Google targets huge population of over 70s in America for self-drive cars
After her painting of a guitar player won a Google contest, she became the oldest person yet to ride in a model with the company’s autonomous technology.
“You haven’t lived until you get in one of those cars,” the Austin, Texas, resident said of her half-hour excursion.
“I couldn’t believe that the car could talk. I felt completely safe.”
Google is betting others will share her sentiment.
With more than 43 million people in the US now 65 and older, and 10,000 more hitting that mark every day, ageing Americans are a natural target market for self-driving vehicles.
Mobility needs (getting to the doctor or the grocery store, seeing family and friends) become paramount for seniors, especially since 79% live in suburbs and rural areas.
“For the first time in history, older people are going to be the lifestyle leaders of a new technology,” said Joseph Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab in Cambridge.
“Younger people may have had smartphones in their hands first, but it’s the 50-plus consumers who will be first with smart cars,” he said.
John Krafcik, chief executive of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, featured Ms Swanson during a January presentation in Detroit.
His own mother is 96; both she and Ms Swanson gave up their driver’s licenses roughly a decade ago.
“A fully self-driving car has the potential to have a huge impact on people like Florence and my mom,” Mr Krafcik said.
“Mobility should be open to the millions around the world who don’t have the privilege of holding a driver’s license,” he said.
Ford also sees autonomy “as a way to strategically address an ageing population,” said Sheryl Connelly, the Michigan-based company’s in-house futurist.
In Japan, Toyota is racing to bring autonomous cars to market, partly because elderly drivers disproportionately cause and are injured in traffic accidents.
Some of this work is in the US, where the company hired Gill Pratt — former programme manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and head of Darpa’s Robotics Challenge — to lead the Toyota Research Institute.
The company is spending $1 billion (€919m) on artificial intelligence and robotics technology to eliminate driver errors and reduce traffic fatalities.
“We often talk about autonomy as if the goal is just to create autonomy in machines,” Mr Pratt said last fall when his new job was announced.
The focus is more on people having “the ability to decide for themselves where and when they want to move.”
