A San Francisco-based startup with eight employees appears to have introduced the first self-driving car technology for everyday consumers.
Cruise has opened up for preorders for its aftermarket kit, a $10,000 system that currently works with Audi A4 and S5 vehicles, Forbes reported. The company will start installing the kit early next year.
"A third of the American workforce spends more than an hour a day commuting. It's boring and dangerous. Now that we have the technology, it's almost our responsibility to do something with it," Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt told Re/code.
The Cruise kit allows drivers to push a button to let the system take over the vehicle's accelerator, brakes and steering wheel. Called "highway autopilot" by Cruise's founder, the system is essentially an intermediary step between traditional cars and totally autonomous vehicles since the driver still needs to get the car to the interstate and in the correct lane.
Vogt hopes the system, which so far has been used for short periods of time, will help drivers relax a bit more since they won't be responsible for directing the car for that half-hour in traffic.
"Most people, when they're driving or commuting in stop-and-go traffic, they're sitting behind the wheel fuming at the car in front of them, wishing it would go faster," Vogt told Re/code. "But when you have this system, you're somehow a little more disconnected, and you don't quite feel that pain and stress, so hopefully that won't come home with you and overflow into the rest of your life."
Vogt plans to introduce systems that work with additional car models, but collaborating with automakers could take three to five years, Forbes reported.
"We have six-to-nine months of testing and qualifications before we can start selling," said Vogt. "Not because there's a law but because we're being realistic. This is a safety control system so we have to be absolutely sure it's safe before we sell it to someone."
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