Is this the same parliamentary committee that told everyone to buy diesel because of their ultra clean exhausts that were going to stop climate change ? Politicians are pretty much lawyers and accountants and know Jack-sh!t about anything, they are easily manipulated by lobbyists and hype.
Interesting you should bring this up. Had a meal last night with my cousin and her husband. He is a retired mechanical engineer who spent all his working life in and around the motor industry. He said that the dirty truth about diesel was known when the decision to encourage take up was made. A classic example of box ticking politics by the government of the day.
He was interesting on the subject of autonomous cars. He is firmly of the opinion that the idea that we will all be using autonomous cars anytime soon and in great numbers is strictly for the birds. Widespread uptake is many many years away. The big motor companies are getting involved but his sources indicate that planning for new conventional petrol and diesel cars are still in progress and new conventional models will be coming on to the market for years to come.
I wonder if, like the paperless office and nuclear energy so cheap it wouldn't be worth billing people for, these ideas of flying autonomous cars will be seen to be another prediction that is some way wide of the mark. There will be autonomous vehicles but possibly in limited applications.
Apparently the 'visual' (spacial) maps needed for Waymo / Google autonomous vehicles to function (they are like Google streetview) have to be massively detailed which results in massive files and at the moment limits their use to small areas (and presumably slows down processing times). Don't know what will happen when on larger roads with no real closely spaced visual clues, or if someone builds a new building or a new roundabout appears or a road gets re-routed (we all now what can happen on normal satnav). Seems that the streetview files will need constant updating.
My brother in law comment when he had his first satnav many years ago is very telling, he said 'I get to places but haven't a clue where the place is or how I got there' - didn't know if he had driven North, South, East or West ! Big tech doesn't care about the public, and whether autonomous cars are a solution looking for the problem or not, all they care about is their bottom line...... They don't give a sh!t about how dumb our lives get as long as the dollars keep rolling in. If Darwin was right about evolution, right now our brains are shrinking and pretty soon our legs will wither (but our bodies will keep getting fatter).
Alexa order my autonomous car for 7-30......... and then cook my breakfast and make coffee, Oh iron my shirt and turn the TV on as well..............