Google co-founder Sergey Brin gestures after riding in a driverless car with officials to a bill signing for driverless cars at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google engineers say they have turned a corner in their pursuit of creating a car that can drive itself. Test cars have been able to navigate freeways comfortably for a few years. On Monday, Google said the cars can now negotiate thousands of urban situations that would have stumped them a year or two ago.LOS ANGELES – Google says that cars it has programmed to drive themselves have started to master the navigation of city streets and the challenges they bring, from jaywalkers to weaving bicyclists- a critical milestone for any commercially available self-driving car technology.
Despite the progress over the past year, the cars have plenty of learning to do before 2017, when the Silicon Valley tech giant hopes to get the technology to the public.
None of the traditional automakers has been so bullish. Instead, they have rolled out features incrementally, including technology that brakes and accelerates in stop-and-go traffic or keeps cars in their lanes.
“I think the Google technology is great stuff. But I just don’t see a quick pathway to the market,” said David Alexander, a senior analyst with Navigant Research who specializes in autonomous vehicles.
His projection is that self-driving cars will not be commercial available until 2025.