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BMW Says Self-Driving Car To Be Level 5 Capable In Five Years (reuters.com)
German carmaker BMW is on track to deliver a self-driving car by 2021, the company's senior vice president for Autonomous Driving, Elmar Frickenstein, said on Thursday. From a report: "We are on the way to deliver a car in 2021 with level 3, 4 and 5," Frickenstein told a panel discussion in Berlin, explaining the vehicle will have different levels of autonomy, depending on how and where it is used. A level 5 vehicle is capable of navigating roads without any driver input, while a level 3 car still needs a steering wheel and a driver who can take over if the car encounters a problem.
It would be cool is future BMW have blinkers, because all the ones I see on the road do not!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I suspect you will see a pretty big shift in what makes a car desirable when self driving cars become the norm, its hard to say if ownership will even be as common as it is now, it seems unlikely that kids who grow up in a family that has a self driving car will ever learn to drive.
I suspect that more and more, in car entertainment, comfort, ride smoothness and fuel economy/range will be the primary things used to market cars in the future and not the ultimateness of the driving machine.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
At least far enough ahead of time to give you take a few minutes to wake up and figure out what's going on before you have to take control.
I mean I'm totally fine with "hey, there's snow/mudslides/migrating crabs covering the road, and I'm not sure what to do, so I'll pull over while I wake you up to decide what to do."
For the faulty, over-hyped present though there's far too much "I'm confused. Catch!" going on. Or worse, "I misunderstood what I thought I saw, goodbye." I'll keep control myself, thanks.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Reacting to stuff in the road in front of you like your 2 examples is the easy stuff where automation is already better than you are.
So it's autonomous except when it isn't. Wake me when we have a car that's full-time Level 5.
Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks, but must still be prepared to take control when needed.
When a level 3 car is driving, you're not. You will not be required to jump in and intercept or overrule the car. But it will be normal for the car to say "Your exit is coming up, please take over" or "The road markings are too unclear, please take over" or "There's road construction ahead, please take over" or "There's emergency services with sirens nearby, please take over" and so on and if you don't it'll pull over and refuse to drive. Unless you want clogged roads with pulled over SDCs, the driver has to be ready to take control within a reasonably short time. This is basically "I'll handle the best conditions", level 4 is "I'll handle all normal conditions" and level 5 "I'll handle all conditions". But they're all genuinely self-driving within those confines.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The problem is needing to drive in the first place.
In places with good public transportation (e.g., Europe), you don't need to drive - you can get around pretty damn effectively with just public transportation. Hell, you can even get between cities taking the trains and planes and never needing to step in a car.
Problem is, then you go to places like North America, where the vast majority of cities are car-only. Walking only gets you from one big box store to another (assuming you can cross that 10 lane highway in-between them), and public transit is non-existent. There you less WANT to drive but instead NEED to drive.
Driving's a chore. It's something most drivers in North America don't want to do (as evidenced by their attention being held elsewhere, typically on small handheld devices). What needs to be done is eliminating the need to drive, so those who drive are those that want to.
Flying is hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of pure terror.
Pilots train long and hard for this.