A good skeptical take on an Apple car by +The Economist?
Upsetting the Apple car
APPLE’S ability to make desirable iGadgets designed for easy portability is beyond question. Reports emerged this week that it is planning to make a mobile device…
Post imported by Google+Blog for WordPress.
Google's worst decision was to not at least start with having a steering wheel and pedals in it's vehicle. They need to stick with what they are good at: software with the most minimal hardware necessary to make it work in the widest array of products possible. To say the least, to get the most initial adoption, they should manufacture a piece of hardware that would turn any drive-by-wire vehicle currently on the market into a self-driving car. As adoption grows, they would probably be able to get existing car companies that don't want to spend the money to develop the tech themselves to license their software for the cars they are manufacturing.
Maybe they couldn't get the car companies to let it be possible to do such a thing with an aftermarket device, but not doing so prevents them from being able to use their standard highly successful approach to bringing their products to market in a successful manner. Not including a steering wheel and pedals just further reduces the likelihood that a person would be comfortable riding in the vehicle on public roads at normal speeds.