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| At least for some vehicles, a human driver will be the cheaper option for many years to come. |
FORD and Volvo are the latest companies to announce their plans to
sell cars that can drive themselves in the next five years.
Both companies have co-opted fast-moving start-up talent to add
momentum to the slow process of development that is typical of car companies.
Volvo is working with Uber while Ford has invested in or is
collaborating with four start-ups to help deliver on its aim to sell many fully
autonomous vehicles by 2021.
Volvo Cars said in a statement that Uber has signed an agreement to
establish a joint project that will develop new base vehicles that will be able
to incorporate the latest developments in AD technologies, up to and including
fully autonomous driverless cars.
The base vehicles will be manufactured by Volvo Cars and then
purchased from Volvo by Uber. The new base vehicle will be developed on Volvo
Cars’ fully modular Scalable Product Architecture (SPA). SPA has been developed
as part of Volvo Cars’ global industrial transformation programme, which started
in 2010, and has been prepared from the outset for the latest autonomous drive
technologies as well as next generation electrification and connectivity
developments.
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, commented: “Over
one million people die in car accidents every year. These are tragedies that
self-driving technology can help solve, but we can’t do this alone.
“That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is
so important. Volvo is a leader in vehicle development and best-in-class when it
comes to safety. By combining the capabilities of Uber and Volvo we will get to
the future faster, together.”
Cheap robot Fords for all
At Ford’s Palo Alto campus, Ford president and
CEO Mark Fields said the next 10 years will be the decade of the robot car,
adding Ford predicts autonomous vehicles will have as big an impact on society
as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago.
And the good news, like Henry Ford’s affordable T-models, the robot
Fords will be aimed at everyone’s pockets.
“We’re dedicated to putting on the road an autonomous vehicle that
can improve safety and solve social and environmental challenges for millions of
people — not just those who can afford luxury vehicles.”
To make this dream a reality Ford plan to be a leader in autonomous
vehicles, as well as in connectivity, mobility, the customer experience, and
data and analytics. The company already has over a decade of autonomous vehicle
research and development, and said its first fully autonomous vehicle will be a
Society of Automotive Engineers-rated level 4-capable vehicle. This means it
will be able to steer itself like the little Google car without a steering wheel
or fuel and brake pedals.
Ford said this first model was being specifically designed for
commercial mobility services, such as ride sharing and ride hailing, and will be
available in high volumes.
To deliver an autonomous vehicle in 2021, Ford announced four key
investments and collaborations that are expanding its strong research in
advanced algorithms, 3D mapping, LiDAR, and radar and camera sensors and is
increasing its Silicon Valley operations, creating a dedicated campus in Palo
Alto.
A visionary woman’s view
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| Robin Chase (Photo: Fortune) |
Robin Chase, co-founder of Veniam vehicle mesh, as
well as co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, commented in an opinion piece that
she did not think five years was too short to start selling robot cars around
the world.
She said in an essay first published on Back Channel that a normal person would typically drive less
than 965 000 km in their lifetime, but a fleet of self-learning robot cars can
drive this distance — learning every centimetre of the way — in a matter of
weeks. And the robot cars constantly share their learning with each other. “They
are doing so now, for multiple companies: dozens of cars are now driving all-day
shifts in Mountain View, Austin, Ann Arbor, Wuhu, China, and Singapore,” wrote
Chase.
“In the last few years, a hundred Google cars have completed
two million miles of on-road travel without injuries or fatalities, and are
simulating and learning from three million virtual miles of driving every day.
Tesla has 50 000 vehicles, sold to the public, that are driving autonomously on
highways right now, collecting millions of more miles of real world driving
experience (albeit with one fatality).
“This gives companies like Google, Tesla, GM, Ford, Toyota, BMW,
and Nissan the confidence to promise commercial sales of fully autonomous cars
by 2020, less than four years away.
Chase, however, warns city planners that robot cars will not
necessarily be a good thing.
“Right now, our ‘congested’ roads and cities are mostly filled by
individuals driving alone in their cars (75% of all trips). Just imagine our
streets and your frustration when 50% of the cars have no people in them at
all.”
Chase warns professional drivers will become unemployed when robot
taxis and trucks take over, adding it won’t only be the drivers who lose their
jobs.
“As personal car owners switch from owning a vehicle they use just
five percent of the time and costs them 18% of their income to being driven for
a fraction of that price, we’ll see lay-offs in repairs and maintenance, and car
insurance, as well as car design and manufacturing and
distribution/logistics.”
But she adds city planners are now at a fork in the road where they
can fix the broken transport system so that more people can escape the poverty
trap by getting to places cheaply, and she said it starts by thinking
differently about tax.
“The cost and inaccessibility of transport has been found to be the
largest barrier keeping people in poverty.
“Shared AVs have the potential to transform access to
opportunities. We’ll also have way fewer traffic deaths and injuries, greener
and more livable cities; clean air; reduced CO2 emissions; more disposable income and more money spent
locally. This goes a long way towards compensating for those lost jobs.”
Chase asks if it still made economic sense to tax labour in the new
automated world. “It makes much more sense to be taxing the new technical
platforms that are generating the profits, and taxing the wealth of the small
number of talented and lucky people who founded and financed these new jobless
wonders,” she wrote.
