1.

2.

Unveiling a car with a top speed of 25mph, two

seats and no pedals or steering wheel might not
make much of an impression at a motor show.
But Google, late on Tuesday, in the US, sent a
minor earthquake through the car and taxi
industry as it unveiled the latest version of its
driverless car.
The electrically-powered vehicle, which Google
has begun testing around its headquarters in
Mountain View, California, dispenses with all the
normal controls, including foot pedals. Instead it
has a smartphone app that summons it and tells it
the destination, and a single STOP button
mounted between the two front-facing seats in
case the occupants need to override the computer.

3.

The car, in fact, takes over all the tasks of

navigation, steering, acceleration and braking.

4.

The company is building about 100 prototypes

for a two-year test. The company's co-founder,
Sergey Brin, told a conference in California that
the vehicle was "still in the prototype stage" but
that the project was "about changing the world
for people who are not well-served by
transportation today".

5.

6.

He said of the car: "You're just sitting there, no

steering wheel, no pedals. For me it was very
relaxing. In about 10 seconds after getting in, I
forgot I was there. It reminded me of catching a
chairlift by yourself, a bit of solitude I found
really enjoyable."
Google says that the principal aim of the project
is to improve safety, and that because the car is
constructed with impact-absorbing foam at the
front and a plastic windscreen, "it should be far
safer than any other car for pedestrians".

once it has refined it sufficiently. Members of the

team had been working on the project even
before joining Google, for more than a decade.
11. But the prospect of driverless cars replacing
human-driven taxis has been the cause of some
alarm.
12. "If you get rid of the driver, then they're
unemployed," said Dennis Conyon, the south-east
director for the UK National Taxi Associations.
"It would have a major impact on the labour
force."
13. London has about 22,000 licensed black cabs,
and Conyon estimates that the total number of
people who drive taxis for hire in the UK is about
100,000.
14. However, Steve McNamara, general secretary of
the 10,500-strong London Taxi Drivers'
Association, said: "You won't get these
[driverless cars] in London for 20 or 25 years.
Maybe by then they'll have a charge point
because there isn't a single one in London now."
15. Other car makers including Volvo, Ford and
Mercedes, are working on driver-assisted
vehicles, which, unlike Google's version, do not
dispense with the driver controls.
16. But Chris Urmson, director of the self-driving car
project at Google, said that the new prototypes
dispensed with the steering wheel and brakes
because there was no guarantee that a human
occupant would be able to take over in an
emergency, and that it was simpler just to have an
emergency stop button.
17. Urmson said: "The vehicles will be very basic.
We want to learn from them and adapt them as
quickly as possible. But they will take you where
you want to go at the push of a button. And that's
an important step towards improving road safety
and transforming mobility for millions of
people."

7.

The cars, which have been built specially by a

company (as yet unnamed) in Detroit, will be
used to investigate further how best to make
driverless vehicles work. Google will run a pilot
programme using the cars, which are not yet for
sale.

8.

One challenge is creating high-definition scans of

the roads and surroundings before the cars can
drive along them, because they cannot gather and
process enough information in real time.

18. So far the Google versions of the self-driving

cars have covered 700,000 miles without an
accident caused by the computer. The company
points out that thousands of people die each year
on the roads, and that about 80% of crashes can
be ascribed to human error.

9.

So far there are high-detail maps of about 2,000

miles of California's roads, but the state has more
than 170,000 miles of public roads.

19. But they could have some way to go to match

10. Google says it is interested in licensing the

technology to traditional vehicle manufacturers

Conyon at the National Taxi Association. Aged

79, he has been driving a taxi for 50 years, and
claims never to have had an accident.