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Self-driving cars are already here. Somebody tell the regulators!

Martin Kahl talks to Volvo Cars, Delphi and Thatcham about the challenges of bringing self-driving cars to market

Volvo-Car-Group-initiates-world-unique-Swedish-pilot-project-with-self-2

They’re here. They’ve been here for some time, blending in and appearing quite ordinary – and most people don’t even know they’re here. Now, though, they’re making headlines, and the call to make sure they have a legally enshrined place in society is growing ever louder.

To industry insiders, the self-driving car has been with us for years – technically, at least. Much of the technology already exists; appropriately equipped cars have been shown to media on test tracks and private roads; and in certain US states, and in parts of Europe and in Japan, prototypes and test mules are allowed on the roads and research programmes are well under way.

At a recent autonomous cars event, hosted by safety, security and crash repair specialist Thatcham Research at its facility in Berkshire, UK, Megatrends took the opportunity to invite representatives from Volvo Cars, Delphi and Thatcham to sit around a coffee table and debate the self-driving car’s transition from technological possibility to legal reality.

Megatrends put to the three the provocative notion that, if the technology is already there, it’s only policy holding things back. The horse has already bolted, leaving regulators struggling to come to terms with the inevitability of seeing autonomous cars on our roads in the near future.

“You’re right that we have a technology issue and a policy issue,” begins Anders Eugensson, Director Governmental Affairs at Volvo Car, “but we have to consider other road users, and how they will react.” There will soon be a mix of types of cars on the road, he points out. “How is this going to affect drivers of normal cars? Is this going to affect what you do? And how will they react? How will the police react?”

Eugensson believes the notion of self-driving cars using the same lanes as all other vehicles is a critical issue that needs to be examined and understood before launch. Henrik Clasen is Technical Manager Safety Systems at Delphi. He believes there could be dedicated autonomous car lanes, but accepts that much needs to be addressed before such lanes are in place. “Who would pay for those investments, and what will the business case look like? Is the road user ready to pay extra to use an automated car, and how should that business be set up?”

The driverless car could see people using their time very differently inside the vehicle, and that would also involve them sitting very differently inside the vehicle. This has an impact not only on the design of a car’s interior as we know it, but also how well occupants are secured in the event of an impact. If people are sitting differently, and not strapped in according to guidelines we currently know and accept, how will this affect existing thinking on car safety?

“We’ve not tested that yet,” says Peter Shaw, Chief Executive of Thatcham Research. “We try to influence design, but that’s not our job. At Thatcham, our role is to test the systems that the manufacturers bring to market, and in the broadest sense, not just in the event of an accident but also across normal driving situations. We need to understand all the implications of the technologies that are coming to market. And they are converging technologies. It’s not just about driverless cars, it’s about the connected vehicle as well. From a legislation viewpoint, it’s almost impossible to keep up with all of those technologies converging in a very short space of time. It’s going to be a great challenge for insurers, for governments and legislators to keep up with the speed of the technology.”

Freedom of the city

Volvo-Car-Group-initiates-world-unique-Swedish-pilot-project-with-selfAs well as technological and legislative hurdles, there is the need to address the mindset of existing road users. Indeed, how will autonomous cars be marketed? Much is about perception and terminology; ask people if they have a connected car, and they may say no, even if their car does have Bluetooth and other connected vehicle technologies. In the same way, OEMs – and the industry in general – need to present autonomous driving in a way that is attractive to consumers. There will be, we can safely assume, a number of consumers who think they would never want a driverless car, while demanding all of the features that in reality add up to a semi-autonomous or self-driving car.

And here we reach a key point of definition – the difference between a self-driving car and a driverless car. A self-driving car can also – and may need to – be driven by a driver; a driverless car can drive from A to B without the need for human intervention. “The self-driving car gives you an option to drive yourself,” says Delphi’s Clasen. “So as long as there is an option for customers and people can decide if they want to drive themselves, I don’t think they will have a problem with it. The problem comes when the car just is not able to be driven. You just step in and it takes you from A to B. Then I think a lot of people would say it is not what they want.”

“It depends if the consumer sees that as a car or some other means of transport,” interjects Eugensson. “I think amusement parks will be the first place where you will find those completely driverless vehicles. And then the customer will see that as completely different from driving a car.”

Clasen agrees. “Individual mobility is still important. If you can’t drive yourself, can you at least decide where the car wants to go?” he asks.

An important aspect of personal freedom is the ability to get in a car and drive wherever you want to go, and that remains the mind-set and culture that’s predominant in most countries, says Shaw. “People don’t want to be restricted to a totally autonomous vehicle, because that’s just like getting a taxi or a train. It almost becomes public transport. What they want is personal freedom.” However, Clasen points out that unlike public transport, a driverless car could take you from your front door to exactly where you want to go without needing to change to some other means of transportation.

Discussion around driverless cars assumes a car in the traditional sense, built by a traditional vehicle manufacturer; such an assumption overlooks the possibility of a tech company launching a self-driving car, like Google’s self-driving prototype, and it perhaps not even being a car, but a self-driving quadricycle, for example. This adds a new dimension to safety, which then adds in a whole new set of challenges in terms of testing.

“Quadricycles, motorcycles and other vehicles are a very different insurance proposition to a car, because they don’t have the passenger safety features and protection that the sound structure of a vehicle now gives you,” says Shaw. “From our point of view, it would be a whole different ball game if that were the case. But what I think we are going to see is low speed controlled testing and development, and that will prove out the attractiveness of those different solutions. All of that big picture testing is a good thing, but for me the true value of autonomous vehicles over the next ten to 15 years will be guided by driver intervention for safety reasons. By that I mean technologies like autonomous emergency braking, autonomous emergency steering, and things that take over when the driver has been distracted or has not realised that they are facing danger. And that, in any normal planning horizon, is where the value is, I believe.”

Clasen believes that driverless vehicles will be offered as an alternative for individual mobility. “It will be connected to the discussion about redefining the vehicle in society. Today’s society is planned around the vehicle and, in the future, you will try to change that, with society planned around people. That will be a low speed device, 10-15kph maybe from A to B within a city centre for example, used as an alternative to public transport.”

Game changer

google-carTen years ago there was no iPhone, and many cameras still used film. In terms of consumer electronics, much has changed over the last decade. Hardware has reached a certain point, and an increasing level of technological development now lies in the software. The industry is working to broadly accepted targets set out in common roadmaps that suggest likely levels of technology by certain dates. Is there a chance that the industry has failed to anticipate just how much things might change in the next decade?

Eugensson believes there is. “We can predict the future by shaping it. We’re not going to have all the answers, but we’re part of the development for the future. What we do now is going to affect the future. The knowledge we are going to gain on the path towards the future has to reshape it, of course. But I think it’s likely that it will go quicker rather than slow down.”

Self-driving car technology will be a game changer, believes Clasen. “Some OEMs will adapt quickly, be flexible and be able to provide these kinds of features at an affordable cost. Some of them will put a lot of money into the vehicles, which will not be affordable. And the third category will not jump on the train because the automotive industry is so slow-moving and conservative. And then a fourth group will move in, organisations like Google, which will go with slow, low-speed driverless vehicles.”

Eugensson (representing the OEMs) counters this suggestion by Clasen (speaking as a supplier) that the OEMs are slow-moving. “I think we’re fast-moving, and I think the market pressure will require us to move even faster.”

Pick a level

Delphi-pedestrian-detectionAccording to the classification system defined in 2013 by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there are five levels of autonomous drive technology: Level 0, where the driver completely controls the vehicle at all times; Level 1, which sees individual vehicle controls automated, such as electronic stability control or automatic braking; Level 2, at which point at least two controls can be automated in unison, such as adaptive cruise control in combination with lane keeping; Level 3, where the driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions, but requires the driver to retake control where necessary; and Level 4, in which the driver is not expected to control the vehicle at any time.

“There’s a difference in approach now,” says Eugensson, “with Google saying it’s probably not going to go with level 3, it’s going to go for driverless vehicles. Google has taken away the driver interface completely. But Toyota on the other hand says it doesn’t believe even in level 3. And we [Volvo] and Mercedes are on the middle track, where we think level 3 needs to come before level 4. So I agree in that respect – there is already division.”

Thatcham’s Shaw agrees that new players are certain to enter the market. “Car manufacturers are waking up to the fact that the competitors of the future are going to be companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple, not just the traditional vehicle manufacturers, particularly as we head towards the electric vehicle becoming far more plausible and usable,” he says. “And I think that’s already the case, not just in automation but even in connectivity – it is already a battleground to decide who will dominate the in-vehicle connectivity. That’s what I think the drivers of the future, the young people are seeking. They’re seeking that extension of their personal device.”

So, has the horse bolted? It’s certainly running, and needs restraining, but it might not be too late to catch it. National, regional and municipal governments are commissioning serious trials; the industry knowledge to make this work exists; the technology is in place; the lawyers are ready and waiting; and the public may even be better prepared for self-driving cars than we think. Flogging the equine analogy one last time, all stakeholders must get together – urgently – to see if we can successfully take the driver out of the equation as easily as we did the horse.

This article appeared in the Q4 2014 issue of Automotive Megatrends Magazine. Follow this link to download the full issue.

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