Driverless cars aren’t going away, but we need to lower our expectations about them

The driverless car startups that haven’t run out of money, gone out of business, or been bought out want you to know that driverless cars aren’t going away. These companies insist that skepticism about the technology is expected but unwarranted and that driverless cars will, in the words of one co-founder, “change the world.”

Where have we heard this before? Oh right, practically every tech company and Silicon Valley partisan that has emerged in the last decade or so has insisted that their only goal is to empower mankind and change the world (and not, I don’t know, make gobs and gobs of money).

I do agree autonomous vehicles are coming (many are already here), but I think we need to rein in the “change the world” rhetoric. Like,...

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