Are We Ever Going To Have Commercially Available Self-Driving Cars

By John Oncea, Editor

Ask 100 people when self-driving cars are going to be commercially available and you’ll most likely get 100 different answers. Here, we throw our hat into the ring and I all but guarantee you the answer will be less than satisfying.

Certain questions can spark deep thought and discussion. “How high is up?” “How long is forever?” And, if you’re as old as me, “Where can I get an MTV jacket?” *

It’s time to add “Are we ever going to have self-driving cars?” to the list. **

The answer is complicated, and the indefinite suspension of Cruise’s driverless cars because of safety issues with the vehicle further complicates things. “The suspension, following a series of accidents involving Cruise vehicles, is a major setback to the self-driving business that (General Motors) has called a major growth opportunity and to the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry,” reports Reuters.

“Driverless cars run by Cruise … and Waymo (which is owned by Alphabet) have been involved in numerous mishaps in (San Francisco) over the past several months,” adds NPR. “They’ve run red lights, rear-ended a bus, and blocked crosswalks and bike paths.”

NPR goes on to quote San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton, while at a rally protesting driverless cars, as saying, “We need actual people behind the wheel with a pulse and a brain that know how to maneuver in sticky situations. These Cruise vehicles are dangerous on our streets. When they see tragedy or see danger or there’s an obstacle in their way, all they know how to do is freeze.”

Reuters adds that the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), which represents airline, railroad, and transit workers and has harshly criticized self-driving vehicles, says companies like Cruise must meet measurable safety standards. “Despite the propaganda pushed by tech executives, Cruise has shown the world that robots are incapable of even coming close to achieving the high standards human operators meet every day,” TWU President John Samuelsen said.

The cars operated by Cruise and Waymo are not commercially available, but their successes and failures directly contribute to when self-driving cars will be made available to the general public. This further complicates matters, as does agreeing as to what “self-driving car” actually means. So before trying to answer when self-driving cars will become commercially available, let’s agree on what we’re talking about here.

* I never had one myself but today vintage MTV jackets are selling for as much as $750!

** In the words of Reverend Lovejoy, “Oh, short answer, ‘yes’ with an ‘if.’ Long answer, ‘no’ with a ‘but.’”

A Rose By Any Other Name Is Still A Rose

Though often used interchangeably, there are differences in the meanings of the terms self-driving car, autonomous car, and automated car. According to Synopsis, “An autonomous car is a vehicle capable of sensing its environment and operating without human involvement. A human passenger is not required to take control of the vehicle at any time, nor is a human passenger required to be present in the vehicle at all. An autonomous car can go anywhere a traditional car goes and do everything that an experienced human driver does.”

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) describes six levels of driving autonomation which have been adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation. These levels are:

• No automation: all human, all the time.
• Driver assistance: a single automated system, such as cruise control.
• Partial automation: ADAS with the vehicle able to steer and accelerate.
• Conditional automation: The vehicle can perform most driving tasks, but human override is still required.
• High automation: The vehicle drives itself under specific circumstances with geofencing required.
• Full automation: All vehicle, all the time. Human interaction is not required at all.

“The term self-driving is often used interchangeably with autonomous,” writes Synopsis. “However, it’s a slightly different thing. A self-driving car can drive itself in some or even all situations, but a human passenger must always be present and ready to take control. Self-driving cars would fall under Level 3 (conditional driving automation) or Level 4 (high driving automation). They are subject to geofencing, unlike a fully autonomous Level 5 car that could go anywhere.”

Baby You Can Drive My Car

So, as long as we can agree on what a self-driving car is, let’s take a look at how they work. According to TechTarget, self-driving cars use a combination of sensors, cameras, radar, and artificial intelligence (AI) to travel between destinations without a human operator.

“Developers of self-driving cars use vast amounts of data from image recognition systems, along with machine learning and neural networks, to build systems that can drive autonomously,” TechTarget writes. “The neural networks identify patterns in the data, which are fed to the machine learning algorithms. That data includes images from cameras on self-driving cars from which the neural network learns to identify traffic lights, trees, curbs, pedestrians, street signs, and other parts of any given driving environment.”

As I type this there are many cars commercially available that come equipped with some self-driving features including hands-free steering, adaptive cruise control, and lane-center steering. TechTarget writes that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines these technologies as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving systems (ADS).

The adoption of these technologies has allowed carmakers to reach level 4 from our chart above, conditional automation. Cars with these features still are not available for public consumption and won’t be until they “learn to identify countless objects in the vehicle's path, from branches and litter to animals and people,” writes TechTarget. “Other challenges on the road are tunnels that interfere with the GPS, construction projects that cause lane changes, or complex decisions, like where to stop to allow emergency vehicles to pass.”

Get Used To Disappointment

Now that we are on the same page *** as to what self-driving cars are, when will they be commercially available? In the loosest sense of the word, they’ve been on the road for several years. In the strictest sense of the word, nobody really knows when they’ll be ready for purchase.

But the simple fact is we’re still in the extremely early stages of development of self-driving cars. The technology for self-driving cars is still evolving in terms of improving safety and reliability. Advancements in sensor technology, machine learning algorithms, and infrastructure are needed to make self-driving cars safer and more capable.

Governments and regulatory bodies are constantly developing and updating laws and regulations to address self-driving vehicles ensure the safety of self-driving cars and address liability and insurance issues. At this time, we have yet to develop a safe framework for these vehicles to operate on our highways on a mass scale.

Widespread adoption of self-driving cars also depends on public acceptance and trust in the technology with high-profile accidents involving them raising concerns. In addition, the cost of self-driving technology needs to come down to a level where it could be economically feasible for widespread commercial deployment.

Finally, the development of infrastructure, such as dedicated lanes or smart road systems, will play a role in enabling self-driving cars to operate more effectively. My hometown struggled to get approval and community buy-in to build bike lanes, I can’t imagine the difficulties that will come with trying to improve the infrastructure to the point where it would be safe to turn self-driving cars loose.

There are optimistic predictions that by 2030, self-driving cars will have become reliable, affordable, and common enough to replace the majority of human-driven cars. However, most of these predictions are made by individuals with financial interests in the industry, based on previous experiences with disruptive technologies like digital cameras, smartphones, and personal computers. These individuals tend to overlook significant obstacles to autonomous vehicle development and overstate the future benefits.

A more realistic prediction is that we are “decades away” from a world where self-driving cars are commercially available. Business Insider writes that Oxa **** CEO Gavin Jackson “said that the industry is ‘a long way away’ from producing cars that can match or surpass human drivers and said that such vehicles would need to become ‘local experts’ before they could be trusted to drive on public roads.”

“In our space, the ultimate goal is to have software that has the experience, the knowledge, and the expertise to drive everywhere,” Jackson said. “When it comes to generalized AI that can do that, we're so far away from that. We are decades away from that being possible today.”

Jackson added that fully automated self-driving cars “that can operate on public roads without human interference are, for the moment, still a pipe dream.” Business Insider further quotes him as saying, “You have to amass enough experience to know where you're going, know the specific driving behaviors, all the shortcuts, know how to get from A to B in an efficient way. And that's what self-driving software has to do.

“It needs to become a local expert wherever it is operating, and over time it will eventually amass enough experience across all of those nuanced places to apply that to more general situations — but that's a long way away.”

*** At least I hope that we are. If not, let me know what I missed in the comments, or send me an email at joncea@vertmarkets.com.

**** Oxa is an autonomous vehicle software company that sells autonomous driving software and develops autonomous vehicles that travel on fixed routes, with self-driving features monitored by human safety officers. The company is focusing on urban public transport and commercial vehicles, rather than passenger cars.