The dream of self-driving cars has been around since the 1950s. With tech giants and startups spurring this on, the dream continues. Realistically though, we will not see this fully autonomous vehicles until at earliest 2035. Why?
Huge costs: the sensors, redundant backup systems, and additional computing power cost about half the retail price of today’s mainstream car.
Standardized software: with everyone going on their own or in consortiums to develop the technology, everyone has their own standards. Unless there is one mandated standard, cars will have trouble communicating with each other — which is vital for a self-driving world.
Upgraded infrastructure: there is a need for a connected infrastructure where real-time data from traffic lights, traffic conditions, pedestrian signs, etcetera can feed the information to a car. The amount of data needed to transmit the information requires upgraded cellular towers or a parallel mode of transmitting the data. Today’s 4G infrastructure and potentially future 5G cannot yet handle the volume of the gigabytes/terabytes of data constantly being transmitted.
Liability: who is liable in case of an accident? The user? The ride-sharing provider? The manufacturer? No one wants to take on this burden.
The business model: the purpose of autonomy is so that a consumer does not need to own the car and can merely summon the car when ready to use. Who actually owns and maintains the fleet of autonomous cars? What is the platform delivery? If Uber or Lyft think that they can do that, they are naive. The incumbent automakers that will not give up a nearly $1 trillion dollar industry.
Levels of Autonomy (bold represents ADDITIVE to the prior level)
Level 0
No drivers assistance
Level 1
Steering or acceleration/deceleration assistance from the car. Requires full human attention.
Level 2
Steering and acceleration/deceleration assistance from the car. Requires full human attention, but can briefly take hands off the wheel.
Level 2+ (Today’s Maximum)
Steering, acceleration/deceleration, and lane changing assistance from the car. Requires partial human attention, but can take hands off the wheel. Needs to be alert and ready to takeover though.
Level 3
Steering, acceleration/deceleration, and lane changing assistance from the car. Requires partial human attention, but can take hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. Needs to be alert and ready to takeover though.
Level 4
Steering, acceleration/deceleration, and lane changing assistance from the car. Requires no human attention and can take hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. Only available if area has data available to the system (i.e. mapped).
Level 5
The car can drive itself anywhere and everywhere.