It'll be decades before autonomous cars are widespread on the roads -- and even then, they won't be able to drive themselves in certain conditions, the CEO of Waymo said Tuesday.
John Krafcik, head of the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet, said that though driverless cars are "truly here," they're not yet ubiquitous. And he doesn't think the industry will ever achieve the highest driving rating of being able to drive at any time of year in any weather and any condition.
Obviously even now they "work" to an extent that is quite impressive and neat! But the fantasy of robot uber taxis driving around, say, Philadelphia, has always been that. (If you read Tesla fan boy boards many of them believe Elon's gonna give them a software update in a few months that'll let them rent their existing cars out as robot taxis when they don't need them). Not gonna happen any time soon. Their utility will be so limited as to basically be gimmicky or as part of the general research project, with a few very niche applications that are much more about the neato factor than any sort of viable consumer/business model,