I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.
The first autonomous cars date back to the late 20th century. But recent increases in sophistication and reductions in cost - reflected, for example, in cheap LIDAR systems, which can 'see' a street in 3D in a way similar to that of the human eye - are now bringing autonomous cars closer to the market.
When you think of driverless cars, there's a huge potential for these cars to save lives by preventing accidents and by reducing congestion on highways.
I'm looking forward to real big advances in autopilot capability. I'm also expecting companies all over the world starting to deploy mapping and experimental cars for taxi services. You'll see a lot more activity around that.
I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.
I think it's very clear now that we will have self-driving cars.
Uber's issue, I think the biggest one is driverless cars. That could be a complete reset to the business.
It's been invigorating being back on the West Coast, being at Alphabet, because there is so much innovation. And the big challenge is, how do you think about resource allocation and priorities when you have so many great options? But wearing jeans instead of suits and popping into driverless cars has also been a lot of fun.
We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling.
If you say you want to automate cars and save people's lives, the skills you need for that aren't taught in any particular discipline. I know - I was interested in working on automating cars when I was a Ph.D. student in 1995.
Driverless cars are a great thing.
Other cars on the highway driven by believers will suddenly be out of control and stark pandemonium will occur on... every highway in the world where Christians are caught away from the drivers wheel.
People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.
Eventually, all cars are going to be autonomous.
I have one of the self-driving Teslas; it drives itself periodically. It's a marvel of science, but it's still frightening. I think we've got a while before regulators and the general public wrap their heads around the path that will lead to the ubiquity of driverless cars. There's no doubt Uber will be a leader in that space.
It's hard to think that Mark Zuckerberg is actually impoverishing anyone by getting rich with Facebook. But driverless cars are another matter entirely.
One of our most promising technologies is Super Cruise, which is the working name for an innovative system coming to Cadillac in the 2016 time frame. It will allow you to drive on the highway without touching the wheel or pedals, both at speed and in stop-and-go driving.
Google has already tested robot cars in San Francisco. If they can navigate San Francisco, they can probably manage just about anywhere.
Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.
Our highways and our roads are underutilized because of the allowances we have to make for human drivers.
It's a no-brainer for me that at some point our cars will have the ability to drive themselves.
Restrictions on mobility will be removed as cars become driverless. We'll be chauffeured, basically.
When we try to make a car that drives itself, we believe - whether we're right or not - we believe that there would be strong net positive benefit to the world if cars could drive themselves safer than people could.
My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.
I suck as a driver. I believe all cars should be piloted and driven by machines.
