon Musk is predicting Tesla will have full autonomy by the end of 2019. But notice that Elon isn’t predicting Tesla will be allowed to have its cars drive themselves everywhere.
Self-driving cars might be a nice concept for some, but not everything in life should be handed over to a computer. Especially not when all those systems for whatever reason are supposed to be always online. The past has enough examples how missing or badly implemented security left the doors wide open for abuse. If your computer gets infected it might be annoying, but if it happens to your car it might be deadly. Sure they say that self-driving cars are more secure, but wait until there are enough of them on the streets so they reach a valueable target size.