Anyone overly concerned about dealing with self-driving cars while they are out and about may have plenty of time before having to worry.
That doesn’t mean that connected cars
aren’t disrupting the automotive ecosystem, allowing the car and its occupants to be directly connected to the Internet, enabling automated links to other connected devices, like smartphones,
tracking devices, other vehicles and even home appliances, based on a new study.
There will be 15 million self-driving cars produced in 2025, according to the study ‘On Track with
Self-Driving Vehicles 2.0’ by Juniper Research. The worldwide installed base of autonomous cars at that time is projected to be more than 22 million.
By 2020, still a few years away,
there will be a few thousand self-driving vehicles, according to Juniper.
There are five official levels of autonomous car classifications, defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration and Society of Automotive Engineers. They are:
- Level 0 – The driver completely controls the vehicle all the time.
- Level 1 – Individual vehicle
controls are automated and the driver must be ready to take control at any time. Automated systems include parking assistance with automated steering and lane-keeping assistance.
- Level 2
– Automated system controls acceleration, braking and steering and can deactivate immediately upon takeover by the driver.
- Level 3 – Within known, limited environments, the
driver can safely turn their attention from driving tasks. The car will sense when conditions require the driver to retake control and provide enough time for it. This is the eyes-off-the-road
stage.
- Level 4 – Vehicle performs all functions for an entire journey with the driver not controlling the vehicle at any time. The vehicle can travel with or without a driver.
For that last one, the automotive engineers society suggests that automated systems can control the vehicle in all but a few environments, such as severe weather. The industry group also
identifies one additional final stage, where no human intervention is needed other than to set a destination and start the system with the vehicle being capable of driving to any location where it is
legal to drive.
Marketing and messaging to people in the car will come at the later stages, especially when watching the road is not necessary.
Juniper notes that there are some
dependencies for this to happen, such as reliability of technology, high accuracy maps and software algorithms.
And then these cars will need buyers.