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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.