“My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car,” says Henrik Christensen, director of the University of California San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute. Mass production and adoption of driverless cars are only 10 or 15 years away. Some predict an even faster shift. Tesla already embeds self-driving hardware in its current models. Alphabet (formerly Google) has spun off its driverless vehicle technology into Waymo, a separate company. Uber is piloting self-driving cars in several cities (with mixed results). Some teenagers in 2030 may still get to drive their parents’ clunkers: The average age of US cars in use is 11.5 years.
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