For adaptive cruise control (varies speed based on the car in-front of you), some will only take you so slow. Some auto makers can have the adaptive cruise control bring you to a full stop (for something like stop-and-go traffic).
Then a step up on the "drifting out of your lane" is one that will attempt to keep you in your lane (Acura and Mercedes have this, goes by the name "Lane Keep Assist"). [0]
I think both approaches are necessary, and complement each other well. An incremental approach will be the best way to clear out the psychological obstacles to self-driving cars, people need to gradually get used to the idea or else it will just be met with fear. and google's approach is already proving to be an effective tool to clear out regulatory obstacles and get the public excited.
And for a company like Tesla, who will sell their own cars, an incremental approach can be self-funding. Google has a ton of money to dump into research and is unlikely to bring a car to market themselves, so building a finished product will make it easier to find customers to license individual components of their tech to.
I was wondering what data they were gathering, and what they would do with it, and how it could be useful to other drivers:
What if you have a Tesla driver profile and you could see your driving habits ranked amongst all other tesla drivers (anonymously) to determine your rank as the most safe, efficient, slow, fast, whatever driver.
To see where you stack among others would have an effect on your driving. To see how your particular car performs against all others - its mileage vs age against others etc...
I think that there is a whole other layer that could be added onto the Tesla experience that other car manufacturers are far too old and less nimble to do appropriately.
ADAS isn't just about the self-driving cars that Google is testing. ADAS includes systems like:
- Warnings if you drift out of your lane (Mercedes has been advertising this for four years)
- Warnings and stops if the car predicts an accident may occur soon (Infiniti has been advertising this for years)
- Automatic parking (Ford has been advertising this for years)
- Blind spot detection (many car companies have it)
- Cruise control that maintains minimum distance to the car in front of you (BMW and Audi mid and high-end cars had it since 2010)
It really looks like Tesla is trying to develop those features for the Model S and future cars.