Engineering news
So far, one of the most futuristic-looking autonomous cars has been Sedric (SElf-DRiving Car), unveiled by Volkswagen. This electric, driverless, and somewhat cute-looking ‘pod’ comes without a steering wheel or pedals, and can be summoned with the push of a button. Volkswagen says Sedric won't appear on the roads any time soon. However, this concept car will be most likely an inspiration for their other vehicles.
Infiniti is updating its Q50 model by implementing a self-driving system called the ProPilot, in partnership with Nissan. The update will be introduced in 2018 but will initially only offer driving assistance to the user rather than adapting to self-contained autonomous ability.
For its part, Hyundai unveiled its autonomous concept car, Ioniq, which already had a test run at CES. The company is putting the vehicle through rigorous research and testing to further develop its technology.
BMW hasn’t presented any self-driving tech in Geneva just yet – but made a curt announcement, stating that its autonomous and electric iNext would be unveiled in 2021.
Then there are also companies that are bucking the trend slightly. Airbus and Audi's design and engineering company, Italdesign, have joined forces to create its so-called Pop Up concept, a vehicle that could transition between the road, air and rail, depending on the best way of getting you to your destination. The passengers would be able to escape traffic thanks to an accompanying drone, which would hover over the car, attach itself, and airlift the car's upper part - with the passenger but without the chassis and the engine - to the destination.
Land Rover has also opted for a drone. In collaboration with the Red Cross, it unveiled its 'Project Hero' - the Land Rover Discovery outfitted with a roof-mounted drone, to be used by Red Cross mountain rescue teams. The drone would be controlled by a tablet app, allowing the driver and passengers to monitor their surroundings as they drive. It would also be feeding live footage from disaster areas to emergency response teams.
Peugeot has also entered the game with its semi-autonomous car Instinct, which originally debuted at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The plug-in hybrid system is capable of 225kW of power, with an aerodynamically efficient design and LED light strips gracing the front, as well as headlights that include cameras to monitor the road. The seats are ergonomically adjustable and the car will be connected to the internet to sync to the user’s personal devices. Peugeot plans to start its production by 2025.
Connectivity could be useful to convey real-time information to the driver, but could also limit autonomous cars to urban areas, says Paul Nieuwenhuis, automotive industry research expert at Cardiff University - unless in the near future countryside also becomes as smart and connected as cities.
After all, with the rise of the Internet of Things, it is likely that soon autonomous cars will be seamlessly integrated into our connected world, says Axel Schmidt, managing director at Accenture Automotive. Smart cars will be exchanging traffic data with the infrastructure and other cars around them, communicating status information to manufacturers and workshops, sending movement patterns and risk assessments to insurance companies, and so on, he says.
“They will also channel digital services, apps and entertainment to the people who sit inside them,” adds Schmidt. “All of that will really change the very notion of what ‘cars’ are – they’ll stop being a mere means of transport, and become the ultimate ‘mobile’ device.”
Apart from the self-driving tech unveiled in Geneva, there are other efforts to get you places without making you concentrate on your surroundings. Volvo will begin trialling its self-driving cars on London’s public roads later this year, and Google, Apple, Uber, Lyft, and Ford are all working hard to demonstrate their technological edge in the driverless market.
With that much novel self-driving tech, car industry experts agree that autonomous cars are clearly the future. “But what’s important here is that self-driving cars are a means and not an end,” says Schmidt. “They have to be part of highly relevant business models – think of self-driving trucks or taxis, for example – or must be packaged with digital services like in-vehicle entertainment. And they require autonomous-vehicle-friendly regulation.”
While autonomous cars are clearly gaining ground, major safety concerns remain. Despite a study by PTOLEMUS, a consulting firm, suggesting that autonomous vehicles will reduce road accidents by 30%, there was already one fatal car crash involving Tesla’s driverless Model S, in May 2016.
Nieuwenhuis thinks that there probably won’t be too many such tragic accidents, though, saying that “this may often make the car industry look conservative, but they are less likely to launch potentially dangerous technologies prematurely”.
Schmidt says that fully autonomous vehicles are probably not fully ready for the road just yet. “The Artificial Intelligence that drives them still needs more training, and some issues like how AI reacts to unknown situations haven’t been worked out yet. But partly autonomous driving is here, and it is already reducing risks and improving safety.”
For instance, he says, according to the “disengagement reports” by the State of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, car companies are making “tremendous progress regarding technology sophistication, safety, and general ‘road readiness’.
"Some of the vendors in the report have cut the number of times in which a human had to take control down to 0.2 such cases per 1,000 miles – that is pretty good, especially if you remember that the benchmark for these robot cars the average human drivers. I don’t have the numbers, but I very much doubt that the average human can drive a thousand miles without making one mistake.”