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The country’s transport minister addressed the issue in a statement today As self-driving cars are being tested everywhere from the  US  to  South Korea ,  Germany  to  Australia , reports today make it clear that it won't be happening in India. The country's transport and highways minister, Nitin Gadkari  told reporters today , "We won't allow driverless cars in India. I am very clear on this." The statement wasn't a reflection of safety concerns. Rather, the minister's rejection of self-driving vehicles is about the jobs they would take away from drivers in the country. "We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs," said Gadkari. He went on to say that while India was indeed short about 22,000 commercial drivers, the government was working on opening a number of training facilities across the country in order to get 5

Five year investment period with AI start-up Argo will lead up to 2021 - the date Ford has set for the launch of its self-driving car Ford  has announced plans to invest $1 billion into an artificial intelligence start-up called Argo AI, as the company accelerates development of fully autonomous cars. The $1 billion investment will be seeded over a five-year period, with the marque planning to launch a vehicle capable of driving itself completely by 2021.  •  Self-driving cars: Everything you need to know Founded by former  Google  and  Uber  engineers, who were working on self-driving projects at those companies, Argo AI will be tasked with developing the software platform for Ford’s production self-driving system. Ford engineers are to be placed within the start-up firm. The technology which will be created by the collaboration may not be limited to just Ford vehicles either – the manufacturer says it could be licenced to others in the future as well.  •  Opinion: Ford's sm

David Shepard Toyota's automated driving technology test vehicle on a Lexus vehicle displayed in Tokyo in Nov. 2014.  Photo credit: BLOOMBERG WASHINGTON -- General Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. officials will tell a U.S. House panel on Tuesday that automakers need changes to automotive safety rules to allow the deployment of self-driving cars on American roads. "Without changes to those regulations, it may be years before the promise of today’s technology can be realized and thousands of preventable deaths that could have been avoided will happen," Mike Abelson, vice president of global strategy at GM, said in written testimony released Monday. "It is imperative that manufacturers have the ability to test these vehicles in greater numbers." On Monday, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Senator John Thune, the Republican chairman of the Commerce Committee, said in a joint statement they are exploring legislation that "clears hurdles and advances innova

Steve Kovach   Chris Urmson, Google's former head of self-driving cars.Reuters/Stephen Lam GOOG Alphabet-C  819.24 5.57 (+0.70 %) Disclaimer Get real-time GOOG charts here » Google's parent company, Alphabet, lost some of its leading self-driving-car experts because they were offered large payouts based on the valuation of the company's self-driving-car division,  according to a new Bloomberg report . The large payouts gave the employees little incentive to stay at the company, and some left to begin their own self-driving-car startups and initiatives. Essentially, the staff members were paid so much that they quit, the Bloomberg report says. To be clear, it's likely the large payouts weren't the only factor that caused the employees to quit, but it appears to be a significant reason. A spokesperson for Waymo, the self-driving-car company that launched under Alphabet, declined to comment on the report. It's unclear how much the payouts were or who rec