The problem is that they are not and may never be practical, due to the infinite variables they need to deal with on the open road caused by other (human) drivers, weather conditions, etc.
The only way self driving cars can feasibly work is if they are used on dedicated roads that are closed to human drivers, allowing the software in these vehicles to communicate with each other, to work out things like speed, proper distancing, and synchronize lane changes and such.
Throw an unpredictable human driver into the mix and it all falls apart.
Actually, even your standard garden variety car now has so many driver assist devices and features that making them fully self driving…again, with human vigilance…isn’t a leap at all.
They maintain lane control, do emergency stops, correct skids, sometimes the steering automatically corrects, some can pretty much park themselves, etc.
I don’t see what there is to charge Musk with or even sue. But you know they’re out to get him, and they’re just hoping something will stick.
No, general case automated driving (which is what we are talking about here) is decades away or more from being viablle.
To be a general case self driving vehicle you need to able to deal with uncertainty and they can’t.
Not only that but they haven’t figured out how to deal with even what are simple problems that humans deal with automatically. Like speed limit signs that list multiple speeds for different types of vehicles and update throughout the day….
There are billions if not trillions of edge cases that are not based on human unpredictability that they have no idea how to solve currently.
You could build a general case self driving car and have it work with todays tech, but it would basically be very slow abs stop anytime it hit one of these countless cases until the situation causing the confusion resolved itself.
This type of vehicle would be practical for an older or disabled person who won’t care it takes them an hour to do what for everyone else would be. 15 minute drive in order to keep or have their mobility and freedom. But the general case average Joe is going to get in his car tell it to drive hi. To work and then nap in the car or whatever while it drives him there as quickly as if a human was driving… easily decades or more away.
It abs 80/20 or 90/10 problem…. 80-90% of the effort is in the last 10-20% of the problem. Took around 40 years to get about 70-80% of trhe problem complete.. which is where we are today… going to take many more decades to get the remaining 20-30% done