Gadgetory

hello and welcome to insights tube I'm Sumi das joining me is senior writer for cnet news Seth Rosenblatt Seth thanks for being with us I assuming okay so it wasn't that long ago that we were talking about our first test drives in the Google self-driving cars yep those were Alexis's yes now it seems that google has doubled down on the self-driving car technology they've created their own car from scratch they've built it from the ground up yes tell us about it well they didn't just double down they shrunk it by at least half it's tiny tiny tiny little here it looks a little bit like a like one of the new Fiats but without the nose it doesn't have a gas engine no internal combustion engine it's got a motor driven by an electric battery and actually it has two motors one is a backup in case the first one fails and the thing that everybody keeps talking about is the fact that there's no steering wheel yes no steering wheel no gas pedal no brakes you sit in you push a button and you pray although you and I felt pretty comfortable it was it was it was amazingly safe okay so the cars that we were in were these these Lexus SUVs that had been hacked right had been totally hacked they'd been adapted with Google's self-driving technology but they were standard lexuses they could go as fast as the lexus SUV can normally go with a human driver these cars are something special they are limited to 25 miles per hour and because of the way that technology works it needs that that spire on top of the roof to see the world around it the cars don't have as many restrictions in terms of what it can see the Lexus roof was quite large and it created some blind spots for the car google says that these cars that they've designed don't have that issue any other capabilities that these cars that they've built have that the maybe we're limiting factors in the lexuses and Toyotas that they hacked sure so one of the things that they've done with these cars is again change their change them so they can only go 25 miles per hour they have the rated for crab is in the front at 25 miles per hour 30 miles per hour and back to account for whiplash um and they're they're really just the kind of thing there's almost like golf carts yeah they reminded me of the gem you know those yeah the gems yeah um I also read that they have sensors that can see basically the distance of two football fields in any direction yes that's something that the lexus isn't Toyota's I think that's new I think the sensors that yeah the senses they were able to put on the Lexuses and Toyotas we're not quite as developed as the ones that are involved in this car Google had gotten quite far with this technology using lexus and toyota cars um why did they decide to do this I mean it's a big effort to build a car from scratch huge effort and they told us that each one of these cars cost around 150,000 dollars which you know for you and I is a lot of money but for Google it's what they find in their couch when they're you know after after watching the game right so why did Google invest in these custom and somewhat expensive cars and I think the answer is that they feel that self-driving technology isn't just about the car being able to go where it needs to go without a human steering it it's also about changing what the car can be the statistics are on Google side here between the ages of 4 and 34 the number one cause of death in the United States it our car crashes forty percent of those are our bicyclists and pedestrians which is horrific google has something to the to the argument where they say that you know people who are too old to drive safely people who have infirmities and can't drive safely can't you know if they're blind or they have other vision impairments or they're on medication that makes it very dangerous to operate a vehicle this could be a huge huge thing for them this could totally change their lives and their mobility another thing is a lot of people getting to their public transportation can be a huge deal because it's that first and last mile and something like this could solve that google has talked about you know fleets of self-driving cars and people being able to get around it's not necessarily something that you must have to get around but I think it can solve a lot of of mobility problems for people and that's what makes this so exciting right at the very least yet another indication that it's not if self-driving cars become a reality it's it's more when absolutely okay Seth Rosenblatt thanks for joining us thank you sue me for inside scoop I'm city does thanks for watching