So many things are at play in the race for the perfected driverless vehicle: economics, environment, geopolitics. There likely won’t be one company or nation that fully wins, though you don’t want to be on the outside looking in. And you need to have ready answers for the what’s likely to be resulting unemployment.

Japan announced it will be testing robo-cabs in 2016, while China reports it has already tested driverless buses. 

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From Jun Hongo at the WSJ:

Japan’s cabinet office, Kanagawa prefecture and Robot Taxi Inc. on Thursday said they will start experimenting with unmanned taxi service beginning in 2016. The service will be offered for approximately 50 people in Kanagawa prefecture, just south of Tokyo, with the auto-driving car carrying them from their homes to local grocery stores.

According to the project organizers, the cabs will drive a distance of about three kilometers (two miles), and part of the course will be on major avenues in the city. Crew members will be aboard the car during the experiment in case there is a need to avoid accidents. …

Shinjiro Koizumi, son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and a vice minister in the current government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, appeared at an event Thursday afternoon to promote the driverless-taxi effort. “There are a lot of people who say it’s impossible, but I think this will happen faster than people expect,” he said.•

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From The Economic Times:

BEIJING: A Chinese bus-maker has claimed that its driverless bus has completed a successful trial operation on an intercity road in central China’s Henan Province, where it automatically changed lanes and stopped at traffic signals.

The 10.5-metre hybrid bus by Yutong Bus Co. Ltd. ran around 32.6 kilometres on the intercity road linking Zhengzhou City with Kaifeng City in late August, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.

The driverless bus has passed all tests, including identifying all 26 traffic lights on the road, automatically changing lanes and overtaking vehicles in neighboring lanes, the company said.

The bus is installed with two cameras, four laser radars, one set of millimetre wave radar and integrated navigation system.•