From KQED. I like to imagine the future with driverless cars.

You summon a car for your ride to work and at precisely the right time an all electric vehicle arrives outside

your home.

When you get inside you can put your feet up, meditate, call a friend, answer emails, watch TV, whatever your heart desires.

There are no slowdowns because there are no accidents.

These cars have a perfect driving record.

In some scenarios, you won't even have the hassle of owning a car with its insurance premiums

and annual registration fees.

They'll be a communal good, and we'll need a lot fewer of them, so we can turn parking

lots into parks or housing. Street parking turns into bike lanes or parklets or nicer sidewalks.

In this future, which admittedly I might be viewing through some rose-colored glasses here,

but the convenience and the privacy of cars gets married with the efficiency of public transportation.

I for one am ready for this utopian driving experience,

but for now we've got streets full of test vehicles.

San Franciscans may be particularly tired of them because for years the city has been one of the most popular

testing grounds for automated vehicles in the nation. These cars are easy to

spot. They wear an exo-shell of gadgetry, sensors surveying the landscape. They also drive really, really slowly.

Today's question-asker Lenore noticed one company in particular has been

testing in San Francisco a lot. Waymo, aka Alphabet, aka Google. Lenore feels like their white SUVs have been just taking over San Francisco

streets in recent months, and she wrote Indeba Curious to ask, why?

Today in the show we'll answer that question and get an update on where things are with driverless technology.

Is my driving utopia right around the corner or decades away?

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