(Newswire.net — December 23, 2014) — Next year, Californians will be the first to drive in Google’s famed self-drive car, fully-functioning automated vehicles that are scheduled to roam west coast cities.
The search engine giant announced Monday on its website, they are unwrapping “the best holiday gift they could imagine: the first real build of our self-driving vehicle prototype.”
“The main reason we wanted to develop this prototype vehicle is that we can do a better job than we can do with an existing vehicle,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
The tech giant said on its website that this vehicle was the best they could come up with design-wise as the Google car prototype was “an early mockup”.
“It didn’t even have real headlights,” Google said on its website. “Since then, we’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car, for example, the typical ‘car’ parts like steering and braking, as well as the ‘self-driving’ parts like the computer and sensors,” it continued.
This time, google engineers put all systems together in this first complete prototype for “fully autonomous driving.” After a series of security tests during the Christmas period, the vehicle will hit the streets.
Unlike the bubble shaped first prototype, Google engineers implanted the self-driving technology in Lexus SUV’s and Toyota Prius. According to previous tests, the technology will seriously affect the market. However, Google is not the only player in the game as Ford, Nissan, Toyota and Tesla are developing the technology of fully autonomous vehicles.
The Google prototype had no wheel, no accelerator pedal, or brake pedal, only two buttons ‘Start’ and ‘Stop’, which was kind of spooky. Therefore, Google engineers decided to implant the technology in existing models people are familiar with.
Engineers realized the possibility of a manual override is crucial no matter how much people are used to new technologies. Packed with sensors and navigated by GPS, the Google car promote thse most secure driving, however, people still need to feel they could always ‘take destiny in their own hands’.
No conclusive tech specs were released in the announcement on Monday.