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We’ve been told for years that self-driving cars are just approaching. But it’s time to accept the truth, said Darrell Etherington on TechCrunch: they “aren’t going to happen” in our lifetimes.

I’ve long been excited about the potential of this technology, but my remaining optimism left me finally last month when Ford and Volkswagen announced they were stopping running Argo Al, their autonomous driving tech joint firm. Argo was considered a leader in the field. But Ford feels that “producing profitable, fully autonomous vehicles on a large scale is a long way off”, and it could no longer stomach the increasing costs. This is just the latest setback.

True, General Motors is making progress in trialling driverless vehicles on the roads, but only on a small scale. Tesla is pushing ahead with its self-driving technology, but its ambitions can be limited by an investigation that is looking into some accidents involving its “Autopilot” system. Some of the firmest believers in self-driving technology have turned nonbelievers. State-of-the-art robot cars still “struggle” with construction sites, road blocks, and sometimes even simple left turns.

I recently took a ride in a self-driving taxi in the city of Chandler, Arizona. There was an undeniable horror-movie aspect to sitting in the back of a vehicle and watching the steering wheel turn autonomously. To my relief, it slowed when other vehicles behaved improperly. I was just about to feel relaxed and text a coworker when the taxi came to a sudden stop at one point. A truck stopped in front of us and wanted to go backwards in order to take a missed turning. Unclear about what to do next, the taxi “chirped(吱吱叫) to call a human specialist to solve the situation”. Fortunately, the truck driver decided to drive on and we continued our way. My driverless experience made me believe this technology may never be possible to make passengers relaxed when they are in a driverless vehicle. Even so, I won’t undervalue the technological advances that have been made—after all, who knows what the future will look like.