The dream of a fully automated car stretches back to the 1939 World’s Fair, Stienstra said. The first actual autonomous car was called Stanley, Stanford University’s experimental vehicle that won the 2005 DAPRA Grand Challenge, traveling 132 autonomous miles through the Mojave Desert in six hours and fifty-four minutes.
Most automakers say they will have a version by 2020. Google says it will have a fully automated car by 2017. Some, such as Raj Rajkumar, director of the Carnegie Mellon-GM Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab, estimate an autonomous package “might only add $5,000 to $7,000 to the sticker price.”
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