Through all the hype, self-driving cars remain elusive

THE RELENTLESSLY hyped arrival of autonomous vehicles looms as the greatest disruption in personal transportation since Henry Ford’s moving assembly line started producing Model Ts by the millions. One word in that statement – arrival – is, however, doing a disproportionate amount of work.

Self-driving vehicles, despite being the subject of breathless media reports and automakers’ strategies, remain years from being available to private owners.

Scores of companies hold permits to test autonomous cars in California, US, yet even leaders like Waymo, once Google’s self-driving project, are unwilling to commit to when such vehicles might be appearing in showrooms.

Even with so many companies testing self-driving cars – 16 million kilometres since 2009 by

Waymo alone – the definition of “autonomous” continues to be murky, at least to the public.

What is available today in driverassistance systems like Cadillac’s Super Cruise or Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot may offer hands-free motoring in some situations. But they are far short of what is known as Level 5 full automation under the specifications of SAE International, a standardssetting organisation.

That capability entails operation on any road in any conditions that a human driver could handle; logically, cars built to this standard would have no need for a steering wheel or foot pedals.

With this radical shift in driving comes questions about the viability of traditional business models based on the private ownership of cars and the dominance of the large carmakers.

That upheaval creates opportunities, making way for new players, many that bring the digital mastery that a new generation of driverless cars will demand.

It looks like a Silicon Valley replay, both philosophically and geographically. Start-ups sprout wherever the ground is fertilised with cash; already, there are giants such as Waymo, Lyft and the General Motors unit Cruise. All have outgrown the beginner phase.

Still, Reilly Brennan, a general partner at Trucks Venture Capital and a lecturer in transportation at Stanford University, is cautious about how quickly a commercial market will develop for new companies.

“Fully unstructured driving by go-anywhere cars is a long time away,” he said.

“Few start-ups actually understood the commitment required to create a complete vehicle.” | The New York Times