Commentary
Self-Driving Cars Meet Reality
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, April 14, 2019
Numerous entities ranging from carmakers to tech companies have been working on autonomous or self-driving vehicles for years.
Now reality may finally be settling in.
In a recent speech, Ford CEO Jim Hackett said: “We’ve overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles.”
In March, Ford announced it plans to invest $900 million in its southeast Michigan footprint, as part of a $11.1 billion investment in global electric vehicles. The expansion includes the first autonomous vehicles being produced starting in 2021.
It appears that some of those vehicles will still be prepared, but they may not be seen outside of highly controlled and narrow applications because “the problem is so complex,” said Hackett.
Ford is not the only company backing off a bit from an autonomous vehicle future.
At CES earlier this year, Toyota seemed to modify, if not shift, its position on self-driving cars, with an emphasis now on creating technologies to help people drive better rather than having cars drive themselves, as I wrote about here at the time ("CES 2019: Toyota Shifts Focus To Assisting Drivers, Not Displacing Them").
In its IPO filing last week, Uber now doesn’t appear to have any high expectation for self-driving vehicles dominating roads any time soon.
“We believe that there will be a long period of hybrid autonomy, in which autonomous vehicles will be deployed gradually against specific use cases while drivers continue to serve most consumer demand,” states the prospectus.
The technology to have a car drive itself down the road is not the issue.
Rather, it’s the context -- or everything else that is happening in the environment around the car as it moves along -- that can’t yet be factored.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
The Lemming like car execs are leading their companies over the cliff along with the Ev Lemmings...and these guys get the big bucks WTF?
Chuck, Have I not been right about this from the "git-go" ????
D.B.A., baby....................Dead Before Arrival.
"The technology to have a car drive itself down the road is not the issue."
YES it is Mr Hackett..................it's just not one of "Ford's Better ideas", it's a Dumb Idea.
Yes, Mark, you were very early in that assessment.
I would settle for mandatory enhanced driver-assist, as long as it continues to develop safer interventions. For example, tracking lane-drifting could issue better warnings or interventions. Cars with drunk or texting drivers, equally dangerous and readily detectable by onboard computer monitoring, could activate the hazard lights to warn other drivers until the car begins behaving normally again.
Volvo plan to add tech that detects drunk driving and pulls the car over and parks it, Douglas, so you may be on to something here.
November 2015 - Big Brother Like "Birth to Grave" Autonomous Driving Mandates Will Kill The Automobile Industry And Take Our Freedom Of Mobility
https://www.theautochannel.com/news/2015/11/26/162527-autonomous-driving-may-kill-automobile-industry.html
Though they sure attract investments, Bob.