Self-driving cars are further away than you think

The promise of autonomous cars has no doubt been an exciting and intoxicating one for technophiles everywhere, not to mention those who see driving as a chore that must be endured, rather than enjoyed. There's no shortage of autonomy evangelists - Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a famous example, Ford reckons it will have its first truly self-driving car ready by 2021 and BMW and Mercedes have similar timelines - while ridesharing companies and Silicon Valley tech giants like Uber and Google are also bullish on fully-autonomous vehicles. And why wouldn't they be? Without a driver taking a cut of fares, profit margins for those businesses would explode, while also giving the public cheaper rides and potentially freeing them from the financial burden of owning a car. But according to one of the world's biggest manufacturers of the advanced sensors that make autonomous cars possible, the utopian vision of completely hands-off, point-to-point driving is highly unlikely for the foreseeable.