Driverless Transportation is coming.  Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin said last year that within 5 years we’ll be riding in robot cars.  Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has stated, “We should be able to do 90% of miles driven within three years.”  Nissan and Renault CEO, Carlos Ghosn, has declared, “I am committing to be ready to introduce a new ground-breaking technology, Autonomous Drive, by 2020, and we are on track to realize it.”  That is just a sampling.  GM, Audi, Mercedes and others are all working on this technology as well.

In addition, the US DOT has awarded $25 million to build a test-bed for connected vehicle systems at the University of Michigan and has awarded a total of over $77 million for the program in general.  The UK has just announced a £65 million driverless pod system in the town of Milton Keynes.  If successful, the plan is to roll them out in towns across England.

Yes, Driverless Transportation is coming and it is coming quickly.

The team from Driverless Transportation is based in Virginia.  (Well, Shawn is currently in going to school at Stanford in California, but her home address is still Virginia.)  As business leaders and entrepreneurs, we would like to see Virginia become one of the major hubs for driverless transportation technology.

Virginia has a great starting point.  Besides us, :-), there are a lot of great Virginia-based organizations that can help expand this vision of a driverless future:

• The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Blacksburg
• The UVA Center for Transportation Studies in Charlottesville
• The Mobility Lab in Arlington
• The Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation & Research in Charlottesville
• The Virginia Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon
• The US Headquarters for Audi and VW in Herndon
• The AUVSI - Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International
• Offices for Federal Government Agencies working in this area:
  • DOT Research & Innovative Technology Administration (RITA)
  • NHSTA
  • DARPA
  • Plus a variety of high tech companies supporting both government and commercial enterprises.

We think the right place to start is to enact a law allowing the testing of driverless cars similar to what has passed in California, Nevada, DC or Florida.  We’re starting by meeting with a senior official in the Virginia state government later this week.

If you’d like to help or have ideas on how we can make this happen, please let us know.