And the Award for Most Nauseating Self-Driving Car Goes to …
In many ways this year’s CES looked a lot more like an autonomous-car show than a consumer electronics show.
There were announcements aplenty from the likes of Ford, Baidu, Toyota, and others about self-driving vehicles, upcoming driving tests, and new partners. In a parking lot across from the Las Vegas Convention Center, several companies offered rides; you could even schedule a ride in a self-driving Lyft through the company’s app and get dropped off at one of many casinos on the Strip.
A couple of miles away in downtown Las Vegas, an eight-passenger autonomous shuttle bus ran in a loop around Fremont Street. It was part of an ongoing test between commuter transit company Keolis, autonomous-car maker Navya, and the city.
While there’s still a long way to go before most of us will be able to, say, summon a robo-taxi to go out to dinner, I wanted to get a sense for what it’s like to ride in these vehicles. So over the last week I lined up as many autonomous-car trips as I could and paid attention to things like how smooth the rides were, how the cars reacted to sudden obstacles, and what the overall experience was like to be a passenger in a car with no human hands on the wheel (if there even is a wheel).
The results? Often boring—which in this case is a really good thing—with a side of nausea and a dash of fear.
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