A German Parking Garage Parks Your Car For You 131
moon_unit2 writes "Tech Review has a story about a garage in Ingolstadt, Germany, where the cars park themselves. The garage is an experiment set up by Audi to explore ways that autonomous technology might practically be introduced; most of the sensor technology is built into the garage and relayed to the cars rather than inside the cars themselves. It seems that carmakers see the technology progressing in a slightly different way to Google, with its fleet of self-driving Prius. From the piece: 'It's actually going to take a while before you get a really, fully autonomous car,' says Annie Lien, a senior engineer at the Electronics Research Lab, a shared facility for Audi, Volkswagen, and other Volkswagen Group brands in Belmont, California, near Silicon Valley. 'People are surprised when I tell them that you're not going to get a car that drives you from A to B, or door to door, in the next 10 years.'"
Re:How does the insurance industry feel about this (Score:4, Interesting)
How will the insurance industry make up for the rates charged if cars are fully autonomous? They will lose a very lucrative market if and when this comes to be.
By insuring car makers against crashes caused by their software. And, of course, it's not the rates they care about, but the profit....they may be able to maintain their profit whilst reducing rates by paying out less and getting rid of administrative overhead by dealing with a few big customers.
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Last summer I was in New England. A buddy and I were driving down the interstate and I wanted to stop at a pharmacy and get some antacids. We had the GPS unit find the nearest pharmacy and it began directing us to a CVS just two miles away. The unit kept telling us that we were getting closer, but I didn't see any exits. Just before we crossed an overpass the GPS announced, "Your destination is on the right." Sure enough, I looked down and there was the CVS -- forty feet below us.
I have often wondered how a driverless car would handle that situation.