It’s a late summer day, and I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of a BMW
3 Series at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, Calif. Sitting,
not driving. When I lift my hands from the wheel at the beginning of
this 2.2-mile course, the car accelerates to 75 mph almost instantly,
pushing me and my passengers—BMW engineers and executives—into our
leather seats. The car’s computer brain, using satellite signals to
navigate the track, is in control.
“Wait until you see what’s coming up,” says Tom Kowaleski, a BMW
spokesman, as we head for the Corkscrew, a steep, tight S-curve and the
scene of numerous YouTube crash videos. We hit it at about 40 mph, and I
have to sit on my hands to keep them from grabbing the wheel back from
the machine. The executives chuckle.
This 3 Series is part of BMW’s ongoing efforts to improve the
technology behind driverless vehicles and understand how computerized
chauffeurs might be used in the real world. Similar projects are under
way at General Motors, Volkswagen, Google,
and at research labs around the world. While the current technology is
good enough to navigate roadways and recognize obstacles,
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