I’m sure Elon Musk will rest easy tonight knowing that a middle-aged mountain Bikers from wales is sure it’ll all work now after however many billions he’s sunk into it and however many thousands of hours of testing but still sometimes you need to experience these things for yourself.
It wasn’t even a self-driving car, mine was having a £800 “service” so I borrowed my Boss’s Ford Vigale which is an S-Max with so many toys it gets its own name.
Set off, the computer told me the speed limit and stopped me going over it, the computer kept me in lane, the computer braked and majntained a safe distance between the car in front and warned me if I got to close to stuff, I’m told it’ll steer away and brake if you don’t heed the warnings – I’m fairly confident that if I were about to do that massive 6 hour motorway bit on the run to the Alps I could set the cruise control and hop in the back for a nap.
If didn’t take me long to consider that rather than trying to help the driver, this car was actually driving for me and it felt like an illusion of control for me – the only thing missing was the steering input to actually navigate the thing, you don’t steer to control, just navigate.
Bonkers.