re: Driverless cars on highway by end of year.

At best autonomous driving will handle highway slogs. It can't and won't fully replace drivers in most of our lifetimes. What it can do is keep us comfortable while our commute times lengthen and increase the productivity of long haul truck drivers.

It's different for pickups, Suburbans, and Jeeps.....autonomous research depends on the autonomous vehicle fleets recognizing and "learning" road surfaces and markings. It will likely never handle the type of use that a lot of these purpose built trucks see, such as jaunts through a pasture, backing into a boat ramp, stop and go moving on a job site or in an urban area, or heavy off roading.

If the cars can talk to each other on the road we can actually put them much closer together and better utilize our existing highway infrastructure. They can accelerate, steer, and brake as a group and basically bumper lock each other and let other cars come into or out of the lane.

Imagine a group of Teslas in autonomous mode traveling down the highway. If they are networked, they can get much closer together and basically draft each other safely. You can actually fit more cars on the highway in that case.