Uber recently joined Google, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, GM and BMW in research on self-driving car technology. Google this week opened a technology center in the Detroit area, which is known worldwide as Motor City because it is the historical home of big American car companies.
Google will employ an unknown number of people at its 53,000-square-foot Novi, Mich., facility. Silicon Valley-based Google needs the access to Detroit-area talent in engineering and vehicle development.
Like during the U.S. and Soviet space-age competition in the 1950s and 1960s to see which could be the first to put a man on the moon, there is a similar global rush among many companies to produce the first fully functional, mass-produced, self-driving vehicles. They will include radar, many high-resolution cameras, and sophisticated, thinking computers that can collect data, understand passengers’ needs, navigate the roads without errors and anticipate the stupid things that human motorists inevitably will do.
Car owners who grimace now about the repairs to computer and Internet technology on today’s vehicles, can’t even imagine what the costs will be on self-driving cars if any of the many gizmos goes haywire.
Repair shops will include people who are proficient on the motors, transmissions, steering, braking and other traditional car parts. But the self-driving repair places of the future will have to include more than a few computer geeks and even a young hacker or two.
Repair people will have to be proficient in radar and video camera technology and all of the interfacing that’s required. No doubt there will be modular, snap-in components to make fixes easier.
But only dealerships and high-end shops will be able to afford the computer diagnostic equipment required to pinpoint what’s wrong with malfunctioning self-driving vehicles. Today’s grease monkeys and shade-tree mechanics will have to bow to the repair centers of the future just as guys who loved to tinker on cars in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s had to mostly hang up their timing lights and tool belts because of the computer technology in today’s vehicles.
College requirements no doubt will be essential for tomorrow’s self-driving vehicle auto mechanics.
The same may also be necessary for the people doing the road and bridge work in the future. The nation’s transportation infrastructure will likely have sensors, too.
Maybe only the quaint covered bridges in rural Iowa will be given a pass just so people can reminisce about how things used to be back in the olden days.
©2016 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
