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How San Diego helped launch the self-driving car era

Claire Trageser

A dark minivan with sponsor decals, including DELCO, sits on a desert roadside. Pale rock canyons and distant blue mountains rise under a clear blue sky. — Driverless minivan on the move. Photo: Courtesy of Todd Jochem

Long before Waymos and Teslas roamed our roads without drivers, there was the 1995 minivan that steered itself 2,849 miles from Pittsburgh to San Diego.

The big picture: This minivan was one of the first demonstrations that self-driving cars were possible. It helped pave the way for some of the autonomous vehicles we see today, Todd Jochem, who worked on the project, told Axios.

Driving the news: Thursday was the 31st anniversary of that drive.

Jochem has written a book about it, called "Driven."

Along with finishing the drive in San Diego, the city played another key part in driverless history.

Two years later, Jochem and a team from Carnegie Mellon used the HOV lanes on I-15 to run "Demo '97," a demonstration that showed fully autonomous cars and buses driving in realistic traffic scenarios.

Fast forward: The technology for driverless cars on highways was 90% of the way there in 1997, Jochem told Axios.

What took time was getting the sensors used for autonomous navigation to a price where the cars would be at least somewhat affordable, he said.
At the time, sensors were $30,000 on their own.

Plus, we needed better GPS maps so the robot cars could navigate regular roads.

Because you can't just drive on the highway.
And people needed to get used to the idea of robot cars. TBD on whether that's happened.

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How San Diego helped launch the self-driving car era

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