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Believe it or not, autonomous vehicles have been many decades in the making.

Even in 1939, General Motors had an exhibit called “Futurama” at the New York World’s Fair that presented a model of the world 20 years in the future. Central to this display was a system of automated highways and vast suburbs, with a focus on how automation could reduce traffic congestion and lead to the free-flowing movement of people and goods.

Since then, many autonomous vehicle concepts have popped up at various times – but they have always fell short due to technical limitations. Only recently, due to advances in technology, have self-driving cars been able to overcome three primary engineering challenges: sensing the surrounding environment, processing information, and reacting to that environment.

Today, the future for autonomous vehicles is bright, and it is expected that there will be millions of self-driving cars on the road by 2035, creating a multi-billion dollar market.

Autonomous Vehicles: What

The recent Volkswagen scandal had me wondering about past auto manufacturer scandals and how their prices (individual or sector wide) were affected.  Here's a piece by ProPublica which brought back memories.  Especially the Pinto issue, which affected me as I learned to drive stick in a Pinto in the 1970s.  Boy, the mind reels!

The recent revelation that Volkswagen used software to make its diesel engines appear to be polluting less than they are is just one of a long list of scandals that have plagued the auto industry. Here is a selection of some of the best reporting on the subject.

Pinto Madness

Mother Jones, 1977

The Ford Pinto was rushed into production in the early 1970s despite the company knowing that the gas tank could explode in a rear-end collision. Ford decided to do nothing about it because a cost-benefit analysis showed that it was cheaper to pay legal costs for an expected number of future victims than to fix the cars.

Air Bag Flaw, Long Known to Honda and Takata, Led