You’re not bothering to understand what’s happening. Discard your curmudgeon for 5 minutes and actually PAY ATTENTION to what that story says, and how utterly impossible that was 3 years. It IS happening, right now, before our very eyes, the whole concept of vehicle travel is changing. You can deny until you’re blue in the face, and it doesn’t matter. The future is now, the science fiction staple IS ON THE ROAD.
Curmudgeon?
I am a civil engineer who deals with road construction and traffic issues on a daily basis.
I am also a car enthusiast, who takes them apart and puts them back together.
The company I work for has also been on the leading edge of LIDAR technology...which just two weeks ago pitched a large scale demonstration project of a real world application for mobile LIDAR. I have also used LIDAR on my own projects.
In other words, I have a basic understanding of how this stuff works. How much the equipment costs. Weather limitations, recalibration requirements, data usage, computing requirements, durability, air conditioning requirements.
And, I know how roads are built, how they are funded how they are repaired...and how that is funded...and basically how problematic it would be to keep roads suitable for self driving cars.
You can call me a curmudgeon...but perhaps you are buying into the hype too much.
I ask you once again...since you stated “this IS happening”, then give just one example. And when you can’t find one, perhaps instead of calling me names, consider what it means when you can’t - this IS NOT happening.