Driverless cars were the future but now the truth is out

theguardian.com

7 points·musha68k··5 comments

They're right - the amount of money poured into driverless cars could have easily been used to make public transit across the country much more usable, and immediately available. Though I realize the money is not fungible between private sector research and public utilities.

Perhaps one could argue that without this level of research into driverless cars, we would still lack auto-braking and radar cruise-control (which are standard on many new cars now). I don't know though, personally I wish more time and money was spent building out public transit and making it a viable option for more people.

> Today we can say it has failed miserably

Can we? It seems like yes, it was overhyped, but "miserable failure" seems like a stretch. Especially considering you can ride a Waymo robotaxi right now (in certain areas) and it's, IMO, a much better experience than Uber.

Ask a B-school professor whether or not the whole-industry RoI, or the yawning chasm between what was promised vs. what shows signs of actually being delivered, have yet qualified for "Miserable Failure".

The article didn't mention Waymo at all though, which is why I think it's mostly left wing flak.

The author had a point to make and wasn't about to let a successful robotaxi deployment get in the way of making it.

When an author is pointedly ignoring evidence that contradicts their thesis that's usually a signal that you're reading political polemic instead of objective analysis.

After 10 years of research and billions of dollars spent, the most visible outcome is that you can call a Waymo in San Francisco and it might not park itself on top of a pedestrian.

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