Even as automakers and technology companies have been promoting a euphoric vision of the future in which cars will drive themselves and serious crashes will be rare, their engineers have been engaged in a sobering debate.
Just how autonomous can and should cars become? the engineers are asking.
Is there an inherent danger in technology that invites human drivers to sit back and relax — but still requires them to be ready to hit the brakes or grab the wheel at the first sign of trouble?
Those questions have taken on a new urgency after the revelation this week that the driver of a Tesla Model S died in a crash in Florida while the electric car was operating in its Autopilot mode.
The man, Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was driving on a divided highway, when a tractor-trailer truck made a left turn and crossed in front of Mr. Brown’s lane of traffic. Tesla said neither Mr. Brown nor the car’s self-driving system noticed the white truck against a bright sky, and the brakes were never applied.
For now, other automakers are giving no sign of slowing down their efforts to pus
On Friday, even as the world was absorbing news of Mr. Brown’s death as the first known fatality of the autonomous driving revolution, the German automaker BMW said it intended to offer a “self-driving car” — but not until 2021. And it will have much different technology than is now available on the Tesla Model S.h forward with cars that can drive themselves. But mainly they say the technology isn’t ready yet — which for many is an implicit rebuke of Tesla’s willingness to tempt tech-minded drivers to turn tomorrow’s vision into today’s road reality.
“Today we are standing at the brink of a new revolution,” Harald Krüger, BMW chief executive, said at a news conference in Munich.
Mr. Krüger added that the Tesla crash was “really very sad” and said BMW would need “the next few years” to perfect its autonomous driving system. “Today the technologies are not ready for serious production,” he said.
The world’s largest carmaker, Toyota, is a notable holdout in the rush toward completely autonomous cars. Last year, the company said that it would invest $1 billion in a Silicon Valley-based research effort to focus on cars that will function as “guardian angels,” saving human drivers from errors, rather than replacing them.
Tesla, which started its Autopilot feature last fall, has emphasized in discussing Mr. Brown’s death that the system isn’t intended to take over complete control of the car and that drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel and remain alert and engaged.
The point highlights the difference in approach that separates companies working on self-driving technology.
Read more of the original article in The New York Times
