Self driving vehicles are not a low hanging fruit. We are far, far away from fully autonomous vehicles that don't need a human backup driver. This is despite massive investment by Google and others.
True, I shouldn't have grouped it in with self checkouts etc. When we do achieve reliable self driving capability it will be arguably the single most impressive engineering feat we've accomplished.
Tesla are describing their 'hardware 2' self driving platform, fitted to all of their new cars, as "full self-driving hardware", and they've posted several videos recently of fully autonomous journeys on public roads. They've said they plan to roll out an OTA update to enable full self driving next year.
Mercedes-Benz have a limited self-driving mode on their 2017 model.
Uber-owned Otto, a company focusing on self-driving technology for trucks, plans to start offering its services next year.
And of course Google is quietly continuing their self-driving project, although they've gone a bit quiet recently.
Now, it does look to me like we've still got a fair few corner cases to straighten out, but either all of these companies are badly wrong, or we'll be seeing self-driving vehicles on sale to the public in the next few years (even if not next year).
