Burns Lawrence D., Shulgan Christopher. Autonomy. The Quest to Build the Driverless Car - And How It Will Reshape Our World

Ecco , 2018 — 368 p. — ISBN 978-0062661128, 0062661124An automotive and tech world insider investigates the quest to develop and perfect the driverless car—an innovation that promises to be the most disruptive change to our way of life since the smartphone
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution. Soon, few of us will own our own automobiles and instead will get around in driverless electric vehicles that we summon with the touch of an app. We will be liberated from driving, prevent over 90% of car crashes, provide freedom of mobility to the elderly and disabled, and decrease our dependence on fossil fuels.
Autonomy is the story of the maverick engineers and computer nerds who are creating the revolution. Longtime advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car team and former GM research and development chief Lawrence D. Burns provides the perfectly-timed history of how we arrived at this point, in a character-driven and heavily reported account of the unlikely thinkers who accomplished what billion-dollar automakers never dared.
Beginning with the way 9/11 spurred the U.S. government to set a million-dollar prize for a series of off-road robot races in the Mojave Desert up to the early 2016 stampede to develop driverless technology, Autonomy is a page-turner that represents a chronicle of the past, diagnosis of the present, and prediction of the future—the ultimate guide to understanding the driverless car and navigating the revolution it sparks.
Self-driving cars, once heroic engineering prototypes confined to desert race courses, are now being tested around the Phoenix, Ariz., metropolitan area—arguably, the greatest transition in mobility since the automobile began. Burns, who led R&D at General Motors for years and consulted on Google’s autonomous car project, is an unabashed booster for the technology. But he and writer Shulgan vividly recount the painful birth of the first robotic racers and highlight the missteps, egos and legal battles that have hampered its progress. Insider drama aside, they present a compelling vision of a future with many fewer cars, less pollution, less congestion—and more freedom to move than ever before.
Introduction: The Problem with CarsThe Turning Point
DARPA’s Grand Challenge
A Second Chance
History Happens in Victorville
The New DNA of the Automobile
A Fish Out of Water
Epiphanies
Close Only Counts in Horseshoes
The Age of Automobility
The 101,000-Mile Challenge
The Seeds of Change
The $4 Trillion Disruption
The Tipping Point
The Stampede
Driving Opportunity
Human Factors
Epilogue: The Quest Goes OnA Note on Sources