Toyota to Hyundai put brakes on self-driving car goals
las vegas — Carmakers and tech companies have fallen over one another in recent weeks to show the strides they’ve made with selfdriving cars. At CES — usually a stage for bragging about futuristic bona fides — top executives are instead tamping down expectations about the arrival of autonomy.
Truly driverless vehicles are years away, executives from auto giants Toyota Motor Corp and Hyundai Motor Co, mega supplier Robert Bosch GmbH and ride-hailing service Lyft said this week. While each of those companies showed off the progress they’re making in the form of concept models or Las Vegas test drives, they’re quick to admit that plenty of major hurdles remain.
“It’s a mistake to say that the finish line is coming up very soon,” said Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research Institute, the carmaker’s $1 billion unit working on artificial intelligence and robotics. “Things are changing rapidly, but this will be a long journey.”
Toyota president Akio Toyoda introduced an electric-vehicle concept called e-Palette, a box on wheels engineered to drive itself on set routes.
In 2020, Toyota will demonstrate the vehicle at the Tokyo Olympics, but even then, the car may need as many as two engineers or test drivers to ensure customer safety. Pratt said the technology may not be ready to go it alone — and even if it can, the laws may not allow it yet.
One of the major challenges is replicating the human brain, Pratt said. People can sense gestures and the movements of pedestrians and
It’s a mistake to say that the finish line is coming up very soon Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research Institute
other drivers and predict where they’re going. AI scientists are working on this, Pratt said, but it’ll take years to get autonomous-vehicle systems to be capable of complete robotic driving.
South Korea’s largest automaker is projecting an even longer timeframe than Toyota for when it’ll be able to deliver almost fully self-driving vehicles. After announcing a deal to collaborate on the technology with US startup Aurora Innovation, whose founders hail from Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo, Hyundai said it’s targeting so-called Level 4 capability by 2021. The fuel-cell vehicle the company debuted at the show, called Nexo, can autonomously park itself into a space and back — with or without a driver.
“We take very conservative steps,” Lee Jinwoo, vice-president of Hyundai’s Intelligent Safety Technology Centre in Namyang, South Korea, said at CES. “We want to test and validate the technology first. It will not be for sale in 2021, only testing in city use.”
Lyft and Aptiv, the self-driving software company spun off by Delphi Automotive, gave reporters rides in semi-autonomous BMWs, and will demonstrate their wares to CES attendees this week by offering trips to more than 20 destinations around Las Vegas.
But the day that costly drivers can be completely removed from the ride-sharing equation isn’t close, according to Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s chief strategy officer. — Bloomberg
las vegas — The smartphones and other small machines that used to dominate the annual CES gadget show have been overshadowed in recent years by bigger mobile devices: namely, automobiles.
Auto companies typically save more practical announcements about new cars, trucks and SUVs for the upcoming Detroit auto show. But major automakers like Toyota, Kia, Hyundai and Ford have a noticeable presence at this week’s tech showcase in Las Vegas. CES is a chance for carmakers and suppliers of automotive parts and software to display their wilder and far-out ideas.
Toyota says it’s developing selfdriving mini-buses that can serve as bite-sized stores. These vehicles will drive themselves to places where potential buyers can try on clothes or shoes or pick through flea market items. The project is still in the conceptual stage, with testing expected in the 2020s.
Automotive supplier Bosch wants to help guide drivers to vacant parking spots in as many as 20 US cities, including Los Angeles, Miami and Boston. The company says it will be working with automakers on the initiative but didn’t say which ones. As cars drive by, they will automatically recognize and measure gaps between parked cars and transmit that data to a digital map.
TV manufacturers are showcasing new models — all with acronyms to set their sets apart. One feature called HDR10+ by Samsung and HDR 10 Pro by LG takes what’s known as high dynamic range and adjusts settings for each frame, instead of having levels set for the entire video at once. Meanwhile, quantum-dot technology promises more accurate colors. Samsung calls its version QLED, while Hisense has QDEF.
As LG unveiled its lineup of smart appliances, executive David VanderWaal quickly lost rapport with his on-stage partner, the cute voice-activated assistant CLOi. After an initial greeting, CLOi stopped responding while continuing to
20 us cities targeted by Bosch to help guide drivers to vacant parking spots
blink its digital eyes. VanderWaal shrugged it off, saying, “even robots have bad days.”
HTC is upgrading its headsets for exploring virtual worlds. HTC says the new Vive Pro has better resolution and audio and weighs less than its existing VR model. The Taiwanese company hasn’t yet revealed cost or shipping dates. There’s also a wireless option coming this summer.
The Vive competes with Facebook’s Oculus among high-end systems, but these haven’t been as widely used as smartphonebased headsets such as Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Daydream. Toy maker VTech has agreed to pay $650,000 to settle charges it violated a law protecting children’s privacy.
The Federal Trade Commission says VTech collected personal information from children without getting parental consent and didn’t do enough to protect the data it collected. Such toys have become popular, and companies are expected to unveil more toys and other internet-connected gadgets at the CES tech show in Las Vegas this week.