Self-driving cars on long road to full autonomy

An autonomous car is a vehicle capable of sensing its environment and operating without human involvement.The terms "autonomous” and "self-driving cars” are often used interchangeably.Two decades ago, the US military kicked off the race to build a self-driving car by sending a fleet of fledgling robot vehicles across the Mojave Desert in its seminal Darpa challenge.Ten years later, the auto industry was buzzing with predictions that self-driving cars would be all over the roads by now.That hasn’t happened. But the industry has started to put limited bits of automation, such as hands-free driving and crash-avoidance systems, into mass-produced models.Although these features have been promoted for their potential to make driving safer and easier, regulators are subjecting them to scrutiny after years of notable crashes, some of which resulted in fatalities.Some companies have abandoned their autonomous vehicle efforts, citing excessive costs and complexity. Others are continuing to make progress, including Alphabet’s Waymo, which this year expanded its driverless taxi service to a third major US city.Elon Musk’s Tesla has failed repeatedly to realise its ambitious targets for autonomous vehicles. The CEO told investors in 2019 that Tesla would have more than 1mn robotaxis on the road by the following year. The company hasn’t deployed a single autonomous vehicle in the years since.General Motors Co’s self-driving Cruise unit has also had problems. One of its robotaxis struck a pedestrian in San Francisco in 2023.GM then halted Cruise’s service in the three states where it was operating and dismissed top executives.Nonetheless, GM announced in September it would resume driving robotaxis on public roads in California, and has been testing self-driving cars — accompanied by a human — in Texas and Arizona.Among other positive developments in 2024, technology leaders such as China’s Baidu and Waymo are expanding services to new cities, with Alphabet in July announcing it would put $5bn more into the business.China has been a hotbed of innovation thanks to dozens of startups and robust regulatory support.There some alternatives to full autonomy.Advanced driver-assistance systems — known as ADAS — help drivers to park, stay in their lane and avoid objects using cameras, radar and other electronic sensors. They can alert drivers and in some cases briefly take control of the car to avoid collisions.The industry categorises automation systems from Level 0 to 5. Level 0 features simply pass on information to the driver, like sounding a warning when you’re driving out of a traffic lane.The pinnacle — which has yet to be achieved — would be Level 5 cars that can drive autonomously everywhere and in all conditions.Virtually every major automaker has embraced ADAS, with the fanciest systems reserved for higher-price vehicles.There some advantages of limited autonomy.Auto-safety regulators in the US see so much potential in automatic emergency-braking systems that they’ve decided to mandate them as standard equipment for new cars beginning in 2029.But fatal crashes involving ADAS attract a lot of attention, especially if a Tesla is involved. Musk argues that Autopilot saves lives, but he’s used questionable data to make his case.The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened dozens of investigations into crashes involving ADAS since 2016, most of them involving Teslas.In 2015, Ford’s then-CEO Mark Fields predicted that self-driving cars would be on the road in five years. A year later, Musk said Tesla would demonstrate a fully autonomous Los Angeles-to-New York trip by the end of 2017 — another goalpost that came and went.A true self-driving car — Level 5 — won’t be available before 2035, and probably not for some time after that, S&P Global Mobility said in September 2023.