In the Auto Industry, the Future Is Software--Not Machinery - Column

After all, Volvo has long asserted that the best attributes of its cars reveal themselves only in a crash. But this was an autonomous Volvo, part of a small test fleet Uber operated in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Arizona. The latter had welcomed Uber with open pro-business arms after the company and the California DMV got into a semantics spat, since resolved, over a $150 permit. The Cal DMV had revoked the registrations for Uber's 16 test vehicles, and if the bureaucrats were motivated by the fear of a couple tons of undercooked technology circulating among the driving public, those fears seem to have been vindicated by the photos of the capsized Volvo. It doesn't matter that, by all accounts, it wasn't the fault of the Volvo's computer that a driver turned suddenly in front of the oncoming robo-car, giving neither it nor the human minder aboard time to avoid the impact.