Researchers may have said that Google self-driving cars are not quite ready to take people down millions of American roads, but the search giant just announced that the first fully working prototype of its kaola-faced self-driving are ready to hit California roads in 2015. As you can see, this complete prototype is somewhat similar to the one Google showed off in May.
Spot any difference? The first one(bottom) was a model and it has no headlights and the Lidar, which is located at the top of the car that allows it to capture 360-degree view of the environment to see objects ahead, has been brought down to a smaller size. It even has a s
teering wheel, brakes and pedals; which means a human can take control of the car in case something goes wrong. The mock up Google teased in May had none of these. Might be it decided to heed the warnings of the California Department of Motor Vehicles which outlined that Google driverless cars must have these controls and a human driver should always be behind the wheels when testing these cars.
