Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car - And How It Will Reshape Our World

Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car - And How It Will Reshape Our World
Lawrence Burns

’A fascinating hybrid. Part freewheeling history of the rise of the modern autonomous vehicle, part intimate memoir from an insider who was on the front lines for much of that history, Autonomy will more than bring readers up to speed on one of today’s most closely watched technologies’ Brian Merchant, author of The One DeviceFrom the ultimate insider – a former General Motors executive and current advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car project – comes the definitive story of the race between Google, Tesla and Uber to create the driverless car.We stand on the brink of a technological revolution. In the near future, most of us will not own automobiles, but will travel instead in driverless electric vehicles summoned at the touch of an app. We will be liberated from driving, so that the time we spend in cars can be put to more productive use. We will prevent more than 90 percent of car crashes, provide freedom of mobility to the elderly and disabled and decrease our dependence on fossil fuels.Autonomy tells the story of the maverick engineers and computer experts who triggered the revolution. Lawrence Burns – long-time adviser to the Google self-driving car project (now Waymo) and former corporate vice president of research, development and planning at General Motors – provides the perfectly timed history of how we arrived at this point, in a character-driven and vivid account of the unlikely thinkers who accomplished what billion-dollar automakers never dared.Beginning at a 2004 off-road robot race across the Mojave Desert with a million-dollar purse and continuing up to the current stampede to develop driverless technology, Autonomy is a page-turning chronicle of the past, a diagnosis of the present and a prediction of the future – the ultimate guide to understanding the driverless car and to navigating the revolution it has sparked.

Copyright (#ulink_5f0a522c-56bb-5a02-951d-f34cabb99945)

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2018 by William Collins

Copyright © Lawrnce D. Burns 2018

Cover image: Shutterstock

Lawrence D. Burns asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008302061

Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008302085

Version: 2018-07-26

Dedication (#ulink_355cf77d-733c-5235-88ff-e07b35439b33)

To engineers, who make what’s possible real

Epigraph (#ulink_ba37ec75-580e-55e1-8a8e-829682999119)

One new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.

—Thomas Jefferson

Contents

Cover (#u0285a092-f6e6-53be-aa82-cfa1ffdb2fe7)

Title Page (#ua832a746-c60f-5e2a-8598-56744a42f45e)

Copyright (#ucb496590-a56d-5d1b-ac8b-cea1b73b89c0)

Dedication (#u89aaa0f7-0b91-5cef-9654-78fed480afaf)

Epigraph (#u317bb8e9-3f9c-5767-991a-6b3e69e7fa99)

Introduction: The Problem with Cars (#u35eed20f-12af-58dc-a012-0f73b20a09b1)

PART I: THE TURNING POINT (#ue50a131f-f4e1-5b77-be68-88454993a21e)

Chapter One: DARPA’s Grand Challenge (#u9328f840-a2db-5139-ba5f-8e4c3e53e120)

Chapter Two: A Second Chance (#u8d45c00f-f230-5dd9-b7f7-362b794925f2)

Chapter Three: History Happens in Victorville (#u90ece5a0-1672-5ecc-988c-24bd4c4dfb61)

PART II: THE NEW DNA OF THE AUTOMOBILE (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four: A Fish Out of Water (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five: Epiphanies (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six: Close Only Counts in Horseshoes (#litres_trial_promo)

PART III: THE AGE OF AUTOMOBILITY (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven: The 101,000-Mile Challenge (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight: The Seeds of Change (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine: The $4 Trillion Disruption (#litres_trial_promo)

PART IV: THE TIPPING POINT (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten: The Stampede (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven: Driving Opportunity (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve: Human Factors (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue: The Quest Goes On (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

A Note on Sources (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)