While traditional attributes, like good fuel economy, remain important to American auto shoppers, the focus is shifting. Buyers are putting more and more emphasis on high-tech safety features and looking forward to a wave of new autonomous technologies coming to market in the near future, according to a new study.
Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and General Motors all have announced plans to begin rolling out semi-autonomous features, starting in 2016, and Tesla just began remotely updating its Model S sedans to use its AutoPilot system, which permits hands-free driving on well-marked, limited-access highways. But a second study says it’s a new entrant to the automotive world, tech giant Google, that has taken the lead in self-driving technology.
“No other company has as much relevant technology to advance autonomous driving software,” says Egil Juliussen, PhD., senior research director at IHS Automotive and author of one of the new reports. “Google is in a unique position to provide the software and map infrastructure to allow mobility services to anyone — via fleets of driverless cars — within a decade or less.”
And, if the other study, by AutoPacific, Inc., is on target, that’s precisely what American motorists are looking for. It shows that safety technologies now rank sixth in importance among 62 separate vehicle attributes, behind reliability, driver’s seat visibility, vehicle ride, durability and handling.
“Safety has always been important to consumers, but as we’ve seen more advanced safety features come to market, we have also seen an increase in the percentage of consumers who rate safety features of high importance when shopping for a new vehicle,” says AutoPacific Vice President Dan Hall.
(“Driving” an autonomous Nissan Leaf in Tokyo traffic. Click Here to see what that’s like.)
Safety features have changed dramatically since AutoPacific first launched its Future Attribute Demand Study in 1994. Back then, airbags had just become mandatory and anti-lock brakes will still relatively new. Cars didn’t have radar sensors and stereoscopic vision systems.
But such technologies are becoming increasingly commonplace – and extraordinarily more sophisticated. While it is not capable of full, hands-off driving, the new 2016 BMW 7-Series comes close, with technology that can even steer around, not just brake, when it spots an obstacle. And such systems are rapidly migrating down to mid and even lower-level products. New federal rules will soon make backup camera systems mandatory.
According to the AutoPacific study, 65% of those surveyed said they want blind spot detection on their next vehicle, up from 57% a year ago, an 52% want collision warning systems, preferably with auto braking, a 9 percentage point increase. Demand for those and other high-tech safety systems appears to grow as consumers become aware of their capabilities.
(Click Here to find out why so many early autonomous vehicles are involved in crashes.)
As for self-driving technology, “Driver assistance safety features are a stepping-stone to autonomous driving and have been well received by consumers,” says Hall. “We’re seeing that same dynamic with semi-autonomous driving features, but consumers aren’t quite ready for fully autonomous driving.”
Slightly less than a third of the survey respondents said they’re ready for auto-pilot highway cruising – but interest in that and other autonomous technologies has been growing steady, notes Hall.
Who will get to market first is far from certain. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn are both promising to roll out steadily more sophisticated semi-autonomous features through the end of the decade, and Ghosn has set a target of having a fully autonomous vehicle – capable of handling city streets, as well as highways – in production by 2021.
But according to the IHS study, it’s Google that could be best positioned to get a working system into consumer hands first.
“Unlike traditional vehicle manufacturers,” said the report, “Google also has the ability to leverage adjacent technologies and learnings from its other projects and investments – including robotics, drones and related technologies that help automotive operations, such as neural networks, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and machine vision. This provides Google researchers additional expertise not available directly to traditional OEMs.”
Google has logged hundreds of thousands of miles testing conventional vehicles modified to use its self-driving technology, and it is just rolling out a fleet of bubble-shaped “Google Cars,” with later versions set to be completely driverless.
The challenge for the tech giant is that it has decided not to actually enter the automotive manufacturing world. It will need to line up one or more partners willing to license its self-driving technology and, so far, it’s unclear any existing automaker is ready to go that route. But as the race to bring autonomous cars to showrooms, some makers might see that as the most expedient option.
(Tesla’s autopilot opens door to semi-autonomous cars. For more, Click Here.)
If you own and ride in an autonomous vehicle do you need an operators license? You, after all, are not the driver.
At the moment, at least, yes, you will need a license since you might be required to take control of the vehicle at any time should the system fail or otherwise require human intervention.
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com
When AVs are released to consumers passengers will be at the mercy of a computer, hackers, improper code, questionable safety devices, electrical failures and much more because many entities are determined to rush unsafe, half baked products out the door to be “the first”. The litigation should keep judicial systems around the world overwhelmed for decades as injured parties or heirs of the deceased killed in an AV sue for damages and negligence.
There will not likely be any controls for passengers to take control of the vehicle in an emergency nor any designated driver. It will be quite an experience to say the least. The question is how many will risk their lives to find all of the computer, design and manufacturing defects in these AVs?
So far Google has reluctantly reported at least 12 AV test vehicle accidents of which 2 were clearly programming errors. Having an AV do a panic stop when entering an intersection because the traffic light turns yellow is a good means to injure people.
In addition Google’s accident avoidance distance detection software programming can’t deal with bicycle riders who pull up next to a Google AV test vehicle on the street. One such vehicle backed up traffic for many traffic light cycles recently because the bike rider was waiting for the AV to move before they could ride off. The AV software would not allow the AV to proceed with the bicycle rider close to the AV. That made for many frustrated motorists and long traffic backups.
This week a Google AV was stopped in CA for obstructing traffic as it was programmed to only proceed at a maximum speed of 25 mph but was driving in a 35 mph high traffic area. Needless to say commuters and the police were not amused with the traffic obstruction and violation. Google being the sensitive, understanding types that they are used this dangerous AV operation to claim they have never been ticketed in all the test miles they have logged. That may change real soon and for good reason.