The popular notion of the go-anywhere, go-anytime, sleep-in-the-back autonomous car crumbled a bit in the last few weeks, as automakers admitted that the development of full self-driving technology is more difficult than expected.
Questions about the technology’s future reached full public view in April, when Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Hackett acknowledged what had already become painfully obvious to much of the engineering community. “We overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles,” Hackett was quoted as saying by numerous news outlets. “Its applications will be narrow, what we call geo-fenced, because the problem is so complex.”
The admission came as a shocker to many in the public and in the media, essentially because it flew in the face of a growing belief that shiny new autonomous vehicles would soon be landing in dealerships.
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