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Driverless Cars Need a Lot More Than Software, Ford CTO Says (axios.com)
In an interview, Ken Washington, Ford's Chief Technical Officer, shared company's views on how autonomy will change car design. From an article: The biggest influence will be how the cars are bought, sold and used: "You would design those vehicles differently depending on what business model (is being used). We're working through that business model question right now," he said. The biggest misconceptions about autonomous capabilities is that it's only about software: "People are imagining that the act of doing software for autonomy is all you need to do and then you can just bolt it to the car," he said. "I don't think it's possible to describe what an autonomous vehicle is going to look like," he added.
If you take a model S, and add cross traffic and rear radars, it will have the hardware to be 100% self driving. (Don't believe Tesla when they take your money for "full self driving" without those basic necessities, they're flat out lying as they have done so often in the past)
Beyond that though, there's a LOT of software work to be done, and I really don't know how far away that is. There are just so many edge cases in driving that I'm not confident that we'll get to 100% self driving with zero driver input under any circumstances for a very long time (and that's what you need if you want to get out of the car at work and send the car to pick your kid up at school without you)
Ford though is talking about the next stage, once self driving is around, you won't want what the Model S offers. sitting facing forward with a steering wheel in your lap and with the primary entertainment display off to the side and out of your line of sight will be awkward and unnecessary. Thing is, that's talking about what a self driving car CAN be, not what a self driving car MUST be, these are 2 very different things, and I don't think Ford understands that. Too many people think that you must have complete revolution, instead of simple evolution. The first fully self driving cars will be just like today's cars, but with radar, lidar, and cameras mounted on them, plus some pretty powerful computers and software. They'll evolve from there to include more vehicle to vehicle communication, and to change the interior away from a driving focus, and towards an entertainment focus, but none of that will happen instantly, nor does it need to.
The people who expect a full self driving revolution don't tend to be happy with the slow evolution that actually could get us there, and therefore these people are holding back progress.
One thing he could be referring to is the idea of an automated fleet of vehicles, effectively self driving taxis, that scoffer people around on demand and on schedules and eliminate any significant need for car ownership in metropolitan areas. And do so without a significant monthly cost - ie only $50 a month for 50 hours of travel time or such.
You're probably right though in that a ride service like that will add whatever kind of micro-transactions or advertisements to their vehicles that they can get away with to make a extra buck. Anything from refreshments to movie rentals. And the government may eventually deem user-driven cars unsafe compared to their automated counterparts, especially since for a automated fleet to attain maximum efficiency it can't have manually operated vehicles in the way. That's probably a good 40-50 years out though.
The bigger problem will be surviving 40-50 years to get to that point. Society is going to get rocked by the number of people that get put out of work by self-driving semis, taxis, and other vehicles. How many more will be made redundant by then by AI and robotics is anyone's guess.
But I question the common perception that self driving cars are going to lead huge drops in car ownership.
Companies make more money selling subscriptions than selling individual items. Car manufactures can simply not sell autonomous cars to the general public and instead only license them to taxi-like companies. Now not only do they gain reoccurring income streams for each car built, but they can also dictate terms through the contracts and now all car repairs have to be handled by only authorized dealers. Any non-authorized repairs and the car bricks itself for 'safety'. Some cell phones, computers, and farming equipment already do those things.
If the car companies don't do that, you can bet some of the tech companies will lobby Congress to restrict ownership and repairs over fears of having the cars hacked and then being used to run over tons of people.
So the possibility easily exists that it'll eventually be illegal to own your own car within our life span.