If they're only reliable in controlled conditions, they're not reliable. The really hard problems that would impact the feasibility of self-driving cars (as the popular imagination sees them) arise in unanticipated situations.
After all the work that was done with the DARPA Grand Challenge(s) in the past decade, it would be an embarrassment to Google if they couldn't get the cars to work in controlled conditions, rather than it being a staggering achievement in getting them to where things are at now.
I really want self-driving cars to happen, but I see the biggest impediment to that vision of the future being the general public's level of optimism and credulity WRT this stuff, to say nothing of the tech community's optimism and credulity. It's a domain that is a nearly infinite bucket of incredibly hard problems, problems that may ultimately prove insoluble as currently specified. If everything goes well, then maybe in 20 or 50 years a lot of transportation will take place in self-driving cars which operate with sets of known constraints in environments that are (to some degree) controlled.
If everything doesn't go well, then people will keep talking about how self-driving cars are inevitable, and how in a just a few years they're going to pick you up at your house and drive you to work using the exact same roads set up the exact same way as roads are now, doing the exact same commute that they might've been doing when driving themselves. This credulity will push the money and the technology forward, until too many disappointing setbacks occur, and then all the money dries up and nobody's talking about self-driving cars anymore.
If you tell somebody that something is inevitable and almost here and it's just a matter of throwing enough resources at it, it's much easier to get people to give you money to do those things, but as soon as anything happens that doesn't fit that script, they will assume you've been lying to them all along (or just aren't credible), and the R&D money goes away. Whereas if expectations are set appropriately, it's harder to get that money, but as long as there are achievable, realistic goals and people aren't basically pitching magic, then the funding is more likely to stick around during the rough patches.
After all the work that was done with the DARPA Grand Challenge(s) in the past decade, it would be an embarrassment to Google if they couldn't get the cars to work in controlled conditions, rather than it being a staggering achievement in getting them to where things are at now.
I really want self-driving cars to happen, but I see the biggest impediment to that vision of the future being the general public's level of optimism and credulity WRT this stuff, to say nothing of the tech community's optimism and credulity. It's a domain that is a nearly infinite bucket of incredibly hard problems, problems that may ultimately prove insoluble as currently specified. If everything goes well, then maybe in 20 or 50 years a lot of transportation will take place in self-driving cars which operate with sets of known constraints in environments that are (to some degree) controlled.
If everything doesn't go well, then people will keep talking about how self-driving cars are inevitable, and how in a just a few years they're going to pick you up at your house and drive you to work using the exact same roads set up the exact same way as roads are now, doing the exact same commute that they might've been doing when driving themselves. This credulity will push the money and the technology forward, until too many disappointing setbacks occur, and then all the money dries up and nobody's talking about self-driving cars anymore.
If you tell somebody that something is inevitable and almost here and it's just a matter of throwing enough resources at it, it's much easier to get people to give you money to do those things, but as soon as anything happens that doesn't fit that script, they will assume you've been lying to them all along (or just aren't credible), and the R&D money goes away. Whereas if expectations are set appropriately, it's harder to get that money, but as long as there are achievable, realistic goals and people aren't basically pitching magic, then the funding is more likely to stick around during the rough patches.