A parallel industry to the driverless car market will, at least initially, be kits that allow owners of pre-autonomous models to retrofit their rides to have robocar capacity. It appears odd to invest money in companies that would seem to have a short shelf life since the hands-free option will likely be standardized in the coming decades, but there are profits to be made in the interim. From a post by Google driverless-cars consultant Brad Templeton:

“So far it’s been big players like Google and car companies with plans in the self-driving space. Today, a small San Francisco start-up named Cruise, founded by Kyle Vogt (a founder of the web video site Justin.tv) announces their plans to make a retrofit kit that will adapt existing cars to do basic highway cruise, which is to say, staying in a lane and keeping pace behind other cars while under a driver’s supervision.

I’ve been following Cruise since its inception. This offering has many similarities to the plans of major car companies, but there are a few key differences:

• This is a startup, which can be more nimble than the large companies, and having no reputation to risk, can be bolder.
• They plan to make this as a retrofit kit for a moderate set of existing cars, rather than custom designing it to one car.

They’re so dedicated to the retrofit idea that the Audi A4 they are initially modifying does not even have drive-by-wire brakes like the commonly used hybrid cars. Their kit puts sensors on the roof, and puts a physical actuator on the brake and another physical actuator on the steering wheel — they don’t make use of the car’s own steering motor. They want a kit that can be applied to almost any car the market tells them to target.”