If you're one of the millions of people pining to own a Google self-driving car, you'd better make yourself comfortable, because you may be in for a much longer wait than you ever expected. Not only that: There's a distinct chance that once you get behind the wheel of the first commercial version of the Google car, it may not be able to take you where you need to go. Any shift by Google in its self-driving car plans would be significant, because while there have been skeptics, much of the world has taken it for granted that the major technology challenges of fully computer-controlled vehicles have been worked out, and that Google was on track to deliver them in the near future. The expectations are so high that lawmakers are now being urged to scrap support for mass transit programs, which, some argue, won't be needed in an era of ubiquitous self-driving cars.
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Lee Gomes (2016) studied this question.