Who would have guessed that a taco truck would have stumped GM’s autonomous Chevy Bolt and while an auto reporter was tagging along for a ride, no less?
It happened this week in downtown San Francisco during a media event marking GM’s debut of its autonomous Bolt.
“At one point we got stuck behind a taco truck where construction workers were ordering their lunch and it took a while for the car to figure out what to do,” reporter Alexandria Sage said in a Reuters news video.
In fact, the car didn’t do anything. So after a minute of watching and waiting it became apparent that it was time to bench the computer.
“It just sat there, so finally the driver disengaged the program, took over the wheel and we went around the taco truck,” Sage continued.
GM purposely chose San Francisco to put its autonomous cars to work because of the complex driving conditions there and will use set-backs, like the taco truck blunder, to improve their vehicle’s self-driving system to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.
All told, Sage reports that the Bolt she rode in traveled 2.2 miles in about 15 minutes and never exceeded 20 mph. During that time, the car’s sensors detected 117 people, 4 bikes and 129 cars.
