Google says it is expecting no regulatory roadblocks that will prevent it from putting out its fleet of driverless cars on public American roads for testing in the next five years.
Speaking at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, Mich., Chris Urmson, head of Google's self-driving car project, told reporters that Google will still need to gather data on how its self-driving cars interact with other vehicles and pedestrians on the road, even as he says Google does not need to ask permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to put out its futuristic cars for testing on public roads.
"They are not a permission-granting organization," Urmson said. "NHTSA could certainly reactively ban it, but we don't think that they need to grant permission."
In California, Google has recently been allowed to test its autonomous cars in public state roads, but with the condition that Google equip the test vehicles with a steering wheel and manual brakes to be controlled by a human driver in case something goes wrong.
However, Urmson says he believes some states already allow the testing of autonomous vehicles without requiring input from the human driver, although he declined to comment further on which states those are.
The NHTSA says Google must meet requirements to place its self-driving cars on the road. However, if Google makes "low-speed" vehicles for testing, meaning the cars would have reduced risk for injury to the passenger in the event of a collision, the NHTSA will have less restrictive requirements.
"Just like any car built for use on U.S. roads, any autonomous vehicle would need to meet applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards, which fall under NHTSA jurisdiction," said NHTSA spokesperson Gordon Trowbridge. "The agency will have appropriate policies and regulations in place to ensure the safety of these types of vehicles."
In recent months, states have been turning to the federal safety regulation agency for guidance on how to develop policies governing the testing and use of autonomous vehicles once they become commercially available.
Urmson went out of his way to stress that the "worst thing we could do is cross them," but says he believes the NHTSA will not prevent testing if Google complies with crash-test and other safety standards.
"What we really need is to get to the point where we're learning about how people interact with it, how they are using it, and how can we best bring that to market as a product that people care for," said Urmson.
Still, there will be the inevitable caveats to Google's vision of the future. Urmson says Google is not a car manufacturing company and has been looking to established auto manufacturers who are willing to work with Google to make self-driving cars a commercial reality. One of the most likely candidates is General Motors (GM), which says it has been in discussion with Google about a possible autonomous car partnership.
"I'm not in charge of deciding what we will do and won't do, but I'd say we'd certainly be open to having a discussion with them," said Jon Lauckner, chief technology officer at GM.
Google and GM are not strangers and have been working in joint projects in previous years. Urmson, who was part of Carnegie Mellon University, was a member of a team that worked with GM when the Detroit automaker developed a self-driving SUV that won a DARPA challenge in 2007.
