What do you get when you combine the electric car with self-driving technology? Elon Musk’s vision for the future of Tesla.

The Tesla CEO is in talks with Google to get self-driving technology into Tesla’s future cars, according to Bloomberg.

Musk, who says he prefers the term “autopilot” over “self-driving”, argues the move is a natural step in the evolution of the automobile. Still, the Tesla CEO is also quick to note that self-driving technology isn’t a priority for his company — at least not currently.

“We’re not focused on autopilot right now; we will be in the future. Autopilot is not as important as accelerating the transition to electric cars, or to sustainable transport,” he told Bloomberg.

Yeah — this happened.

One problem with the idea, at least as far as Tesla goes, is cost: Cars like the Model S already run for at least $69,000, and slapping on self-driving tech would only make things more expensive. Musk, however, is optimistic, and it’s tough to fault him for his vision — however unrealistic and zany it often feels.

Musk says that Google’s self-driving sensor system is too expensive. One alternative, he says is the camera-based system Toyota showed off earlier this year.

The other big problem is, of course, safety, which is a concern for any company looking to invest in self-driving cars. The technology is still unproven, and if car makers are correct, it’s going to be at least a decade until it’s ready for widespread adoption.

Google isn’t commenting on Musk’s remarks, but considering that Google’s Sergey Brin himself is a (hot pink) Model S owner, it’s fair to assume Google is very much interested in helping Musk along. Both Brin and fellow Google founder Larry Page are also Tesla investors.

If Hyndai’s latest concept vehicle is the future of transportation, let me off this ride right now.

At this year’s Seoul Motor Show, the Korean automaker unveiled the E4U, a personal mobility vehicle that moves around using a rotating semisphere instead of wheels.

While the vehicle is clearly a concept and not an actual product (yet), its existence doesn’t bode particularly well for what Hyundai thinks personal transportation’s going to look like in the future.

If General Motors’s EN-V is any indication, the future of personal mobility will be self-driven.

Ignoring the goofy bumblebee-yellow paint job and the no-doubt confusing control scheme (which Hyundai compares to that of a helicopter), just take a look at that helmet. Any vehicle that requires riders to wear that sort of thing isn’t going get any traction. And that’s a fact.

The E4U isn’t the first personal mobility vehicle of its kind, however, as carmakers have been showing off similar things for a while now. Consider the Puma, an electric vehicle created by the geniuses at Segway (remember the Segway?), or the Hiroko, which is set to go into production later this year.

While all of these vehicles are variations on the same general design, they all seem to be created with the impression that personal mobility vehicles are going to be controlled by people and not, well, the vehicles themselves.

For better or worse, this is a future that Google is already working on with its self-driving cars, which have already gotten the green light in Nevada, Florida, and, most recently, California. But Google isn’t the only company going this route. Self-driving mechanisms are also built into General Motors’s EN-V, which the company unveiled in 2010.

Whatever the future of personal mobility looks like, let’s hope it’s not as goofy as the E4U.

Photo: Nikkei Automotive Technology

Google’s self-driving car is pretty smart.

It’s got a 64-beam laser rangefinder, four radar units, a camera, GPS, inertial measurement unit, wheel sensors, and enough processing power in its onboard computers to crunch through all the data those sensors generate, create a 3-D map, apply custom algorithms, and compute a safe driving path — and do all that many times per second. Yes, it’s a brainy car.

But that’s nothing compared to its apparent self-image. A photographer spotted Google’s car on the U.C. Berkeley campus earlier this week. The place it chose to park? A parking space reserved for one of Berkeley’s eight Nobel laureates.

Photo credit: Bernadette Geuy. Used with permission. Hat tip: Scot Hacker

“Google is focusing on full automation of the driving experience, making the vehicle drive itself without human interaction, ” says Sterling Anderson, the cofounder of Gimlet Systems. “Gimlet is an intelligent combination of both human and vehicle, an invisible copilot that is adaptive to the driver’s needs.” The system can either run in the background and come to life to avoid collisions or drive autonomously if the driver is incapacitated or wants to zone out. In testing with real human drivers, Gimlet reduced collisions by between 78 percent and 100 percent. 

A copilot wouldn’t just make drivers safer but also reduce fuel costs and congestion. Many safety features, which make vehicles larger or heavier, could be removed if cars were no longer in danger of crashing. Collision-proof vehicles can also be packed more tightly into roadways, avoiding the need to build more roads.

How does it work? Any intelligent vehicle control system is designed to preemptively avoid hazards in the environment so it needs to know where those hazards are, or will be, in the near future. A laser-based range finding unit (lidar), which looks like a spinning tin can on the top of the vehicle, works with cameras, radar, and some infra-red sensing to construct a map of the environment.

Using this map, Gimlet monitors and predicts the vehicle’s motion and determines how safe it is. If there is any adjustment to be made, the system’s logic-based algorithms determines the adjustment behind the scenes by sending commands to the accelerator or steering or braking system to avoid an accident.

Gimlet’s makers want to improve the driver’s performance even when he is not using the copilot. “We want to preserve the driver’s intuition about how the vehicle will respond. For that reason we provide a number of different feedback mechanisms. One is haptic, applying a feedback torque to the driver’s steering wheel.” This avoids the situation where the driver doesn’t even know he is making a mistake because the copilot corrects the vehicle’s motion without giving feedback. 

Test drivers grew quite fond of their copilots. 20 drivers performed 1,200 trials, driving a utility vehicle remotely using a video feed and the copilot. “We surveyed the drivers at the end of each day of testing. When they began the tests most drivers didn’t trust the system,”Anderson explained. “By the end of testing they were reporting that they felt more in control of the vehicle with the copilot’s help, than they did without it.” 

Its military applications look promising. “The number one cause of non-combat fatalities in the U.S. Military is vehicle crashes,” says Anderson. “It’s a serious cause of death even in combat, when soldiers are under duress.” If soldiers could drive supply convoys or perform surveillance and reconnaissance missions remotely, they would avoid risks like IEDs, saving many lives. 

Not content to let Google receive all the hype for self-driving cars, both Toyota and Audi are showing off their own driverless solutions at the Consumer Electronics Show next week.

Toyota is showing off one of its luxury models, the Lexus LS 600h, equipped with radar and camera equipment (see video below). Audi hasn’t revealed much about its self-driving vehicle, but it notes that it’s bringing a car that can find a parking spot and park itself without a driver, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Automakers have been slowly adding computer-assisted features to their vehicles, like parallel parking assistance and the capability to nudge cars back into their lines if they veer out. But it was Google that proved fully autonomous vehicles are possible when it announced its ambitious project in late 2010 (at which point the cars had already covered more than 140,000 miles without human intervention). Google claims self-driving cars will ultimately save lives, since they remove the human element that’s often the cause of accidents.

Partially due to Google’s efforts, Nevada approved self-driving car regulations in early 2012 and granted Google a license to test its vehicles in that state.

Like the 1990s search engine companies who were trounced by Google’s breakthrough search, car companies will be quick to show they’re keeping up with Google’s self-driving innovations. For consumers, this race toward fully autonomous cars is a good thing. Within 10 or 20 years, adding self-driving capabilities to your car could be as easy as (and perhaps standard) as cruise control today.

Google announced today that its self-driving cars have logged over 300,000 miles without a single accident — a step closer to being able to say, “Look Mom, no hands!” without running over your mom.

The company announced the milestone on its blog, saying employees will be able to start taking these cars to and from work without a second researcher in the passenger seat. Up until now, testing has been done in pairs, but those on the self-driving team will start using the cars for short solo tasks such as commuting.

Before we get crazy and start expecting our own robot , Google says it has a couple of things to work on. First off, the cars need to be able to to detect one-off construction signals, a task Google calls “tricky.” The cars will also need to get experience driving on snowy terrain.

Recently Google received a license from the state of Nevada to “drive” its autonomous cars on Nevada roads. The state approved regulations for self-driving vehicles in February, which included getting the green light (so to speak) from insurance companies, car manufacturers, law enforcement, and other involved parties. In order to drive in Nevada, self-driving cars will have special license plates to alert surrounding drivers to their presence. Autonomous cars  being tested with have a red infinity logo and those owned by civilians will have a green infinity logo. This green logo, of course, will only come into existence when self-driving cars are being manufactured for the public.

Self-driving car photo via Zack Sheppard/Flickr

Nevada has approved Google’s application for a license to test its driverless cars on Nevada’s roads today, a big step for the project and for autonomous cars overall.

The license will allow Google to drive these cars across the state under a few preset conditions: Two people, — one behind the steering wheel and one with the ability to control the car — must be in the vehicle at all times. Google must also retain a $1 million insurance bond and make very clear where the car will be driven.

Nevada recently approved regulations surrounding these self driving cars, which received the green light from insurance companies, car manufacturers, law enforcement and other agencies.

“Self-driving cars have the potential to significantly increase driving safety,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat at the time. “We applaud Nevada for building a thoughtful framework to enable safe, ongoing testing of the technology and to anticipate the needs and best interests of Nevada citizens who may own vehicles with self-driving capabilities one day.”

The license plates that self-driving cars will have in the state of Nevada are different from regular cars. They will be red with an infinity logo in the center. When car companies begin selling these vehicles regularly, civilian license plates will be green with the same infinity symbol. Test vehicles will remain red, however.

Google has hinted at it the self-driving car being used for things like deliveries and taxi services, but there’s a huge potential to help the disabled and elderly as well. In March, the company released a video of the autonomous vehicle escorting a legally blind man from his house to wherever he wanted for the day (his first stop was Taco Bell).

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below:

hat tip Ars Technica; Self-driving car photo via Zack Sheppard/Flickr

Back in February, Nevada became the first state to pass regulations that would legalize these cars for use. It’s not clear yet if they would be available to the general public or be targeted to the differently abled. Google has also said the cars might serve as taxis and delivery vehicles.

In the video below, Mahan talks about how much extra time everything takes when one is blind and the liberating possibilities of a self-driving car. Then he takes ride to Taco Bell and enjoys his meal with two hands while heading to pick up some dry cleaning.

We’re one step closer to widespread availability of self-driving cars — at least, if you live in Nevada.

The state passed regulations for self-driving cars today that were approved by insurance companies, car manufacturers, police, and others, reports Physorg. The biggest benefactor of the decision will be Google, which debuted its futuristic self-driving cars in late 2010 and lobbied for their use in Nevada last May.

“Self-driving cars have the potential to significantly increase driving safety,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to VentureBeat. “We applaud Nevada for building a thoughtful framework to enable safe, ongoing testing of the technology and to anticipate the needs and best interests of Nevada citizens who may own vehicles with self-driving capabilities one day.”

Bruce Breslow, Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles director, says the DMV is now figuring out licensing procedures for testing the self-driving cars. The test cars will sport red license plates, Breslow said, while the general public will get green plates when the cars are available.

It’ll likely be a few years before normals folks can get their hands on self-driving cars, but Google previously hinted that they could perform tasks like serving as automated taxis and deliveries.

How good are Google’s self-driving cars? The company dropped a bombshell when it first announced their existence, saying the cars had covered 140,000 miles of driving in California with occasional human control. Seven cars drove over 1,000 miles without any human intervention at all. And that was back in late 2010, by now they’ve likely clocked many more miles on the road.

Thus far, there has only been one reported accident in the public with one of Google’s auto-driving cars, but that was entirely the fault of the less-sophisticated human behind the wheel. Google said in December that it received a patent for its driverless cars, but the company will still face competition from other car manufacturers.

Sebastian Thrun, the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google’s Street View service, previously said that the company’s goal is to prevent traffic accidents, give people more free time, and reduce carbon emissions by changing the way people use their cars.

Photo via Mac Morrison/Flickr

Google said the accident, in which a Google-owned Toyota Prius rear-ended another Prius, happened when a driver — rather than the car’s computer — was in control. The accident, which happened earlier this week, occurred not far from Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

“Safety is our top priority,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. “One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.”

The accident itself was thankfully just a fender bender, as seen in the photo above.

Last October, Google engineer Sebastian Thrun nonchalantly announced on the company’s blog that it had developed the technology to let cars drive themselves. Google also told us its self-driving cars have now traveled “160,000 miles autonomously without incident.”

If it can be confirmed by a third party that Google’s self-driving Prius was in fact wrecked by a human, maybe Google should just let the computer drive in the future.

A video of a Google self-driving car can be found below:

Photo via Jalopnik.

Google’s Music Beta first look: it’s miserable – Google’s Music Beta is supposed to provide users with a way to access the music anywhere, anytime as easily as physically possible. But it’s just not that easy.

Bad information spreading on PlayStation Network’s return date: nothing new, folks — There was some unfortunate wording in a Bloomberg news report on Sunday about Sony’s PlayStation Network, leading many publications to report that the network will be down until May 31. But that’s incorrect, according to Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold.

Angry Birds flutters over to Chrome — Google is bringing Rovio’s Angry Birds, a popular game on mobile devices where players fling birds at structures to try to destroy pigs, to its Chrome web browser to showcase how fast the browser has grown over time.

Why I (and probably 600,000 others) stopped playing World of Warcraft — Blizzard’s flagship online game, World of Warcraft, shed around 600,000 players in the last quarter even though it released one of its most successful expansion packs yet. VentureBeat’s Matthew Lynley offers a possible explanation.

Instant video game lets you kill bin Laden yourself — What the game lacks in quality it certainly makes up for in controversy.

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Google lobbies Nevada to be first state for self-driving cars — Google hasn’t given up on its sci-fi ambitions to make self-driving cars a reality.

At last, Sid Meier readies Civilization World social game for Facebook — Sid Meier’s Civilization World is finally close to coming out of an insane development cycle.

Why it’s hard to care about Facebook’s privacy slap fight with Google – In all the discussion this week about Facebook’s secret attempt to plant negative news stories about Google, most of the comments have (deservedly) focused on Facebook’s underhanded tactics. But here’s the other thing that struck me about Facebook’s criticisms: They’re pretty lame.

San Francisco will juice your electric car for free — The city of San Francisco, Calif., will install electric vehicle charging stations in publicly-owned garages and at San Francisco International Airport by the end of the year that drivers can use for free until 2013.

Everybody’s hot for Samsung’s Galaxy S II, hits 3 million pre-orders — It looks like Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S II may be the Android smartphone to beat this year.

We’re still far from seeing the self-driving cars widely deployed across the country, but landing Nevada’s approval could get the cars up and running in Las Vegas within a few years. Eventually, the cars could perform automated deliveries and serve as self-driving taxis in Vegas, policy analysts say.

The news comes about eight months after Google first announced the technology, which at the time seemed to have come straight out of an Isaac Asimov novel. And in addition to announcing it had developed self-driving cars that actually worked, Google also dropped a bombshell saying the cars had covered 140,000 miles of driving in California with occasional human control. Seven cars drove over 1,000 miles without any human intervention at all.

Google hired Las Vegas-based lobbyist David Goldwater to promote two bills that would legalize self-driving cars. One bill is an amendment to a current electric-vehicle bill that would allow licensing and testing of autonomous vehicles, while the other would allow texting while riding behind the driver’s seat of a self-driving car.

Thus far, Google has been testing the cars with a person in the driver seat (to take over in case the system fails) and passenger seat (to monitor the system). If the legislation is passed and Google’s technology reaches a point where it can be reliably deployed, the cars would be able to drive completely on their own.

Sebastian Thrun, the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google’s Street View service, previously said that the company’s goal is to prevent traffic accidents, give people more free time, and reduce carbon emissions by changing the way people use their cars.

We saw the publication of two lengthy articles this week about Larry Page, who is scheduled to take over as Google’s chief executive on April 4. After I read them, one big question lingered: What does his takeover mean for Google’s long-rumored Facebook competitor?

It may not mean anything. Google executives have been hinting at this product for a while now, and there’s presumably a large team working on it. So Page may not be any more (or less) involved as CEO than he is in his current role as the company’s president. But this is an ambitious project, reportedly adding social features to many existing Google products, and it’s going to need the support of the company’s CEO. That’s especially true if the product stumbles out of the gate, as happened with many of Google’s other social initiatives.

Yet social networking doesn’t seem to be on Page’s radar. Writing in Fast Company, Farhad Manjoo notes that Page doesn’t have a profile on Facebook or other social sites, and he quotes former Google executive Jason Shellen (now at AOL) as saying, “There’s an EQ — an emotional intelligence — around social software, and it just might be out of Google’s reach.”

In Wired, meanwhile, Steven Levy portrays Page as someone who follows his intellectual passions, even if they don’t seem to be a great fit for the company. (Apparently Page is behind the company’s recent, baffling effort to build self-driving cars.) Longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer told Levy that the key fact about both Page and Google co-founder Sergey Brin is that they were educated in Montessori schools, where “you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so.”

Where does social networking fit into those interests? Well, it’s noticeably absent from the story. Instead, Levy and the Googlers he interviews return again and again to the theme of information. (The self-driving car is defended with the phrase, “This is all information.”) Social products don’t seem to interest Page — Shellen told Manjoo, “With social, there’s nothing for Google to solve.”

And Page comes off as the exact opposite of the oversharing type who thrives on social networks — for example, he got rid of his personal assistant with the explicit goal of making it harder for employees to meet with him. As Levy puts it:

Like the plane spotters who log the peregrinations of aircraft, Googlers often swap data concerning Page’s and Brin’s ambulatory patterns. Even so, it can sometimes be tricky to catch Page; he is a master of the drive-by greeting, flashing a wide, happy-to-see-you smile while slightly picking up his pace, leaving a potential interlocutor talking to his receding back.

Again, none of this says much about Google’s social products. But it does suggest that the company will soon be led by a man who doesn’t want to use them.

Update: Levy emailed me to point out that his Wired article is an excerpt from his forthcoming book In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, and that while “the social issue” doesn’t come up in the excerpt, it is addressed in the book.