Driverless Cars Set to Hit the Automobile Market By 2015

It is a curious anticipation for driverless cars to hit the market by 2015 but technology always amazes people. Rumour has it that driverless vehicles could actually be on the market by 2015. Different companies are at advanced levels of developing and testing driverless automobiles including the giants in the motor vehicle industry such as Ford, BMW, Audi, GM, Volkswagen, Google, and Volvo. 

Google's driverless cars an ongoing project

Google has taken a center-stage role in running a project dubbed Google driverless car which brings together technology advances for self driving cars. The project is led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun among other big brains in the science and tech world. Google carried out successive tests that involved a fleet of an Audit TT and six Toyota Prii. The cars navigated over 140,000 miles across the streets and highways of California.

Apparently only one accident was witnessed during the test but this occurred in a rare testing occasion when a human was actually driving.  Google also took another test featuring 1000 miles and during this testing, no accident was reported. The road to unveiling a truly driverless car seems to have progressed to greater heights. 

The designers of these cars argue that they will eliminate accidents on roads, which have taken away lives of many motorists, pedestrians, and passengers. Many of the notorious accidents witnessed today arise from driver errors. The precision of driverless cars is expected to improve the flow of traffic, which is another daunting thing experienced in big cities and towns. 

Driverless cars cockpit

This means that the traffic jams may be reduced significantly. It is also thought that the cars would allow commuters to embark on other things when travelling such as sleep, read, work or make discussions while aboard the vehicle. As the innovative designing and testing automated cars in the market continues, Audi has voiced its ability to have a fully automated car on the market by 2015 however; this is subject to the wishes of the drivers and whether they are really prepared for such a big thing in just a few years to come.

In Las Vegas this year (2013), Audi made remarkable comments that it would have a technology that could be applied to remotely park cars in parking areas using smartphones or tablets and this is by 2015. These systems are a series of other technological developments that will have been unveiled before the grand launch of the driverless cars.

However, prior to the autonomous cars, the market is expected to get releases of semi-autonomous vehicles. This may happen in about few months and the use of the remote parking apps could be a step above the semi-autonomous cars. It is expected that towards the end of 2013, Mercedes-Benz will sell vehicles, which are capable of steering themselves in a lane.

The auto control systems are aimed at being in-charge of the car to avoid crashes. In the driverless cars, Google seems to be posing stiff competition as it has already begun testing its self-driven cars that use Google’s mapping system. However, the big challenge is whether car buyers will be willing to pay for such technology. And, as Dr Wolfgang Durheimer, a member of Audi’s board of management that handles matters pertaining to technical development says, it is a question of how much consumers will be willing to pay for the advanced self driven cars.