AI is often described as the most transformative technology of the century, and while it has already reshaped many aspects of life, from scientific discovery to waging war, hype and over-promising remain. One of the boldest promises is the arrival of self-driving cars. We are told accidents will disappear, traffic will ease and algorithms will chauffeur us while we scroll our feeds. But is that really about to happen?
Despite promises and passing deadlines (the list of missed predictions on the subject by Tesla boss Elon Musk has its own Wikipedia page), automakers have still not managed to get vehicles with high-level autonomy onto the road in numbers. And jurisdictions where regulators have said they’re satisfied for vehicles to drive fully autonomously are few and far between.
So, will it ever happen? Or is the vision of a full-autonomous driving future just an elaborate ruse designed to fuel AI hype and raise the value of Big Tech stock?
What Is The State Of Play Today?
Predicted dates for the arrival of truly autonomous vehicles, known as level 5 autonomy and capable of operating with no human intervention, have come and gone.
It’s probably fair to say that progress has been slower than some of the more excited commentators had expected. But progress has been made, and continues to be made.
Probably the greatest success so far has been the operational deployment of robotaxis—fully autonomous taxis—by a number of operators, in several cities around the world. This includes Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, which operates in US cities including Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Waymo takes passengers on 250,000 trips every week, and has just announced plans to build a factory that will produce 2,000 vehicles annually.
In China, Baidu and Pony operate services in cities including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.
One of the biggest success stories, however, is WeRide. Spun out of work carried out at Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit, WeRide completed the first robotaxi trial in Guangzhou in 2000. Since then, it’s scaled up and now produces autonomous cargo vans known as robovans, self-driving robobus services in France and robo-road sweepers in Singapore.
What about private autonomous passenger vehicles? Well, there, progress has been a bit slower.
No company has yet been given the necessary permits to allow fully autonomous vehicles onto public roads in the US or anywhere else.
Tesla markets its Autopilot technology as Full Self-Driving Beta, but it still requires a fully attentive human sitting in the driving seat, which means it doesn’t meet the bar of full autonomy.
It is becoming increasingly common, though, for vehicles to be operating at lower levels of autonomy. Mercedes became the first automaker to receive approval for a level 3 autonomous vehicle to operate in the US in 2023. This means drivers can remove their hands from the controls in certain circumstances, while remaining immediately ready to intervene if required.
And other car makers, including Ford and GM, are increasingly rolling out advanced driver-assistance features with aspects of autonomy, like hands-free freeway driving and lane changing.
These less glamorous but more achievable (not to mention legal) offshoots of autonomous driving are playing an important role, allowing manufacturers to automate incrementally, assessing the impact and influence on driver behavior of new features, before moving on to automate other processes.
Road Blocks
So what’s stopping autonomous cars from becoming the everyday reality we’ve been promised?
Well, the obstacles on the road are a mix of technical, regulatory and societal.
Starting with the technology, there are still safety concerns following a number of fatal accidents while driving under supervised autonomous conditions. Statistically, per mile, autonomous driving is already safer than human driving, according to Waymo’s research. But there are concerns that autonomous driving systems still aren’t capable of adequately dealing with unexpected and fringe situations, like encountering highly erratic human drivers.
In fact, experts like Lex Fridman, author of MIT’s Advanced Vehicle Technology Study, have said it may be decades before the technology is sufficiently developed to fully solve the challenges of autonomous driving in busy, built-up areas.
In some cases, progress has been slowed due to operators having their permits withdrawn due to accidents. This was what happened in the case of GM-owned Cruise, which had its California permits revoked following an accident in which a pedestrian was dragged along a road.
As far as regulation goes, only a few US states have given out permits for autonomous cars, and those have gone to vehicles operated as fleets, rather than individuals, meaning they can be tightly monitored and controlled within geofenced areas.
But possibly the biggest challenge will be persuading people to actually get into autonomous cars. According to research by the AAA, just 13 percent of US citizens are ready to trust a self-driving car. Though low, that figure represents an increase from nine percent the previous year, so people could be (slowly) coming round to the idea.
The Road Ahead
When it comes to getting the self-driving revolution on the road, some things, like geo-fenced robotaxi services, level two and three autonomous features in private cars, seem to be working pretty well.
But the dream of level five autonomy, where we can put our feet up or perhaps even catch up on some sleep as we’re chauffeured across town, remains elusive.
And automakers clearly still have some way to go when it comes to winning public trust.
Will we get there? I would say yes, probably.
Progress seems to be heading, slowly but surely, in that direction. Uptake will be uneven, and no doubt biased towards tech-forward cities (think proximity to major research centers like Silicon Valley and Shenzhen), with progressive regulatory environments.
But auto makers, AI developers, legislators and the wider public all have a part to play in determining whether self-driving cars will become a day-to-day reality for everybody.
