Self-Driving Cars Are Here Today — and Here to Stay

We hear plenty about Google’s self-driving cars. They’re completely autonomous: Once you’ve plugged in your destination, you can, in theory, read or take a nap while the car drives. But Google’s cars are experimental. You can’t buy one.

What we hear less about are the self-driving cars that you can buy today. So far, they’re not fully autonomous, like Google’s. You’re required to keep at least one hand on the wheel while driving. In this regard, they’re strictly a stopgap between today’s cars and the fully self-driving models of 2020 or so.

The main things these cars can’t do on their own: making turns and changing lanes. (The one exception: With a $2,500 software upgrade, recent Tesla S models can now change lanes automatically when you turn on your turn signal on a highway).

But today’s cars can automatically steer (to stay in the lane), accelerate, brake, and park, either parallel or back-in.

Last week, Yahoo Autos invited me to join their judging panel for the Yahoo Autos Ride of the Year competition. Over the course of several days in Detroit, we tested, drove, and discussed 22 new 2016 car models.

Yahoo Autos will reveal the results in November. But I was so amazed by the degree of sophistication in these cars’ self-driving features, I thought I’d write up my reactions now.

The features here are available only on expensive cars, as an expensive option; they usually require an options package that costs around $2,000. They’ll inevitably trickle down to more affordable cars over time.

Adaptive Cruise Control

Cruise control has been around for years: You turn it on, and the car maintains a speed that you’ve set, so you don’t have to keep the gas pedal pressed all the time.

In retrospect, it’s amazing that this feature ever became standard. If you think about it, it’s dangerous. The car is accelerating blind. If you’re not careful, you’ll plow right into a car that’s slowed or stopped ahead of you.

But adaptive cruise control is very different. Now, your car watches the car ahead. It still tries to maintain your chosen highway speed (say, 65 miles an hour), but slows down as necessary to avoid hitting a car ahead of you—and then speeds back up again automatically.

The car’s ability to “see” ahead of it lies in a bulky box behind the rear-view mirror or built into the front grille, depending on whether it’s laser- or radar-based.