Auto Tech: Autonomous Cars Will Change Everything

Japan's Prime Minister Rides in Autonomous Nissan LEAF

Cadillac V2V technology in 2017 Cadillac CTS

Automotive Sensor Technologies

Google Self-Driving Car Development Vehicle

Ford Obstacle Avoidance System

Google Self-Driving Car Prototype

Mercedes-Benz Autonomous Concept Mock-up

Subaru Eyesight Object Identification

Volvo Drive Me

Volvo Drive Me Radar and Camera Sensors

Subaru Eyesight Lane-Keeping and Collision Avoidance

Mercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion Concept

Nissan LEAF Autonomous Drive

Delphi Self-Driving Audi Q5

Delphi Self-Driving Audi Q5 Interior

Cadillac Super Cruise Testing

According to Delphi, “The onboard systems will enable the vehicle to instantaneously make complex decisions, like stopping and then proceeding at a four-way stop, timing a highway merge or calculating the safest manoeuvre around a cyclist or other object on a city street — abilities most existing autonomous systems are unable to execute.”

The Audi is equipped with radar and camera monitoring systems, complex processing units, V2V and V2X communications, Traffic Jam Assist, Automated Highway Pilot with Lane Change and on-ramp to off-ramp highway pilot, Automated Urban Pilot and Automated Parking Valet. All the goodies we’re going to see over the next few years. Apparently, the future is almost now, when it comes to AVs.

As you might imagine, along with projected reduction of accidental injury or death and the reduction in fuel consumption – all the positive social and environmental benefits — there is lots of money to be made in autonomous or self-driving vehicles. While taxi drivers may become obsolete, new services will emerge to generate revenue. You think finding that choice parking space will be free? You want to avoid congestion for free? You want anything for free? No, everything will be mediated.

The Internet of Things (IoT), which posits a world in which everything is connected, will generate huge amounts of data and offer massive opportunities for mining that data and charging you for the smallest service. Google and Apple (and Amazon and Uber, probably) are so ready for this. The money is in the connectedness and while your car drives itself you will be spending one way or another.

As David Miller, chief security officer for Covisint says, “With more than 50 billion connected devices by 2020, the automotive industry has a monumental opportunity to place the vehicle at the center of the Internet of Things. Our goal is to ensure that the wide range of devices in the IoT ecosystem are able to seamlessly integrate with the vehicle, in order to deliver a streamlined, optimal customer experience.

I’ll tell you, people are pumped. Being connected “in the IoT ecosystem” means money can flow.

But on the other hand… I recall the same kind of fervour and excitement 20 years ago when the Internet came online. The World Wide Web it was called, and some visionary people were stoked by the possibilities. You may remember those bizarre Nortel commercials on TV “What do you want the Internet to be?” asked some guy in a black suit.

In retrospect, Nortel and companies like it definitely saw the possibilities but they were way ahead of their ability to deliver and way ahead of consumers. Their driving vision was based on “convergence,” and they were right. Media was going to converge: our desktops, our laptops, our TV, our phones, our bank accounts, stores, entertainment, all of it. We’d be able to watch movies on demand, we’d get the news continuously, we’d share in the joy of being human and buy and sell from each other with reckless capitalist abandon. It was going to be great and it was happening now so get on board!

But there was a problem. Not only was there insufficient bandwidth to do all these things, but there was no payments system in place and no interest from consumers in paying for anything online. It was all moving way too fast.

That’s why the sudden push toward vehicle autonomy seems so familiar. There’s such corporate enthusiasm for a technology that hasn’t come anywhere near proving itself in the cut and thrust of the everyday world. Cars that nudge into intersections? Give me a break. Somebody will shoot their tires out; somebody will delight in hacking their V2V system. How many people have asked for this technology?

The journey from the driven car to the driverless car will take many decades, maybe the end of the century is more like it. It will run up against the human propensity to resist change and to resist ceding control. Why do you think so many cars have only one occupant, anyway? They don’t have friends? Sure they do; they just want some alone time where they can nominally be in charge.

Most people are slow adopters. It will take an age for today’s fleet of conventional cars, not to mention today’s attitudes, to give way to semi-autonomous, autonomous and driverless vehicles. In the meantime, one driver’s Traffic Jam Pilot is another driver’s opportunity to butt in. Am I right? I think so.

But all that said, the direction toward an automated world is clear, and maybe people who were born after 2000 – shall we call them the Internet generation? – will happily adopt autonomous vehicles and transportation droids without fuss. And likely they won’t care as much about cars and driving as those who were born in the 20^th Century, anyway. While the legacy carmakers are banking that they will; Silicon Valley and shareable economy types may have different priorities. Either way, people will continue to require mobility, that’s a certainty.

Personally, I’m glad to have grown up in a golden era of cars you drive yourself. I don’t think future generations will derive as much pleasure from their communally owned transpo-bots as I do from my classic 1956 MGA.