Google Inc. envisions self-driving cars available to consumers as soon as three years from now, according to Bloomberg News. But regulators will slow the process of bringing the technology to market.
The technology is being developed so quickly that it has outpaced the agencies in place to regulate it. The reports states that decisions will have to be made on licensing, insuring and maintaining the safety of the self-driving cars.
"The improvement can be such that we can make cars that drive safer than people do," Anthony Levandowsky, product manager for Google's self-driving technology, told Bloomberg. "I can't tell you you'll be able to have a Google car in your garage next year. We expect to re
lease the technology in the next five years. In what form it gets released is still to be determined."
Google has been developing the self-driving technology for a number of years and currently has a test fleet of at least ten vehicles, which according to Wired Magazine, consist of six Toyota Prius, an Audi TT and three Lexus RX450h.
The Bloomberg report states the Google has no plans on producing driverless cars, but is focusing on the driverless technology.
The biggest technological challenge is ensuring the reliability of the software that makes the car drive, the report states, because software failure would mean nothing is controlling the vehicle.
According to the Bloomberg, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would need to create standards for the electronic components in self-driving cars and figure out how to test them.
"It gets to be a massive challenge to figure out how will the government come up with a performance standard that is objective and testable for so many different scenarios where failure could possibly occur," said Dan Smith, associate administrator for vehicle safety at NHTSA, according to Bloomberg Report.
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