Are We There Yet?

About 10 years ago, a source told me that my daughter would never learn to drive a car -- there would be no need because self-driving cars were just around the corner. Over time, it became conventional wisdom that we would have real autonomous cars by 2020. Well, we all know what happened next. While there are active self-driving taxi fleets in a few places across the country, we're nowhere close to giving up our driving licenses. 

It turns out that self-driving fantasies have been playing out for nearly a century. I decided to dive into that history for the new season of Barron's podcast The Readback. I spoke with CEOs, government officials, industry experts, activists, and more to explain why self-driving is still caught somewhere between imagination and reality.

The first episode -- "Are We There Yet?" -- is out now. It's much better in audio form, but here's a clip from Episode 1: 

Alex Eule: The first big attempt at autonomy came in 1925, when a radio-controlled vehicle named the American Wonder cruised up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue in the middle of New York City. Then, in 1939, the stakes were raised again.

Old clip:  The metropolis of today. New York City, 1939. A blend of yesterday and today, with its buildings and streets in familiar colors…

[Fades under]

AE: Out at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, 44 million people came to what became a must see attraction:

Old clip: ...The New York World’s Fair.

AE: With the slogan “dawn of a new day,” the fair’s focus was on the future, promising visitors a look at “the world of tomorrow.” And all the way back in 1939, there were people envisioning a future with autonomous vehicles.

[Music]

Alex Davies, author of Driven: The most popular exhibit at this fair was called Futurama. It was sponsored by General Motors, and it presented this world of 1960. And it said: This is what the future of driving looks like.

AE: The exhibit, designed by Norman Bel Geddes, imagined a modern expressway system where cars followed a guardrail that controlled their position on the road.

Old clip: Along the ledge of this beautiful precipice, traffic moves at unreduced rates of speed. Safe distance between cars is maintained by automatic radio control. Curved sides assist the driver with keeping his car in the proper lane under all circumstances. The keynote of this motorway? Safety. Safety with increased speed.

AD: Of course by 1960, we had absolutely nothing that looked like what was presented 20 years earlier except maybe for the highways, except they were full of traffic instead of free of traffic.

AE: It was the first of countless blown deadlines in the journey toward autonomous vehicles.

You can listen to the Readback on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you might find podcasts. Episode 2 comes out tomorrow, with new episodes every week.