Driverless taxis, driverless trucks, and totally unstaffed grocery stores are in the news.

How far behind will the US be?

World’s First Unmanned Grocery Store

Please consider In Sweden’s 1st Unstaffed Food Shop, All You Need is a Phone.

UK Fleet Tests Driverless Trucks

Next on the list, the Mirror reports Driverless Lorries Heading for Tests on UK Motorways Next Year.

For those who claim the Mirror is not a reliable site, the BBC had nearly the identical story. I used the Mirror because it had better images.

Similarly, SBS News in Australia comments “Platoons of driverless trucks are to be road-tested on a major motorway in the UK.”

Driverless Taxis Operational by 2020

Via translation from El Economista, Japan Introduces the Robot Taxi.

The Japanese company Robot Taxi has begun testing a driverless taxi service for residents in Fujisawa (south of Tokyo) with the aim of driving these vehicles operate automatically in 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Japanese company intends that its fully automatic driving taxis will operate during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games to transport athletes and tourists from the Japanese capital to the Olympic venues and vice versa.

The Japanese government announced last October that the driverless vehicles can drive through Tokyo in 2020 and also aims to have in place a legal framework for such cars before the end of the next fiscal year, which ends in March 2017.

Winner is Japan

Every time I do one of these stories, naysayers tell me it won’t happen.

Instead, I suggest my often-forecast 2020 date for taxis may have been too pessimistic, at least for Japan. 2019 now seems likely.

What Japan does, others will follow. In France, expect massive protests and shutdowns.