The Self-Driving Industry Is Finally Becoming More Realistic
Over the last decade, most of the buzz around self-driving has focused on the vision originally launched by Google (now Waymo) and later Tesla and others, of a Level 5 (fully, really, truly, autonomous no matter what) personal automobile that you could afford and blissfully relax in the back seat of from then on. You could even send it to fetch your children from school or tell it to wander around waiting for you or maybe even find itself a parking space. More recently, it has become clear that Level 5 personal autos are going to take much longer and be much harder to create, than the initial rosy projections. At CES 2019 last week, this was reinforced by the way vendors moved from pie-in-the-sky promises at previous CES shows to a much more step-by-step, practical approach this year.Last year, in particular, was chock full of warning signs and pullbacks for autonomous vehicle efforts. Most famously, a number of high-profile accidents (aka crashes) on the part of Uber and Tesla cars have called into question whether some of the companies involved actually know what they’re doing.
Level 5 Is Getting Further Away, Not Closer
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Along with that, Waymo, the undisputed leader in progress towards Level 5, met its self-imposed deadline of a commercial robo-taxi launch in 2018 only with the very softest possible launch to a small number of testers in restricted environments with limited routes. Tesla pulled the “Full Self-Driving” option from its order page, citing that it was causing confusion (if you mean confusion that something you ordered years ago may never actually be available for your specific vehicle, I guess).However, on the bright side, there have been some positive developments in the autonomous vehicle space that point to likely near-term use cases and winners. Three of these stood out to me.
Aptiv: There’s a Lot of Money to Be Made In Levels 2, 3, and 4...
