Will we ever get to driverless cars

Back when I was a journalist at The Verge and a comms guy at DJI, the rise of autonomous vehicles, driverless cars or drones that carried people, seemed inevitable. I bought into the credo that my own children would never have to learn to drive.

But take a look at some recent pieces from my old colleague Andy Hawkins at The Verge and you get the sense that the driverless car industry is hitting a wall. Argo.AI, a extremely well funded started backed by Ford and VW is shutting down. Instead of pushing for fully remote vehicles, companies like Ford are putting more emphasis on advanced driver assist features that make some parts of driving, for example on the highway, feel like a fairly autonomous experience.

If you want to soak in some nostalgia from the heady days of 2017-2018, when driverless cars felt like a safe bet for the near future, read here. Or check out this feature length ode to Velodyne and the inventor of LIDAR, which I loved researching and writing. The tech is amazing, but the company’s dream of it’s sensors being a mainstream component on mass produced cars still feels like a distant dream.