It looks like GM’s autonomous technology has a few bugs left to code out of its systems as a simple taco truck seems to have stumped at least one autonomous Chevrolet Bolt.

Leave it to something as simple as a giant aluminum paneled taco truck to stump one of your best autonomous press vehicles. According to Reuters on its report earlier yesterday (Nov. 29,2017) on how their test drive went in one of GM’s autonomous Chevrolet Bolts, it looks like their trip didn’t go as planned. Some simple obstacles that would’ve been easy to navigate for the average driver caused one of the Chevrolet Bolt’s to go into an endless loop of sorts.

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Long before the first non-employees (i.e. the public) got to ride in one of these autonomous Bolt’s, GM’s been testing these vehicles for close to a year in San Francisco. Semi-autonomous would be the correct term as there is still a driver behind the wheel who can take over at a moment’s notice. Good thing there is a driver as if these Bolt’s where truly driverless, that Bolt would’ve been stuck.

Per Reuters,

During a roughly 15-minute ride in a busy area of San Francisco over a 2.2 mile (3.5km) trip, the Cruise-enhanced electric Bolt carrying a Reuters journalist encountered 117 people, 4 bikes and 129 cars, according to the car’s sensors.

The car, never moving more than 20 miles per hour, navigated urban traffic, a tram line, construction zones, pedestrians crossing streets and many double-parked vehicles. Urban environments are as much as 46 times more complex than suburban areas, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said.

But things took a turn for the worse when the Bolt encountered a Taco truck.

A taco truck was too much, though. The Bolt’s human backup driver disengaged the system and took the wheel after the car waited for more than a minute behind the truck where construction workers ordered lunch.

GM’s rep was quick to ensure Reuters that, over time, these issues would improve.

A part of me thinks this is not the first time these construction workers had seen the Bolt driving around. Perhaps they knew a taco truck would throw them off so they took their sweet time ordering.

That’s probably not the case but it looks like GM’s autonomous program will be furiously poring over the data in that incident and understanding, on a technical level, what went wrong.

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