Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030 by Tony Seba

Author:Tony Seba [Seba, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

The Accelerating Race to Fully Autonomous Cars

Nissan has pledged to have an affordable autonomous vehicle on the market by 2020. “By 2020 we will have a car that behaves like the cars we have on the track here in California, which means that you can sit in the driver’s seat, fold your arms, cross your legs, and basically the car will take where you want to go,” said Andy Palmer, executive vice president of Nissan.283 BMW and Mercedes have also pledged to have an autonomous vehicle ready by 2020.

Andy Palmer also said self-driving technology would be available across the entire Nissan portfolio within two vehicle lifecycles after its first self-driving car.284 He re-iterated that the company was committed to “zero fatality and zero emissions.”

How quickly will the market adopt self-driving cars? Acceptance and adoption rates will vary across market segments, demographic groups, and geographies. A study conducted by Cisco Systems found that 57 percent of the drivers it surveyed trust driverless cars.285 The report found that 95 percent of Brazilians and 86 percent of Indians would ride driverless cars (92 percent of Brazilians would let their kids ride a driverless car!). Only 37 percent of German and 28 percent of Japanese drivers trust self-driving cars. Americans were in the middle of the pack with a 60-percent acceptance rate.

These are surprisingly large numbers for a technology that hasn’t hit the market yet. That drivers welcome autonomous-driving cars may speak to the need of many people to find relief from the tedium of sitting in traffic. Sit in Sao Paolo’s interminable traffic and you will understand the willingness of the Brazilians to adopt autonomous cars. I recently went to Istanbul, Turkey, where traffic was so bad our taxi driver watched a live soccer game on his iPhone while driving.

The year 2020 may be the first year of fully autonomous cars, but the transition to self-driving cars has already started. To understand how this transition will play out, consider the framework developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The NHTSA is the U.S. government agency responsible for developing, setting, and enforcing federal motor vehicle safety standards. The NHTSA has developed a five-level framework to establish clarity when communicating its regulatory efforts to vehicle manufacturers:286

Level 0: No Automation. At all times, the driver is in complete control of the vehicle and all its primary controls (brake, steering, throttle, and motive power). Level 1: One Function-Specific Automated. One control function is automated. If multiple functions are automated, they operate independently of each other. The driver has overall control and is solely responsible for the safe operation of the car, but the driver can cede limited authority over a primary control function that is automated.

Level 2: Two Functions Automated and Combined. At least two primary control functions are automated and they work together. By combining different automated functions, the automated vehicle takes control, which allows the driver to disengage from operating the vehicle. The driver can take his or her hands off the steering wheel and foot off pedals at the same time.

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