The Google Self-Driving Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for autonomous cars. The software powering Google's cars is called Google Chauffeur. Lettering on the side of each car identifies it as a "self-driving car". Even as self-driving research cars make record-setting road trips, fully autonomous vehicles that can legally drive on public roads remain a distant dream.

But there’s good news: The advanced components that make these cars work have been filtering into commercial vehicles at a fast pace. Self-parking, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, and lane keeping are just some of the technologies that have leapt into the market in the past few years. Put them all together and you get a picture of how we’ll go from driving to assisted driving to fully autonomous cars. Sure, there will be problems along the way, but it’ll be a great ride. The Google Car is fully electric, big enough for two passengers. It'll only go 25 miles per hour. Your involvement with the car consists of four things: get in, put on your seatbelt, press the Start button, and wait. While you're waiting, maybe check out the large screen in the center console, which shows the temperature and the time remaining in your journey but could easily display just about anything else. Like, say, a Chrome browser for catching up on your Gmail or watching YouTube while you ride. There are downsides to this invention. According to Eno Center’s study, each self-driving vehicle would require added sensors, software, engineering and power and computing requirements that presently tally over $100,000 per vehicle, which is an astronomical number that would be unaffordable for most people. In an age where devices can be controlled from anywhere in the world, people have reservations when it comes to vehicles that are maneuvered by a computer. In a recent poll conducted for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (Auto Alliance), 81 percent of the respondents said they were concerned that hackers would be able to gain control of a self-driving vehicle. Lastly, most people like to keep private. So a car or truck that is being operated by a computer is bound to have a lot of information on it. And in the same Auto Alliance survey, 75 percent of the respondents said they were concerned that companies would use the software from a self-driving car to gather personal data, and 70 percent were apprehensive because they believed this data would then be shared with government agencies.

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