Self-Driving Car Phoenix AZ
What crazy I Robot-inspired fever-dream is this? That’s the question many of us at Avondale Nissan have been asking recently after hearing that several companies–including Google, most notably–are working to perfect the world’s first (real) self-driving car.
Yes, you read that correctly. One might think that this would be only faddish thinking, such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner or the LawnBott lawnmower, taking advantage of new technology to exploit the laziness of many Americans. With the self-driving car, however, this is not the case. During testing, the Google self-driving car has already logged over 700,000 miles, and autonomous vehicles are already street-legal in four states–Nevada, California, Florida and Michigan–although they still require a human driver as well. According to reports, the only accidents involving self-driving cars have occurred when the other driver was at fault or when the human driver took over.
The next step for self-driving cars is to make them better at handling the stop-and-go nature of city driving, and Google claims that this is already being achieved. Chris Urmson, leader of Google’s self-driving car program, has asserted that the car’s software is better able to handle all the distractions of city driving than an actual human, and that it never falls victim to the human errors of fatigue or lack of attention.
So, the real question: are we ever going to actually see these self-driving cars become commonplace? Nissan has announced plans to begin production of self-driving cars by 2020, and a study called “Emerging Technologies: Autonomous Cars–Not if, But When” estimates that by 2035, half of all new cars sold in North America will be autonomous. Many other automakers–BMW, Volvo and Lexus, to name a few–have also planned self-driving car programs, and a company called Induct Technology is producing a golf cart-looking vehicle in European locales such as Lyon and Luxembourg.
While we don’t expect to see them on the lot at Avondale Nissan anytime soon, it would appear that the self-driving car might actually become a reality in the not-too-distant future. But, for the time being, we at Avondale Nissan will continue on the course we’ve set: to proudly sell and service the finest new and used vehicles to the fine people of the Phoenix area! See you soon at Avondale Nissan!
