Self-driving cars are smart. But the technology behind them is no smarter than the fact that it costs parking spaces. In fact, a whopping 600 of them in a row.
The Google-owned self-driving cars from the company Waymo have gained more than 600 parking spaces in San Francisco in one year.
Here, the cars drive around on their own and pick up passengers. But artificial intelligence doesn't have a handle on all traffic rules. And certainly not when it comes to parking.
This is what Autobild writes.
According to the media outlet, Waymo has already had to pay $65,000 in parking fines alone. That's an amount that corresponds to 444,000 Danish kroner.
And while that's a lot of money, it's peanuts compared to what the San Francisco city government has earned by printing 1.2 million parking stalls during the same period.
Waymo has a fleet of about 300 self-driving cars. They drive around the clock. However, they sometimes park in zones where parking is not allowed.
Self-driving cars are actually a long way off.
This happens, for example, when there is a waiting time between booked trips with the service. And although the self-driving Jaguars that Waymo has running can see if they are stopping in the way of others, the technology cannot detect if the cars are stopping in a place where they are not allowed.
The American company believes that the problem can be solved by updating the cars' software. However, Waymo will not promise that paying for parking meters will be the end of the problem.
Instead, it says that it will 'reduce the number of future parking spaces.' So far, self-driving cars have only prioritized safe parking.
They – the cars – are programmed not to block traffic. However, they still lack the ability to read parking and stop signs.
The case shows that the integration of self-driving cars in urban areas is a challenge. There are still errors and shortcomings. And in some places it is a problem that will only be solved very far in the future.
At tech giant Nvidia, for example, they believe that truly self-driving cars are a utopia. In any case, the technology is very far in the future. Even further than, for example, Tesla claims. Read more about it here .
