General Motors? autonomous-vehicle team said it has created the world’s first mass-producible car designed to operate without a human driver. Cruise Automation CEO Kyle Vogt said the electric vehicle, derived from the Chevrolet Bolt, “isn?t just a concept design???it has airbags, crumple zones, and comfortable seats.” In a post at Medium, he said its most significant attribute is that it is ready to be built at a GM assembly plant with the capacity to produce hundreds of thousands of vehicles annually. And it meets redundancy and safety requirements needed to operate without a human behind the wheel, Vogt said.
?If something on a vehicle fails while there is an attentive human in the driver?s seat, they can yank the wheel or stomp on the brake pedal to avoid an incident,” Vogt said. “This isn?t the case for a car with no driver, so we built backup systems. And in some cases we built backups for the backups???and backups for those systems, too.? All the while, Vogt said a production symphony had to be orchestrated at GM’s plant in Orion Township, Michigan, where the automaker assembles the regular, ready-for-consumption Bolt. The wiring harness alone in the newly revealed autonomous car has 4085 wires and 1066 connectors, Vogt said. The self-driving concept unveiled this week is the company?s third autonomous-car generation in 14 months. The first-gen car was a standard Bolt retrofitted with Cruise?s existing autonomous technology. G...