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Self-driving Cars Excite Industry, But They're Not Yet Ready For Prime Time
There has been much fevered talk about the imminence of self driving cars, leaving the impression with the public that it won’t be very long before the automobiles we buy don’t even have steering wheels or pedals.
This has been fuelled by the car manufacturers themselves as they swap overblown rhetoric about the progress being made thanks to their engineer’s ingenuity and the massive sums committed to these projects.
Britain’s BMI Research hosted a seminar recently where it tried to get the hype and bluster and provide some insight into the prospects of computerised/robot/autonomous vehicles. Perhaps job one should be to decide which of these terms makes the most sense.
But the most important “fact” to emerge from the meeting was that fully-autonomous cars won’t be available for up to 15 to 20 years , according to BMI Research analyst Anna-Marie Baisden.
Some questions to emerge included the fate of pricey sports cars like Ferrari in a driverless world.
If the computerized technology is so close to being able to drive a car on city roads or highways, handle errant pedestrians, know that an incoming object is a bird not a car, and handle a whole range of unpredictable situations, why aren’t train services already computerised and driver-less? After all, the task for train drivers excludes steering, turning or avoiding strange objects given that the path has already been cleared.
Manufacturers have made clear performance vehicles will be last in line for automation.
“We can expect autonomy to be mostly focussed on the mainstream car segment – but also commercial vehicles, as we have seen progress with delivery vehicles making largely autonomous trips,” Baisden said in a report.
Source: forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2016/11/27/self-driving-cars-excite-industry-but-theyre-not-yet-ready-for-prime-time/#25fbc7a51609