Making Tech Headlines · Page 7
Waymo Heads to Toronto, Begins With the Testing Part
· New York time
Waymo plans to begin testing its self-driving vehicles on Toronto streets, marking a move into Canada. Testing puts the company’s technology into a new urban setting, where the next milestone involves navigating actual roads rather than merely adding another city to an ambitious map. A new city matters because driving is not an abstract demonstration performed on a blank map. Street layouts, local habits and the ordinary complexity of traffic make each place a practical examination. The promise of automation eventually has to meet a specific intersection. For residents, the useful questions concern how the vehicles behave and how the testing fits into the streets they already use. The novelty of a driverless vehicle can attract attention, but reliable, uneventful conduct is the more important long-term achievement. That creates a peculiar marketing problem. The ideal performance of an autonomous vehicle is often deeply boring. It goes where it should, observes the rules and gives everyone little reason to discuss it afterward. A technology with enormous ambitions must ultimately aspire to the social impact of an elevator ride that nobody remembers mentioning at dinner.
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