Image Credit: Google 2016 could go down in history as the year the autonomous vehicle onslaught went full tilt. While the history of self-driving cars goes back decades Carnegie Mellon University Navigation Laboratory was developing autonomous vehicle technology in the 1980s and one of the first real-world tests of driverless car technology resulted in a Mercedes traversing 1000km in 1994 weve seen a concerted push recently by tech companies and car brands looking to grab their piece of the pie. This week Chinas tech titan Alibaba and SAIC Motor Corp the countrys biggest carmaker announced a connected car that will lead to new autonomous car technology. Youll quickly see driverless car technology resulting from this platform said Alibabas chief technology officer Wang Jian. On the same day South Koreas LG Electronics revealed a tie-up with Volkswagen for a new connected car platform that will enable vehicles to communicate with various devices including home security systems home lighting systems and more. But this could also be viewed as one of the enabling components upon which driverless car technology will be built self-driving cars need to liaise with the outside world. And this leads us to another big trend weve seen in recent years: traditional car brands relying on the smarts of cutting-edge tech companies and vice versa. A brief recap of some of the partnerships and self-driving car initiatives that have sprung up this year involves a Whos Who of some of the biggest names in the industry. BMW announced a partnership with Intel and Mobileye to produce fully autonomous cars by 2021. General Motors (GM) revealed plans for autonomous vehicles when it invested $500 million in Lyft.Toyota set up a 50-person research lab to investigate ways to create autonomous vehicles andplaced a strategic investment in Uber a company that has started testing out its own autonomous vehicles on roads. And Chinese internet giant Baidu launched a new Silicon Valley arm dedicated to self-driving cars shortly after partnering with BMW on a number of self-driving car initiatives in China. The Google factor Google has been working on self-driving car technology for years and is arguably at the most advanced stage out of all the players. Though Google has built its own self-driving car prototype the company has largely relied on partnerships with carmakers and has provided technology for the Toyota Prius Audi TT and Lexus RX450h. Earlier this year Google and Fiat Chrysler teamed up to get dozens more self-driving cars onto roads. During the partnership announcement Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said that Google and other tech companies are not my enemy; these are people who will help us shape the next phase of the automotive industry. And last year Google self-driving car chief Chris Urmson said: Making cars is really hard and the car companies are quite good at it. So in my mind the solution is to find a partnership. But partnerships and alliances are likely only a short-term solution while technology and automotive companies figure out how to become experts in all the fields necessary to launch a self-driving car safely onto highways. To use another example Google has traditionally partnered with handset makers to push out its own brand of Android Nexus phones. But reports suggest that it willbegin building its own phones soon. That makes sense and its an approach that has served Apple well across mobile phones and computers having a single company build the software and hardware can create a smooth experience for users. Google has indicated in the past that it doesnt intend to sell or market its own cars and the prototypes it has built devoid of manual brakes steering wheels or accelerators are part of a learning process. Speaking about these prototypes at the California Public Utilities Commission last year Sarah Hunter head of policy for Google X said: Were making a few hundred of them. Were making them to enable our team to learn how to actually build a self-driving vehicle from the ground up. Google has its own car-making arm Google Auto LLC and its actually this company thats named as the manufacturer of all of the modified autonomous Lexus cars registered in California. Make no mistake about it Google ultimately wants to have full control over its self-driving car initiatives and that will mean building and selling its own cars. Of course thats not to say it wont also work with third-party carmakers to outfit their vehicles with the latest autonomous smarts consumers appreciate choice after all. Read More Here:http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/09/self-driving-cars-where-the-technology-and-automotive-industries-will-converge/ Contact us anytime for a cash for cars quote The post Self-driving cars: where the technology and automotive industries will converge appeared first on http://dublin.cashforcarsireland.com/ via Cash For Cars - Locations http://dublin.cashforcarsireland.com/self-driving-cars-where-the-technology-and-automotive-industries-will-converge/