Why self-driving cars could be going the way of the jetpack

By Jeff Hecht

AS REVOLUTIONS go, this one has been rather lacking in revs. For the past decade or so, there have been confident predictions that gas-guzzling cars driven by accident-prone humans would soon be on the slip road to oblivion. The future of mobility was to be all-electric – and all-autonomous.

Electric cars are already on the move, although we must go much further and faster if we are to meet climate goals. Meanwhile, however, the “autonomous” bit seems to be stuttering, to say the least.

To be sure, some of the latest commercially available cars come with ever more computing smarts, …