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When Can We Expect Self-Driving Cars To Be Available?

You may have been hearing the excited whispers of ‘self-driving cars’ for a couple of years now, but still not know much about them. You’re not alone, many of us are unaware of the advances car makers have been making in this industry. German Specialists briefly explore what has been happening, and what to look forward to, in their latest blog.

The Self-Driving Industry

As early as 2006, BMW has been researching autonomous driving. Their first success was creating the Track-Trainer, which finds the ideal racing line on a racetrack; they showcased this at Nürburgring Nordschleife, the world’s most demanding racetrack.

Since then, Google joined the race and developed its own self-driving car. They became the first to set the record for the most miles driven autonomously. They continued to build their own sensors and invited employees to test these out for them. Now, they have set up a project called Waymo, which sets out to release more self-driving cars into the public domain, making it easier to get around.

Artificial Intelligence has now started to be incorporated into cars, with big companies such as BMW and Tesla implementing it into their vehicles that are sold to the public. Tesla continues to research this area, however, each car is sold with the ability to be self-driving and will just require an update, when they have it, to make it fully autonomous.

The Future

It was revealed in late 2017 that Hamburg would be the host city of the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) World Congress in 2021. Since then, the city has been building a new testing ground specifically for self-driving cars and Volkswagen has become the latest global company to start testing their autonomous cars, no doubt in preparation for the Congress. This is a world event so it’ll be interesting to see what other carmakers have been working on.

There have been no specific release dates for self-driving cars, although Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has said they will have made the necessary technology by the end of 2019, ready to be rolled out in 2020. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Next month we will be assessing the pro’s and con’s of self-driving cars, so make sure you check back with us to find out if they’re worth the investment.

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