Driverless electric shuttles are all set to ply on the roads of California. A pair of fully-autonomous $250,000 buses began driving around an empty San Francisco Bay Area parking lot on Monday, preparing to move onto a local public road in California’s first pilot program for a self-driving vehicle without a steering wheel or human operator. Expected to be on the streets by 2018, the EasyMile EZ10 vehicles are 12-person electric shuttles capable of driving at speeds up to 30 mph without an operator. The EZ10 use cameras, lidar, and highly accurate GPS sensors to operate, but do not have a human safety driver or even a steering wheel on board. They rely on fleet-management software for remote monitoring and control.
