A hybrid, hybrid: Google tests self-driving Prius

Self drive: Greater efficiency and safety

Way out of the box hybrid

Years ago I fully believed the battery was going to completely revolutionize the automobile, and rather quickly. Unfortunately, the research overwhelmingly contradicts such a reality.

I find this irritatingly unacceptable, but to pretend the research is wrong, when so diverse and abundant, seems foolish. Consequently, I’ve been been willing to accept natural gas, biofuels, etc. as supplements to the battery revolution – anything to seriously change the paradigm as quickly as possible away from oil, especially foreign.

Yet for some time I’ve started to believe that auto-drive is the real revolution coming in the auto industry, and it turns out Google has been thinking the same thing.

If you follow this blog then you know this theme has come up a number of times, most recently in Self-drive plus auto-drive: The new hybrid.

“Besides, cars just don’t express today’s ego the way they did in the past,” I wrote. “Today it’s all about social networks, and auto-drive transportation pods will offer a far better social networking experience than will self-driving everywhere – that’s soooo last century.”

And what better company than Google to create the foundation for the next auto-driven social network?

Just recently Google put 140,000 miles on a Toyota Prius driven by an “electric brain” powered by “software, linked to GPS satellite navigation technology” and “video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to ’see’ other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead.”

While Google claims the focus is largely safety – which is a very worthy effort that could easily lead to much smaller cars – even totally unique transportation pods – that are as safe, or safer, than the biggest SUVs, it seems to me that the potential of such technology is far, far greater.

Breaking free of our foreign-oil dependent automotive box just became a little more real.