No, the tech has been around for a few years now. Compared to the tech used in drones for recognition it is still fairly basic.
So, yesterday I drove about 100km mostly on the freeway, and today 40km purely around town, and I couldn't see one situation which the Google car wouldn't have dealt with easily. Which isn't surprising considering the amount of miles they've clocked up in ordinary driving. But with these sales pitches (I went to one today!) it's always what they don't tell you that is usually the most important part. Self driving cars have to be able to cope with every outlier, and all we've seen is them in action on nice sunny days.
"Although the vehicles have already driven 700,000 miles safely, there is clearly still a lot of testing still to do. The cars have yet to drive in snowy conditions and it’s not yet safe to drive in heavy rain either. Many of the problems arise from how good the detection technology is on the car and how well it is able to discriminate between different objects in view and between different weather conditions."
I appreciate the article is a year old, and I think that they will be able to overcome the difficulties eventually, but it is significant that C.U. didn't address any of those issues in his TED broadcast.
The Model T to a 2015 car is silly, though. Every single part of the car has improved, apart from the basic laws of thermodynamics. Tyres, metal, paint, electrics, electronics (all totally new), plastics (only bakelite in the MT) ......
