If self-driving vehicles become the primary means of getting around, they could cut our commutes by 50 minutes each day, save up enough parking spaces to free up an area as big as the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks combined, and save billions of dollars by decreasing the risk of crashes, according to a rosy portrait of the future of autonomous vehicles being published by the McKinsey and Co., as the Geneva International Motor Show begins Thursday.
In other autonomous vehicle news:
1. Driverless vehicles could soon be coming to Stanford s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory campus. Scientists and academics travel from all over the world to visit the center, and the first application of the automated vehicle system will be to transport visiting scientists to the accelerator, says a report by the Observer.
2. Google tells Quartz it could let a few dozen people test out its two-seater self-driving prototype cars later this year.
3. San Franciscans have been spotting the self-driving Mercedes-Benz F015, which premiered at CES in January, on the city s streets this week. See the vehicle in front of a laundromat, by the Bimbo s 365 Club, on a hill with a skyline view, and, of course, with a Golden Gate Bridge vista.
4. And instead of talking so much about self-driving cars, says the Pacific Standard, we should really be thinking more about self-driving buses.
Above: U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt talked with Chris Urmson, director of Google s self-driving car project, at the company s Mountain View campus in February. (Karl Mondon/Staff)
