Originally published April 15, 2015

Article by Paul Williams. Images courtesy Cadillac, Delphi Automotive, Ford, Google, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru, Texas Instruments, Volvo

So I was thinking to myself, if my self-driving car was sitting in the driveway doing nothing, could I send it off to make some money using some kind of purpose-designed, Uber-like app? It could do a little autonomous taxi work, for instance. I mean, really, most of the time my car just sits around depreciating. If it could earn its keep, well, now we’re talking!

You may have noticed that so-called “autonomous” or self-driving cars are the next big thing in transportation. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “automobile.” Personally, I don’t think consumers have wrapped their heads around the implications of this yet, let alone taken it seriously. I mean, it’s science-fiction, right? They’re not really proposing that cars, you know, drive themselves, are they?

But here’s Mark Fields, President and CEO of the Ford Motor Company speaking in January, 2015: “…our view is within the next five years probably somebody [probably Ford?] will come out with a fully autonomous vehicle (AV).”

And here’s Nissan’s CEO, Carlos Ghosn “Autonomous driving will be complete in 2020 with City Autonomous Drive, with cars driving themselves around town.”

From Jim Keller, Honda’s Senior Manager R&D, Americas, regarding autonomous cars: “…I think 2020 is a reasonable date for almost the entire industry.”

You’ll hear the same prognostications from Volvo, General Motors, Audi, Subaru, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and just about every other carmaker. Believe me, they’re all busy automating.

So hold on, car nuts, apparently getting behind the wheel is going to get a whole lot more… boring. Heck, come to think of it, there may not even be a steering wheel to get behind. What about “Drivers Wanted,” Volkswagen? What about that?

Why the rush from mainstream automakers? You probably haven’t missed the media presence of two outliers in the mix: Google and Apple. Currently – although this could change – they don’t make cars that you can buy, so they (or at least, Google for sure) have partnered with the likes of Toyota, Lexus and Audi to get their autonomous chops in order. As far as cooperation is concerned, carmakers may have a tiger by the tail, here, as Google and Apple… well, they don’t necessarily think like carmakers and may not even like cars. But as platforms for new software, which surely can be monetized, they think cars will do just fine.

There’s Tesla, too, a company whose not-to-be-underestimated owner Elon Musk predicted in 2014, “will be the first to market with significant autonomous driving function in the vehicles.” It’ll be in 2017, he announced with some fanfare last year, but possibly responding to similar announcements by mainstream carmakers, now it’s going to be this summer, according to a March, 2015 media conference call reported in the New York Times and elsewhere.

The Tesla technology, called Autopilot, will allow the car to “take control” on highways. Apparently an Autopilot equipped car can also to be summoned by smartphone and park itself in a garage or elsewhere. For Tesla, this is basically a software update, but if it’s effective it definitely maintains the brand’s position as an AV frontrunner.

So where does this leave us (as in you and me)?

Right now it leaves us with a lot of cars that have acquired the ability to “sense” their environment and make adjustments if required. It’s okay, they’re not self aware…. yet, but features like Honda’s LaneWatch and Toyota’s Lane Keeping Assist, Chrysler’s Adaptive Cruise Control, Ford’s Active Park Assist, Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Drive, Subaru’s “EyeSight” and BMW’s Adaptive Brake Assist point to a partially autonomous driving experience where you can, even now, theoretically take your hands off the steering wheel, your foot off the accelerator and the brakes, and cruise down the highway while watching a movie on your smartphone. Then your car can park itself.

But DON’T DO THIS! I’m just saying… these are the types of technologies that are acquiring a confluence of purpose with rapidly increasing momentum towards vehicles that can make their way through traffic jams (Traffic Jam Assist… coming soon, not kidding), through complex intersections and into and out of parking spaces without your help. And yes, once that happens, autonomously cruising along the highway will be a piece of cake in comparison.

There are, as you may have surmised, levels of vehicle autonomy, not to mention all kinds of legal issues (Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan/Renault rather sanguinely pointed out at the 2015 New York International Auto Show that currently in most jurisdictions, “You must have your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. It’s the law.”). That acknowledged, in the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has developed a classification system comprising five levels of vehicle autonomy:

Level 0: The driver completely controls the vehicle at all times.

Level 1: Individual vehicle controls are automated, such as electronic stability control or automatic braking.

Level 2: At least two controls can be automated in unison, such as adaptive cruise control in combination with lane keeping.

Level 3: The driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides a “sufficiently comfortable transition time” for the driver to do so.

Level 4: The vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire trip, with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. As this vehicle would control all functions from start to stop, including parking functions, it could include unoccupied cars.

As you can see, we are well into Level 2, transitioning into Level 3; but Level 4, the true “self-driving car” is still commercially a long way off, according to Nissan Canada President Christian Meunier.

But 2017 will be a big year for autonomous vehicles. Cadillac will debut Level 3 “Super Cruise” technology, “that takes control of steering, acceleration and braking at highway speeds of 70 miles per hour (112 km/h) or in stop-and-go congested traffic,” according to GM’s Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra (the expectation is that traffic laws will be in place by then that will actually permit such capability).

“With Super Cruise,” she explained at a speech in Detroit’s Cobo Center, “when there’s a congestion alert on roads like California’s Santa Monica Freeway, you can let the car take over and drive hands free and feet free through the worst stop-and-go traffic around,”

Also in 2017 according to Ms. Barra, Cadillac “will become the first automaker to equip a model with so-called vehicle-to-vehicle technology that enables the car to communicate with other autos with similar abilities to warn of traffic hazards and improve road safety.” This “V2V” technology will be available in the 2017 Cadillac CTS and that is an important development. It’s V2V and the ad hoc vehicle networks that it enables, which will, among other things, prevent AVs from colliding (there’s also V2X – Vehicle to Everything – where your vehicle is able to communicate with other vehicles, traffic lights, toll gates, pedestrians, and even the owner’s home. That comes later.).

Toyota’s been talking about and working on autonomous technologies for years. The company imagines networks of cars, sensing each other, not able to collide with each other. A collision-free world; do-able, as it turns out.

“Toyota’s vision is of a world without traffic fatalities, and these advanced connected and automated vehicle technologies hold the potential to revolutionize automotive safety,” says Seigo Kuzamaki, Toyota’s Deputy Chief Safety Officer. Toyota and Lexus say 2017 for the introduction of its semi-autonomous Integrated Safety Management system.

Nissan will have autonomous driving technology in many of its vehicles by 2020. Nissan cars won’t actually drive around by themselves, but by the end of 2016 (2017 model year) Nissan promises to bring to market a traffic-jam pilot, “enabling cars to drive autonomously – and safely – on congested highways,” according to Mr. Meunier. They’ll also make fully automated parking systems available across a wide range of Nissan vehicles.

In 2018 it’s multiple lane controls that enable Nissan cars to negotiate hazards and change lanes on a highway, and before the end of the decade we’ll see intersection autonomy, enabling vehicles to negotiate city crossroads without driver intervention.

Volvo, too, is racing to 2017, when it plans to put 100 driverless cars on the road in Sweden, along with others in Norway. Its goal is to become the first on the road with a “market viable” autonomous car, “by about 2020,” which is when Volvo expects the realization of its bold “Vision 2020” commitment that no person will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car thenceforth. Can’t crash, you see.

But what about Google and Apple. What are they actually up to?

In the case of Google, the company’s been developing a technology called Google Chauffeur that would form an autonomous platform carmakers can use in their vehicles. To that end they’ve been largely leapfrogging the automotive industry by going straight to a Level 4 driverless car. After all, if you can nail Level 4, you’ve got Level 3 controls in the bag as well.

Google engineers along with company owners Sergey Brin and Larry Page seem genuinely motivated to reduce collisions, congestion and fuel consumption by developing such technology. Unlike car companies, at least historically, they see these problems as a software issue. Google Chauffeur therefore involves the use of a laser range finder (LIDAR) that generates a three-dimensional map of the vehicle’s immediate environment. The car then compares the real-time laser images with detailed street maps (oh, that’s what they wanted Street View for…) in order to generate a route that avoids obstacles and obeys the rules of the road.

There are, of course, myriad other sensors that allow the car to “observe” the surrounding environment, along with processors on-board to interpret and react to it. A GPS handles the routing. Google now has driverless cars on the road trundling around avoiding obstacles. They look like little eggs.

Interestingly, at a 2011 keynote address to the Institute of Electroncis and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) by Google project chief Sebastian Thrun, and engineer Chris Urmson, it was reported in the IEEE Spectrum that, “Sometimes, however, the car has to be more “aggressive.” When going through a four-way intersection, for example, it yields to other vehicles based on road rules; but if other cars don’t reciprocate, it advances a bit to show to the other drivers its intention.” In other words, it’s programmed to behave as people do. “Without programming that kind of behaviour,” Urmson said, “it would be impossible for the robot car to drive in the real world.”

Let’s let that sink in. It will adopt an aggressive posture. It will show the other drivers its intention. Presumably it will back off if provoked. Hope so. Grrrrrr!

But the project has a far more serious side. Thrun and his Google colleagues, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are convinced that smarter vehicles could truly help make transportation safer and more efficient: “Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form speedy convoys on freeways.”

Furthermore, “They would react faster than humans to avoid accidents, potentially saving thousands of lives. Making vehicles smarter will require lots of computing power and data (Google is not short of either), and that’s why it makes sense for Google to back the project,” Thrun said.

And don’t forget, Google is rolling out Android Auto, a connectivity suite that manages in-car infotainment, navigation and vehicle settings (the Human Machine Interface, or HMI). Those with Android smartphones won’t miss a beat as they move from their home or office into their car.

Apple, meanwhile, is a latecomer, with reports only this February that the company has established a driverless electric car project, code named Titan (maybe they don’t know that’s a Nissan model. Maybe they don’t care).

It’s all pretty secretive, with lots of speculation concerning Apple’s end game. The late Steve Jobs apparently favoured development of an iCar and maybe Apple is now buying into the possibilities of such a product. The automotive sector, after all, dwarfs smartphones so there is great commercial incentive. And from Apple’s perspective, the auto sector likewise produces “mobile devices,” a business with which they are certainly familiar. So what if Apple needs to make them a bit bigger, with seats and wheels.

And like Google, Apple has an HMI called CarPlay, soon to be available in a new car near you. Does that mean we’ll have iOS cars and Android cars? Will vehicle choices be made on the basis of whether it connects to your preferred smartphone? For the immediate future, maybe, but in a few years, unlikely, says Hayato Mori, Honda Canada’s Senior Manager, Product Planning and Business Development. “We’ll have to build the HMI so they adapt to whatever Smartphone platform you own,” he says. “This is something we’re talking a lot about right now. Smartphones really move fast and it is critical that manufacturers make the HMI adaptable to the phone.”

Hmmm, ever read the parable of the scorpion and the frog? But what choice?

Rumours also point to a Canadian connection via a reported Apple meeting with Magna Steyr, subsidiary of Aurora, Ontario-based Magna International, and one thousand Apple executives, engineers and developers are reportedly being assembled from in-house employees, and supplemented by hires from companies like Mercedes-Benz and Tesla. It looks like they’re serious, but no-one’s exactly sure about what.

Sergio Marchione, Fiat Chrysler’s CEO, has an opinion. At the 2015 Geneva Auto Show, he referred to Google and Apple as “disruptive interlopers.” It is indeed a potential collision between two industries, two technologies, two cultures. My view is that the auto sector is on the defensive, that the computing sector is basically yanking the auto sector, including government regulators and insurance companies, into this future whether they like it or not.

There are other companies busy developing software and systems that will enable vehicles to operate autonomously. QNX, a Canadian company and subsidiary of Blackberry is heavily involved as are Delphi Automotive, Cisco Systems, Continental (they do much more than make tires), Mobileye, NVIDIA (the 3D games people, among other things… makes sense), Covisint (check out their tagline, “It’s Happening: Everything and Everyone in the World is Becoming Connected”), Codha Wireless, Bosch and Texas Instruments. These are so-called Tier 1 companies, developing and supplying components to original equipment manufacturers. There are major patents and mega-dollars associated with their products, in case you’re trying to follow the money.

A couple of years ago, I had my first experience in a prototype self-driving car, the Autonomous Nissan Leaf. I sat next to an engineer whose job consisted of pressing the “go” button, watching a screen as the car piloted itself around a track and occasionally nodding at me, as if to say, “Pretty good, eh?”

We went through a couple of S-bends, around a corner, accelerated to about 20 km/h and swerved to miss a crash-test dummy who popped out from behind an obstacle, then continued turning left and right between the cones until coming to a stop at a group of vehicles lined up as if in a parking lot. The Leaf made its way along the row of cars, stopping in front of a parking space.

After 30 seconds or so, the engineer’s expression changed, a phone call was made, more buttons were pressed and the Leaf then obediently parked itself. Apparently there was a glitch, but we were all smiles when the demonstration concluded.

I must say, it wasn’t particularly exciting, but these were baby steps. The car drove itself. It got frustrated in the parking lot, but don’t we all? I remember thinking at the time that the experience was kind of like personal public transportation, even though that’s a contradiction of terms. Like being in a bus or a taxi, but by yourself. What else would there be to do but pull out your tablet and message or work or buy something?


University of British Columbia transportation expert AnnaLisa Meyboom had a similar but much more developed thought. “They (AVs) could make local buses and urban light rail obsolete. Private autonomous car sharing services could take over public transit and taxis. Or public transit organizations could decide to run autonomous vehicle fleets,” she said in a UBC News interview in March 2015.

Of course, autonomous Leafs of the future will undoubtedly be able to learn. They’ll build up a repository of experience that they’ll compare with their database of maps and their real-time LIDAR images and maybe zip around with their digital elbow hanging out the window and one virtual finger on the wheel.

Or maybe not. Like most automakers, Nissan is unlikely to let go of the “fun to drive” factor willingly. Here’s how Nissan Canada’s Mr. Meunier puts it: “Drivers will have the choice to enjoy the pleasure of driving themselves or choosing to travel in partnership with the vehicle. As a result, the desire for performance, handling and “fun-to-drive” characteristics is likely to remain important – as is the idea that consumers want to feel that their vehicle represents them and is an opportunity for self-expression.”

“In partnership with my vehicle?” Who would have thought?

But on the other hand, MIT’s Ryan C.C. Chin writes, “Imagine the following scenario: a customer uses a smartphone app to request an autonomous shared [self-driving] vehicle, it arrives at your door and drops you to your destination, and the vehicle then either moves on and picks up another customer or parks itself and recharges.”

In such a world of driverless cars — which is pretty close to Google’s aspiration, by the way — there would conceivably be a, “90 percent reduction in accidents resulting in 30,000 fewer deaths per year in the US alone, along with two million fewer injuries and $400 billion accident-related cost savings.There would be 4.8 million fewer commuting hours, billions of litres in fuel savings, and increased car utilization from 5 or 10 percent to 75 percent,” calculates Mr. Chin.

And here’s the kicker for the automakers…. “a 90 percent reduction in cars.” Oh, really? Sure, with all the scheduling efficiencies, you just won’t need as many cars. It’s the whole “unused capacity, sharable economy” scenario. How’s that for disruptive?

“The fact is…,” according to a recent Forbes series by consultant Chunka Mui, “…that a driverless car would slash hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue, or even trillions, from all sorts of entities: car makers, parts suppliers, car dealers, auto insurers, auto financiers, body shops, emergency rooms, health insurers, medical practices, personal-injury lawyers, government taxing authorities, road-construction companies, parking-lot operators, oil companies, owners of urban real estate, and on and on and on.”

Yes, in the view of Canadian transportation specialist Paul Godsmark, the deployment of AVs represents, “a paradigm shift as significant as the shift from horses to cars.”

The Conference Board of Canada is already on this, and they are taking it very seriously. Their 2014 report “Automated Vehicles: The Coming of the Next Disruptive Technology” is “intended to be a wake-up call for public and private policy-makers, who must act soon to keep Canada in the “game” of automated vehicles. “AVs will be nothing less than the first widely available autonomous robots to be used by nearly everyone in the world’s advanced economies,” opines the Conference Board.

Road Safety organizations, Transport Canada, M.A.A.D., are all getting up to speed (trying to keep up, really). The Ontario government was supposed to begin testing autonomous cars in 2013 with a view to modernizing traffic laws but the program was postponed. Now it’s supposed to begin in 2015. They’d better get a move on.

You think Taxi drivers don’t like Uber? They haven’t seen anything, yet. Taxi drivers themselves are an endangered species. Little robotic cars are heading your way. Taxi droids, as opposed to delivery droids or tow droids. But in Geneva, the combative Sergio Marchione, continuing his observations about AVs, concluded by asking what was to him the most obvious question: “Why would you buy a Ferrari and not want to drive it?”

Good question, assuming the brand doesn’t morph into a maker of high-end pleasure droids.

Speaking of those, Mercedes-Benz recently showcased its autonomous prototype for 2030+, the F-015 Luxury in Motion, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. More a research platform than prototype, the F015 has 1,100 km of range from its combination battery and hydrogen fuel cell drive train. It will and does drive itself while occupants enjoy its variable seating “luxury lounge” interior. According to Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, “Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society. The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a mobile living space.” Mercedes Benz calls this a “mobility revolution.”

As if right on cue for this article (if you’re reading in early 2015), a Delphi Automotive-equipped Audi Q5 fitted with a suite of autonomous technologies that Delphi currently makes available or is developing, departed from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge heading to New York City “on its ownsome,” as my mother used to say. It left on March 22 and arrived a week later.

Although there was be a person behind the wheel (yes, it has a steering wheel), the occupant (passenger?) was not expected to intervene in the vehicle’s progress unless required (construction zones, accident scenes). The 5,600 km journey, 99 percent of which it completed in autonomous mode, established a North American record for AVs. It’ll help Delphi in the ongoing development of its systems, but it’s pretty good marketing, too.

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 20th 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.

Selected articles and websites:
Automated Vehicles: The Coming of the Next Disruptive Technology (Infographic) – Conference Board of Canada
(PDF) Automated Vehicles: The Coming of the Next Disruptive Technology (Report) – Conference Board of Canada
Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence (CAVCOE)
Coming soon: Android Auto – Google
Apple CarPlay – Apple
How Google’s Self-Driving Car Works – IEEE Spectrum
Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google’s Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions – Forbes
(PDF) On the leading edge: Autonomous vehicles and other safety technologies, The Safety Network, 2014 Issue 4 – Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals
Driverless cars – the future of transport in cities? – The Guardian
Google’s self-driving car: How does it work and when can we drive one? – The Guardian
(YouTube Video) Behind the Google Self Driving Car Project – Google
Markets: Where Is The Money In The Internet Of Things & People? – Harbor Research
Concept of Nissan’s Autonomous Drive – Nissan
Exclusive Interview: Ford CEO Expects Fully Autonomous Cars In 5 Years – Forbes
Emerging Technology: Driving Safety, Efficiency and Independence – GM
Audi pushes toward fully autonomous cars – Automotive News
Honda to Showcase New Connected Car and Automated Driving Technologies at 2014 ITS World Congress in Detroit – Honda
Toyota—of All Companies—Defends Drivers, Says It Won’t Build a Fully Autonomous Car – Car and Driver
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