The Future of Driving: Steering Towards Autonomy

As we approach a new era of autonomous driving, the conventional steering wheel and pedals are becoming obsolete. Google pioneered this shift in 2014 with experimental vehicles that lacked traditional controls, placing full reliance on sensors and software to control them.

Subsequently, General Motors (GM) introduced Cruise AV, a fully autonomous car, also devoid of the steering wheel and pedals. "We believe there will be more change in our industry over the next five years than there has been over the last 50,” says GM President Dan Ammann, expressing the company's vision to stay at the forefront of this evolution. While the company's business has been built on the “owner-driver” model that has historically dominated the industry, Ammann acknowledges a significant shift in consumer behavior. Especially in cities, where people are eschewing ownership and hopping into Ubers and Zipcars when they need a ride, signaling the gradual transformation of drivers to passengers.

Fast-forward to 2023, Tesla has escalated the race towards full autonomy. It has started production of the Dojo supercomputer, designed to train its fleet of self-driving cars. With a computational capacity of an exaflop - a quintillion (10^18) floating-point operations per second - Tesla is poised to redefine the landscape of autonomous driving by 2024.

As we navigate towards this new future, our readiness to adopt this change remains the pivotal question. Are we ready to let go of the wheel and embrace the future of autonomous driving? Share your thoughts in the comments.