Can you picture yourself hands-free here?
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Google's driverless car project was officially launched in 2010. Since then it says its test vehicles have completed more than a million kilometres on public roads. They've progressed from relatively simple driving on the Californian freeway to more complicated manoeuvring in urban areas.
So far, Google has used a fleet of ordinary cars, which have been converted to carry self-driving technology. But now it wants to take the process a stage further by producing a purpose-built machine. It’s planning to create a fleet of about a hundred fully autonomous electric vehicles capable of carrying two people at up to 40 km per hour without any input from a human driver.
The ultimate aim is to get rid of the controls altogether, although early versions will still need to have a steering wheel and pedals.
Google believes it will be able to launch a pilot scheme using the new cars within the next two years. But the internet giant is far from being the only company working on self-driving technology. A number of major manufacturers have their own test programmes, among them Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and BMW.
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moving carefully and skillfully
designed and put together for a specific reason
involvement
what you finally hope to achieve
part of the vehicle which drivers turn to change direction
parts of a vehicle which are operated with the driver's foot
small-scale experiment designed to test a product before it is launched
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