Google and Tesla agree autonomous
vehicles will make streets safer, and both are racing toward a driverless
future. But when Google tested its self-driving car prototype on employees a
few years ago, it noticed something that would take it down a different path
from Tesla.
Google and Tesla agree autonomous
vehicles will make streets safer, and both are racing toward a driverless
future. But when Google tested its self-driving car prototype on employees a
few years ago, it noticed something that would take it down a different path
from Tesla.
Once behind the wheel of the
modified Lexus SUVs, the drivers quickly started rummaging through their bags,
fiddling with their phones and taking their hands off the wheel - all while
traveling on a freeway at 60 mph.
"Within about five minutes,
everybody thought the car worked well, and after that, they just trusted it to
work," Chris Urmson, the head of Google's self-driving car program, said
on a panel this year. "It got to the point where people were doing
ridiculous things in the car."
After seeing how people misused its
technology despite warnings to pay attention to the road, Google has opted to
tinker with its algorithms until they are human-proof. The Mountain View,
Calif., firm is focusing on fully autonomous
vehicles - cars that drive on their own without any human
intervention and, for now, operate only under the oversight of Google experts.
Tesla, on the other hand, released a
self-driving feature called autopilot to customers in a software update last
year. The electric carmaker, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, says those who
choose to participate in the "public beta phase" will help refine the
technology and make streets safer sooner.
Tesla drivers already had logged
some 130 million miles using the feature before a fatal crash in Florida in May
made it the subject of a preliminary federal inquiry made public last week.
The divergent approaches reflect
companies with different goals and business strategies. Tesla's rapid-fire
approach is in line with its image as a small but significant auto industry
disruptor, while Google - a tech company from whom no one expects auto products
- has the luxury of time.
With the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration yet to release guidelines for self-driving
technology, existing regulation has little influence on corporate
tactics.
That makes Google's caution even
more surprising, as it has long operated with the Silicon Valley ethos of
launching products fast and experimenting even faster. But in developing
self-driving cars, the company has splintered from its software roots. It is
taking its time to perfect a revolutionary technology that will turn Google
into a company that helps people get around the real world the way it helps
them navigate the internet.
"I've had people say, 'Look, my Windows laptop crashes every day - what if that's my car?'" Urmson said at a conference held by the Los Angeles Times on transportation issues. "How do you make sure you don't have a 'blue screen of death,' so to speak?"
The stakes are simply higher with
self-driving cars than with operating systems and apps, Urmson said. That's why
Google has yet to bring its self-driving technology to consumer vehicles even
though it's been in development for seven years and logged more than 1.5
million test miles.
Tesla insists its vehicles go
through vigorous in-house testing and are proved safe before they reach
consumers. And, according to the company, putting them on the roads makes the
software - which learns from experience - only better.
"We are continuously and
proactively enhancing our vehicles with the latest advanced safety
technology," a Tesla spokeswoman said via email.
And there's truth to that, said Jeff
Miller, an associate professor in the Computer Engineering Department at USC,
who said there is no way to stamp out every problem from technology before
launching it. At some point, this kind of technology needs to be thrown into
the real world.
"Every single program in the
world has bugs in it," he said. "You have imperfect human beings who
have written the code, and imperfect human beings driving around the driverless
cars. Accidents are going to happen."
But this doesn't mean these products
shouldn't launch.
"We have been testing the
vehicles in labs for a good number of years now," Miller said. "Like
with airplanes, eventually you're going to have that first flight with
passengers on it."
Getting the technology to work is
only half the challenge, though. As Google learned when its employees took
their hands off the wheel, the other half is ensuring that the technology is
immune to human error.
It's not enough for the technology
in a vehicle to simply work as intended, said David Strickland, a former chief
of the NHTSA who now leads the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a
group that includes Google, Volvo, Ford, Uber and Lyft. Part of the safety
evaluation has to account for how the technology could be misused, and
companies must build protections against that.
Tesla and other automakers have
launched automated cruise control features with built-in sound alerts if a
driver's hands are not detected on the wheel. But these checks aren't
fool-proof, either.
"Having developed software and
hardware products ... I can point to the incredible inventiveness of customers
in doing things you just never, ever considered possible, even when you tried
to take the ridiculous and stupid into account," said Paul Reynolds, a
former vice president of engineering at wireless charging technology developer
Ubeam. "If customer education is the only thing stopping your product from
being dangerous in normal use, then your real problem is a company without
proper consideration for safety."
Google and other automakers aim to
solve the human problem by achieving the highest level of autonomy possible.
The NHTSA ranks self-driving cars based on the level they cede to
the vehicle, with 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.
Tesla's autopilot feature is
classified as level 2, which means it is capable of staying in the center of a
lane, changing lanes and adjusting speed according to traffic. Google is aiming
for levels 4 and 5 - the former requires a driver to input navigation
instructions, but relinquishes all other control to the vehicle, while level 5
autonomy does not involve a driver at all.
Volvo plans to launch a pilot
program for its level 4 autonomous car next year. BMW has signaled ambitions to
develop levels 3, 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles.
The problem with level 2, critics
say, is that it's just autonomous enough to give drivers the false sense that
the vehicle can drive itself, which can lead to careless behavior.
Tesla disputes this - its owner's
manual details the feature's limitations - and it says drivers are actually
clamoring for the product. Tesla executive Jonathan McNeil said in a February
investor call that the autopilot feature is "one of the core stories of
what's going on here at Tesla."
The sudden rollout of the tool in
October is in line with a company that has made a name for itself as a
boundary-pusher that appeals to those willing to take a risk on technology with
world-changing potential.
Its regular software updates bring
flashy, first-of-their-kind functions to cars already on the road - a way to
build loyalty among current owners and court new ones. Indeed, 40-year-old
Joshua Brown, who died when his Tesla Model S failed to detect a white big rig
against the bright sky, posted two dozen videos showing the autopilot
technology in action.
Analysts aren't surprised that Tesla
is moving faster than Alphabet Inc. - Google's parent company and the second
most-valuable publicly traded company on American markets. Cars, after all, are
Tesla's business.
Google makes money from its search
and advertising business and has its hands in hardware, software, email and
entertainment. Self-driving vehicles are one of its "moonshots" -
ambitious projects with no expectation for short-term profitability. They are
lumped into Google X, a secretive arm of the company that has experimented with
ideas such as using balloons to connect the world to Wi-Fi and the head-mounted
gadget Google Glass.
The company has no plans to
manufacture and sell its own vehicles. Instead, it likely will partner with
automakers, hoping its autonomous-driving software will come to dominate the
market the same way its Android operating system dominates the smartphone
industry.
"Google has the time, and they
can develop things quietly," said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with
Auto Trader, "whereas Tesla is under some pressure to build this car
company and start making a profit."
As self-driving technology becomes
commonplace, regulators, automakers and consumers will have to decide whether
rolling out early products is worth the potential risk, said Shannon Vallor, a
philosophy professor at Santa Clara University who studies the intersection of
ethics and technology.
"It is far from obvious that
the ends here do justify the beta testing of this technology
on public roads without better safeguards," Vallor said.
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