GM plans to have driverless cars on the road by 2018
There's certainly no shortage of folks working to developed driverless vehicles, but GM now looks set to make itself one of the biggest players and, judging from its targets, one of the most ambitious. As the AP reports. GM bigwig Rick Wagoner will devote at least part of his speech at CES on Tuesday to the technology, with testing of the vehicles reportedly planned as soon as 2015 and the first cars on the road expected "around 2018." As you might expect, those goals have left some slightly skeptical, with DARPA Urban Challenge competitor Sebastian Thrun telling the AP that while it's "technically attainable," he's hardly confident that he'll see driverless cars on the roads within a decade, saying that there are "some very fundamental, basic regulations in the way of that vision in many countries." For it's part, GM sees the technology initially being used for highway driving only, with you still responsible for controlling the vehicle around local streets -- except for parking, of course.
