If you haven’t already read Chunka Mui’s series on the self driving car (links at bottom of this page), you should. For lots of reasons. Mostly because the whole thing is awesome and fascinating.
The economic benefit is illustrated here:
and my take away is that Google is well positioned for a reason I didn’t even think of until now. The massive economic benefits of self driving cars are only realized alongside equally massive adoption of efficient sharing. And that’s a hard problem to solve, arguably harder than getting a car to drive itself.
This system would need to understand my schedule and habits well enough to predict both were I am and where I want to go (however spontaneous I like to think my life is, I’m probably mathematically predictable). And have a car ready to pick me up. And do the same for millions of others. The level of effort the USPS, FedEx, trucking companies, etc. spend on routing and planning is huge. But the magnitude and complexity of this problem dwarfs all of those combined.
So it’s a huge problem, but if anyone Google (maps, mobile, infrastructure…) is well positioned to both:
a) Create and scale this disruptively effective system.
and
b) Benefit from the wealth of information they collect about me in the process.
Pete Tenereillo
Founder / Creator / (ex)CEO, Trapster
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/24/googles-trillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-2-the-ripple-effects/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/30/googles-trillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-3-sooner-than-you-think/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/02/12/googles-trillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-4-how-google-wins-2/