autonomous vehicles – Dispatches From The Front

Rideshare driving was the most-searched side hustle last year, garnering nearly 31,000 monthly Google searches, per a Creative Fabrica study. More than seven million people drive or deliver with Uber alone every month.

However, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview on Friday that driving for Uber is only a safe gig for the next decade. After that, autonomous vehicles, or cars that drive themselves, will take over the same routes humans drive today.

“You fast forward 15, 20 years, I think that the autonomous driver is going to be a better driver than the human driver,” Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern at WSJ Journal House Davos. “They will have trained on lifetimes of driving that no person can, they’re not going to be distracted.”

Self-driving cars are a shared ambition among Google, Tesla, Apple, Uber and Lyft, among other automotive, tech and ridesharing companies. For Uber and Lyft specifically, it’s a matter of cutting costs. However, fiscal expediency is not the main benefit of this emerging technology. Roughly 94 percent of traffic accidents are caused by human error, and to many, autonomous vehicles (AVs) seem to be our only path toward lessening related fatalities. In addition, driverless cars have other benefits, such as lower fuel consumption, lower CO2 emissions and a reduction in congestion. Here are the main ways they stand to change our lives and carve out a lane in the consumer marketplace, as well as the challenges this fledgling sector will need to overcome.

Tag: autonomous vehicles

Uber CEO: Autonomous Vehicles Will Take Over Drivers Soon | Entrepreneur

How Self-Driving Cars Could Shape Our Future | Entrepreneur