They have LiDAR, GPS, radars, inertial reference unit, steering wheel angle sensor and high-precision odometry (left rear wheel rotation sensor). Afaik, LiDAR/map convergence is actually used for localization.. at least it's the case for the street view car, per http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdPwaWATYKg&feature=plcp

Presumably just as vulnerable as someone who doesn't know where to drive without their GPS.

What would be interesting is though with a network of self driving cars you could figure out where all the GPS jammers were.

I remember reading a long time ago some odd story, that one would be able to disable instruments at a relatively low flying airplane, by aiming at it a conventional parabolic satellite dish with a strong microwave component mounted on it. Anyone care to explain if this was just some urban myth or if there is any truth to that? Are there any other ways to "jamm" digital devices from a distance?

Edit: The story seems to be too simplistic, but it there are at least certain devices around that use microwave power to jamm electronics: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/PPC.2009.5386327 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_HPM_Blackout

Google Street View cars have many ways of finding themselves in our world and knowing what is around them (which msftguy have kindly specified) but I guess GPS navigation is its primary instrument and without it it will be unable to drive anywhere. Device like this - http://www.jammer-store.com/gj6-all-civil-gps-signal-jammer-... - or maybe other one can easily block its GPS signal and stop it in case of emergency.

GPS isn't accurate enough to tell you what lane you're in. I'm sure it uses GPS for navigation, but it must use active sensors on the car itself for the actual driving.

You can still drive the car? Also, google has wifi methods of knowing where the car is and they still have computer vision. I think what you would want to do is jam all the frequencies that the google car receives. A better question is how could you try to make the system drive somewhere that you want to.

There's absolutely no way Google is falling-back to the less-specific WiFi geolocation for self-driving cars.

It would be far more effective to simply rely on dead reckoning until GPS service is restored.