In 2020, you’ll be a “permanent backseat driver,” the Guardian predicted in 2015. “10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020,” blared a Business Insider headline from 2016. Those declarations were accompanied by announcements from General Motors, Google’s Waymo, Toyota, and Honda that they’d be making self-driving cars by 2020. Elon Musk forecast that Tesla would do it by 2018 — and then, when that failed, by 2020. But the year is here — and the self-driving cars aren’t.
It is exasperatingly difficult to get a good estimate of how long until self-driving cars happen for real for the typical American, both because no one knows for sure and because companies have incentives to publicize optimistic estimates.
At the same time, companies hesitate to put their cars on the road when there’s any chance they aren’t ready. It’s not hard to imagine their arrival later this year, at least in sufficiently limited contexts; it’s also not hard to imagine that the deadlines will be pushed out another three or four years.
Name of Author: Kelsey Piper