CARS.COM — When Google recruited about 100 employees in 2013 to become guinea-pig testers for its self-driving car project, one man in particular objected. John Krafcik, CEO of the company's driverless-car division, recounted the tale at the 2016 Automotive Forum, an event hosted by the National Auto Dealers Association and J.D. Power on the eve of the 2016 New York International Auto Show.
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"We had one guy in a Porsche 911 who originally said, 'No way, I'm a car guy, I'm going to hate this,' " said Krafcik, an industry veteran who once led Hyundai's U.S. arm. "It turns out he literally loved it, and we literally had to pry the keys back."
For driving enthusiasts that conjures up an unsettling future, where self-driving cars turn legions of car guys into push-a-button lemmings. But Krafcik said the auto industry will continue to have as many, and perhaps even more, brands focused on driving enjoyment. And that's good news for the enthusiasts, he added.
"Self-driving technology will do a super good job of taking care of some of the more mundane, boring A-to-B transportation," he said. But "this is going to take some time. This is truly evolutionary. No one needs to panic."
Strange Occurrences
Google's early tests were relatively simple. Testers would drive the car onto the highway, switch into self-driving mode and resume control at the exit ramp, Krafcik said. Many of today's adaptive cruise control systems with corrective steering essentially do that.
City streets, by contrast, are "orders of magnitude more complicated," he said. As they approach a typical intersection, Google's self-driving Lexus SUVs have reams of data to crunch in real time: pedestrians, animals, traffic signs, stoplights and other cars — behind, ahead or crossing the intersection.
Google says its cars have traveled more than 1.4 million miles since 2013, with occasional fender benders and plenty of bizarre situations. At one point, Google encountered a woman in a wheelchair chasing a duck.
Then there was a horde of hoppers — a real-life "Frogger" scene as half a dozen people crouch-jumped in an apparent stunt around stopped cars at an intersection. The hopping went without incident; Google's car basically stayed put.
Regulatory Hurdles
Semi-autonomous driving technologies have proliferated among new cars and will continue; safety officials recently announced a deal to make automatic-braking systems standard by 2022. At this week's forum, industry experts reflected a widespread belief that self-driving cars will bring safety benefits to consumers and new business opportunities to the auto industry.
But some regulatory hurdles stand in the way, Krafcik said. He pointed to a federal safety standard, for example, that requires a steering wheel to cancel a turn signal after you finish a turn. That, of course, requires a steering wheel — something Google's Snoopy-faced, self-driving prototypes lack.
Government officials admitted to some of the blame. Blair Anderson, deputy administrator at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, conceded that Krafcik's turn-signal example is emblematic of a system "developed over the last 50 years." Many technologies bearing down on the industry were inconceivable when regulators came up with the rules, but NHTSA is in the process of letting automakers request exemptions and interpretations of certain rules to allow technologies to come to market — one example is the driverless parking system in the redesigned BMW 7 Series, which was recently cleared for U.S. operation.
Still 'Decades' Out
Google launched its self-driving initiative in 2009 but shifted its attention to what experts call "Level 4" self-driving technology about three years in, Krafcik said. In essence, Level 4 reflects the ability to accelerate, brake and steer in all situations with no driver interaction at all.
Analysts think such cars are still a long way off. Colin Langan, an auto analyst at UBS, had the longest view. The day you can get into your car, tell it where to go and fall asleep is still "decades away," he said. That's because too many situations — a police officer waving you through traffic, for example — trip up today's autonomous cars, he said.
Indeed, Rand Corp., a research group, says about 275 million miles of fatality-free autonomous car testing will be necessary to determine that self-driving cars have similar rates of safety as human drivers, which is to say nothing of rates that exceed human error. Rand says it would take more than 12 years of driving a fleet of 100 autonomous vehicles 24 hours a day just to rack up those miles.
Krafcik didn't offer his own time frame, but he hinted at the path ahead, at least for Google.
"We've been at this for seven years, and we've been all in on the full L4 [Level 4] solution for about half of that time now, and so we're getting really good in certain environments," he said.
But "there are other environments where we have challenges," Krafcik continued. "There's so much more to do to make it robust all the time."
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