“Okay Google, Drive My Car.”

Okay Google, Drive My Car.

Will Richerson, writer

THE FUTURE IS HERE… well, kind of.

Although we may not have the hover-boards and time-traveling cars that Back to the Future promised us all the way back in 1985, we’re coming closer to a similar reality, as Google has just announced that it will be road testing its new prototype driver-less car on the streets of Mountain View, California sometime this summer.

Granted, the basic technology for driver-less cars has been around for years and has already been tested for over one-million miles on public roads, adding an average of 10,000 each day, but the technology in Google’s new prototype is more advanced than the technology in those older models.

Not only is the technology in Google’s new batch of driver-less cars more advanced, the car can now park itself, stop for pedestrians more accurately, and start and stop itself, all things that had to be done manually in previous models, but they were given a sleek new design as well, although the spinning camera mounted on the top of the car does look slightly ridiculous.

Google believes driver-less cars are the future of driving, but they also believe that with great power comes great responsibility, so they’ve given their cars some limitations for this first season of test drives. The cars are currently limited to run at a top speed of 25 miles per hour, and to only stay in neighborhoods. Additionally, it is mandatory that all cars be equipped with a test driver at all times, someone who can take control of the car using a detachable steering wheel and use the gas and brake pedal which Google says they are still debating including in the finished version.

All in all, Google predicts that self-driving cars could be in the garages of drivers everywhere by late 2020.