C-gt3

Time to "Make America Great Again!"
Just Say'n

joe12pack

you mean those same tinfoil hatters that said the NSA was spying on everyone 12 years ago by recording billions of phone calls and trillions of emails but the lazy trendies called us tinfoil hatters? And then Snowden showed up and vindicated those tinfoil hatters.

As long as "Most of the people on this forum" are not 90 years old I'll take that bet that driverless-robot cars will be ubiquitous in less than 10 years while everyone is still alive. No question about it.

Bonster

I wanna see one of these driverless cars at the track or on an autocross course. That would be worth filming!

ShakeNBake

It's coming....

usctrojanGT3

I'll go flat out and beat the time that the computer can post.

golfnutintib

hapa

we are ALL dying - its just whether we have gotten our minds around that fact LOL ... age, and being old, is but a state of mind...

more seriously, I am 55, and plan to be around for 30-40-50 more years flogging all the nice P cars new and old... my point is that PAG needs to continually revitalize its buyer base -- it already has us locked up pretty much... it needs folks in their 20's 30's early 40's in the fold... they would be idiots not to gear their marketing and product planning for these buyers, and they are NOT idiots

there is no doubt there is a younger contingent of manual/analogue car enthusiasts are out there -- i see them at track days... they have ToyoBaru's, Mini's, WRX's, Evos...we need MORE of them to get car makers to make what enthusiasts old and young want to drive!!!!

IrishAndy

I think enthusiast cars will continue to exist but they will be niche products. I don't think it's that supposedly enthusiast car companies conspire against the manual as much as it is the ever harsher emissions regulations. They forced the impossibly stupid 7 speed manual, auto start-stop... Silly gear ratios... Turbos on everything. That wasn't an enthusiast choice... That was thanks to our lovely politicians. OK, I need a drink now...

Archimedes

You honestly think there are going to be legions of fully autonomous cars on our roads within 10 years? Seriously. It's gonna take another 10 more years of real world testing and development and another 10 of regulatory testing, review, legislation, etc. before you even see a car like that legally for sale in the U.S.

What has been achieved so far is just the tip of the iceberg; fairly basic stuff. To actually have a fully autonomous car that can operate safely everywhere is still a long while off.

And even if the technology were ready today AND the regulatory hurdles have been achieved, it will take a generation to replace all the vehicles on the road with autonomous vehicles, for cost reasons alone. 10 years? Not a chance.

Archimedes

There is a huge difference between active cruise/collision avoidance/lane departure warning and a truly autonomous vehicle, that can operate anywhere, safely and efficiently. We are still a long way off from the latter being a reality, even longer before it becomes pervasive, and longer than you or I have on this planet before it replaces manually operated cars entirely. I'm quite certain we will all be happily driving our sports cars until the folks at Sunnyside Acres wrestle the keys out of our hands. There are so many hurdles still to cross and such enormous cost challenges on top of that.

Ochocoronas

To many real time variables and decisions IMO For these type of cars to work in everyday settings. Highway driving I could see it working no problem but around town no way. I say this as I watch 80% of people texting and reading emails while driving. A computer should be able to drive better than them.

Archimedes

That is the biggest benefit I see of this technology, even the stuff they're putting in cars already. It is actually helping to protect us from these inattentive drivers. Honestly, the kind of person who really wants an autonomous car they can just sit in and go is the kind of person I want to have an autonomous car.

Petevb

As an engineer and Chief Technology Officer of a tech company a stone's throw away from Tesla, count me among those who take the opposing view. Nissan's CEO has stated 2020 for affordable self driving cars, Mercedes said the same. Tesla is saying sooner, and current Teslas are built with the sensor suite needed- they just need software and redundancy. You can buy a long haul truck today that will drive itself on the freeway.

It's not a yes/ no proposition, instead the change will be incremental, and liability will shift in stages not instantly. However more miles will be driven in the U.S. by computers than humans in far less than 20 years. It's a common error to extrapolate past technical progress linearly into the future. It's not linear- it's exponential. Darpa's grand challenge was less than a decade ago. Today I'm dodging driverless cars daily.

Just my $.02.

joe12pack

Yes absolutely 10 years. Whatever technology is being rolled out now has already been in development for at least 10 years. So what you are seeing being rolled out is early 2000 tech.

This push for robots is not just in cars but also in manufacturing, police, etc. They have robot technology where robots can repair themselves and even build new robots.

More driver-less car thoughts to think about for fun:

Ochocoronas

How are you going to address school buses, emergency vehicles, animals crossing the road, debris flying off another car, slowing down to let people merge just to name a few. Bad weather? How can it tell if that puddle is deep are you going to hydra plane? The lawsuits will be endless from the situations that arise. There is a huge deference between collision avoidance and total automation.

Side note... if I am alive when this happens I will be ready to open my chain of drive thru bars for all automated cars.

This manual vs PDK has sure gotten interesting.

Petevb

How do you tell if it's a cop flagging you to stop or a potential carjacker?

Is that an empty paper bag on the road, or a bag of cement you need to stop for or swerve to avoid?

If it is cement- should you swerve across double yellows, or slam on the brakes and risk getting rear ended?

And the obvious already mentioned: if someone's going to die, how do you choose who?

All difficult questions that people answer, often incorrectly, every day. Yet smart systems are improving at a tremendous rate. Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess. Watson beats doctors at diagnosis. These are both problems many claimed computers could never master. Driving is just another line on the list. And you can already Google videos of cars autocrossing or tracking by themselves far better than most of us can- that's the easy part.

From your list above: Tesla has a networked database of potholes and road contours- they stiffen or soften suspension to cope with what's coming. Given this, if it's raining and you're approaching a puddle: who's going to be a better judge of how deep it is, you or the car?