Driven
The Race to Create the Autonomous Car
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- £15.99
Publisher Description
Alex Davies tells the “illuminating and important narrative” (Steven Levy, author of Facebook: The Inside Story) of the quest to develop driverless cars—and the fierce competition between Google, Uber, and other companies in a race to revolutionize our lives.
The self-driving car has been one of the most vaunted technological breakthroughs of recent years. But early promises that these autonomous vehicles would soon be on the roads have proven premature. Alex Davies follows the twists and turns of the story from its origins to today.
The story starts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was charged with developing a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA issued a series of three “Grand Challenges” that attracted visionaries, many of them students and amateurs, who took the technology from Jetsons-style fantasy to near-reality. The young stars of the Challenges soon connected with Silicon Valley giants Google and Uber, intent on delivering a new way of driving to the civilian world.
Soon the automakers joined the quest, some on their own, others in partnership with the tech titans. But as road testing progressed, it became clear that the challenges of driving a car without human assistance were more formidable than anticipated.
Davies profiles the industry’s key players from the early enthusiasm of the DARPA days to their growing awareness that while this spin on artificial intelligence isn’t yet ready for rush-hour traffic, driverless cars are poised to remake how the world moves. Driven explores “the epic tale of competition and comradery, long odds and underdogs, all in service of a world-changing moonshot” (Andy Greenberg, author of Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While the idea of self-driving cars is almost as old as the automobile itself, they didn't become practicable until the arrival of technology capable of replicating a human driver's senses, writes Davies, a Wired editor, in this deeply researched account. In the early 2000s, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiated the DARPA Grand Challenge race for autonomous vehicles, offering a million-dollar prize for the winning design team. While that first race, held in 2004, was a fiasco not a single car made it to the finish line a 2005 race delivered a clear winner in "Stanley," an autonomous SUV funded by Volkswagen. Subsequent races grew in public profile as well as complexity as human stunt drivers began participating in order to test how the autonomous vehicles fared alongside non-AIs. Davies narrows his focus to Google and Uber's dueling bids for control of this market, culminating in a courtroom battle over corporate espionage. The book starts a bit slowly as Davies sets the stage, but like its subject, it gains speed and momentum as it gets going. The result is a skillfully chronicled work on a timely topic.
