Here’s another example of self driving vehicles expected in operation within a year or two, not 10-15 years as the pessimists are telling us.

EasyMile has already deployed its low-speed EZ10 shuttles — known as SDVs, or Shared Driverless Vehicles — in closed environments in Finland, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. At one location, the shuttles travel around an amusement park. In another, they take day-trippers from a parking lot to a beachfront. Much like the self-driving cars being developed by Google and other Silicon Valley companies, the vehicles use high-definition internal mapping software to know their routes and various sensors to avoid pedestrians and other obstacles.

But the vehicles will have to be modified to follow the new self-driving handbook from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which is already in force for testing on public roads and still being developed for consumer use.

“In Europe these are truly driverless cars; they don’t even have a steering wheel,” but in California a steering wheel, brake pedal and accelerator must be added, Willis said.