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.

Comments

Re:So what?

[Altus]

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.

Re:Yawn.

[BasilBrush]

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.

Re:Yawn.

[Kjella]

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.