It takes a lot of nerve to get into any car on the streets of Los Angeles. This morning I was watching the news on TV at our hotel, and when they’re not talking about Stormy Daniels’ hush money, there’s live traffic reports on – and boy, is it Prang City.
There are flashes of pileups in every major artery, and one gets the impression that Angelenos are in a state of constant collision, like some form of subatomic particles. Heaven knows what they do: They look at the stock market, spank their children, and crane their necks to read the ubiquitous giant billboards advertising the services of Better Call Saul-type accident lawyers.
Whatever the reason, the population of this city suffers from 52,000 car accidents every year – that’s over 140 shunts, dents, dents and fender-benders per day, and I’m afraid there are of course many hundreds of people who are badly injured or lose their life.
All of this bloodshed occurs in normal motor vehicles, where the driver is supposed to keep his or her most attention on the road. We are talking about conventional machines in which humans do their best – using all their senses – to anticipate each other’s mistakes, study the traffic and turn the steering wheel in time.
Driverless Teslas – a new type of car so absurd, so bold, so revolutionary that ten years ago I wouldn’t have believed it was possible, writes Boris Johnson
Today, however, I am about to entrust my life and the lives of my wife and ten-month-old baby to a very different kind of machine: a machine over which no one—or at least no human—has control.
We are on the verge of being transported in a new type of car that is so absurd, so bold, so revolutionary that ten years ago I would not have believed in the possibility. Maybe on a test track; perhaps in laboratory conditions – but I never expected to see it in the heavy traffic of a big city.
I’m about to set off in a self-driving car on the seething Limpopo of LA streets filled with predatory crocodiles and charging hippos. We get into a car with no eyes to see, no hands to point and no feet to slam on the brakes.
This car has none of the natural terror, none of the paranoia that is so vital to human drivers. It just has dozens of tiny cameras the size of jelly beans, hidden discreetly and mostly out of sight within its sleek white body. and it has a neural system, an electronic brain, that becomes more powerful with each passing week.
I can report, ladies and gentlemen, that the overall effect is astonishing. Do you remember the part in the poem when the portly Cortes sees the Pacific from the Andes for the first time and looks at it with eagle eyes while all his men stare at each other with wild suspicion*?
These are the looks that – wild guess – pass between us as we gently drive away in this self-driving Tesla.
I sit at the steering wheel but don’t touch it, and even though my feet are near the pedals, I don’t use them – and my word, the steering wheel turns itself.
It’s eerie at first, like watching a ghost press down the keys of a piano. Now it points, yields and floats through traffic with the delicacy and tact of a living chauffeur. It’s so human, I gasp, so gentle.
“Soft as butter,” confirms the man from Tesla. He is there to watch over his expensive prototype but, I assure you, does nothing to drive or control it.
Now we’ve come to a very tricky intersection where five streets meet in the middle of Beverly Hills and we have to go left. Traffic is coming at us pretty quickly, bustling through the streets lined with tall palm trees and $100 million homes.
I wonder what the hell happens if this thing malfunctions now?
Embarrassing or what? What if it has some kind of seizure, a suicidal episode like the onboard computer in 2001’s “Space Odyssey”? What if Putin is already in his brain and a Russian bot is preparing to hurl us headfirst into the oncoming steel wall?
What happens if the navigation system isn’t working properly and you suddenly have no idea where it is?
Don’t worry, says the man from Tesla. It doesn’t need satellites. And he’s right. With impeccable manners and consideration of all other vehicles, we turn left and I relax enough to absorb the audacity of Tesla’s plan.
There are already some self-driving cars on the streets of LA that are licensed to carry people. They are run by a company called Waygo and have large rotating sensory towers on the roof. However, they can only navigate a very small part of the city because they are specifically programmed to understand these streets.
This Tesla machine is far more ambitious, and thanks to its cameras and neural network, it can go anywhere – once it is fully licensed and approved.
“It’s more than safe,” says the man from Tesla. “It’s five to six times safer than a human driver.”
“Think about what we human drivers have to do,” he explains. They are constantly looking at the road and constantly turning around. “But even if you have eyes in the back of your head, you don’t see as much as we do.” “We see 100 percent.”
As he speaks, a man staggers slowly into traffic in front of us, looking a little under the weather. Instinctively I reach for the steering wheel; my toe twitches for the brake; but I needn’t have worried.
The car had been waiting for me for a long time and had the man in sight – a tiny human figure actually appeared on the dashboard in the electronic street image.
We effortlessly slow down and fly around him. After about 45 minutes, I feel like a driver’s license examiner – except I want to tell the car with flying colors that it passed.
There was only a moment of mild confusion as we pulled up to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. A uniformed doorman appeared and waved us forward.
The car didn’t move. The man waved again. Still the car did nothing.
Oh yes, said the man from Tesla. “This gesture is not recognized yet, but we are fixing it for the next iteration.” It should happen next month.
“This car is incredible – but it’s the worst thing ever and it gets exponentially better.”
It was in 2009 when I first tested an electric Tesla roadster, which at the time was shaped like a Lotus. The M40 failed and I had some skepticism about the future of the brand.
Well, I won’t make that mistake again. It seems strange to me now. It seems crazy. But I’ve seen enough to know that it will happen and that sooner or later there will be a tipping point.
Everyone will do it: read a book, play cards or just doze behind the wheel of vehicles that move under their own power: faster, quieter, less polluting – and safer.
Literary corner
*At first glance in Chapman’s Homer: a sonnet by John Keats describing his amazement as he read the ancient Greek poet Homer, translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman