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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.
We are sick and tired of selling value at this price point. We don't easily know where you go in real time, can't divert you to areas we want you to go, or subject you to in vehicle ads, and after only a few years you are off a payment plan. We are going to fix this for you, and likely make it illegal to return to the old model of ownership and privacy rights.
Now if we could only find a way to program human drivers to that standard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Shitty 'self driving cars' will fail spectacularly in the marketplace once people truly understand the reality of them: your real freedom taken away, as you're strapped into some machine that you have zero real control over.
I for one will be very happy to have a machine do the driving for me. I already use adaptive cruise control and traffic jam assist on my commute, and I would happily turn over the drudgery of driving to a machine. I derive no joy from driving, though I know many people who do, and I don't begrudge them that.
But I question the common perception that self driving cars are going to lead huge drops in car ownership. Right now my golf clubs and gym bag are in my car, and my sunglasses, and my bike rack, and my music collection. And compared to the amount of crap I see in other peoples vechicles, I am the model of tidiness. Music can migrate to my phone, and I can carry my sunglasses easily enough, but how do I call for a car that has a bike rack that fits a recumbent bike? I can take my golf clubs in an uber type car to work, then to the course, then back home, but that is a bunch of schlepping that is easier when I can just leave my clubs in the trunk. What about child seats? Will parents have to provide their own car seats, or count on calling a car that has one or more available?
None of these things is a showstopper, but if I am already spending money to own my car, why wouldn't I spend money to own my self driving car, that already has my stuff in it? I can see two car families turning into one car families, but I suspect many people will still want to own their own vehicle.
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.
That's not actually the whole story. Ford had written a cost-benefit analysis of changing fuel systems across all cars, not just Pintos, as part of a presentation to NHTSA about moving to a 30mph fixed-barrier standard. The standards were rapidly shifting during the development of the Pinto - there was no rear-collision standard at all when the design began and the original proposal was a 20 mph moving-barrier standard, which Ford supported and designed the Pinto around.
The NHTSA then solicited opinions on a future change to a 30mph fixed-barrier standard, which was the reason Ford provided that analysis. The Pinto was one of dozens of vehicles which would be affected by such a change. Mother Jones magazine got the report and turned it into a series of stories about the Pinto being a death trap. The NHTSA then tested the Pinto using non-standard methods (different levels of gasoline, the use of a "bullet" car instead of a barrier that was designed to ram under the gas tank, and a 35mph speed that had never been discussed). Based on a set of tests that were designed specifically to cause a gas leak and exceeded any standards even being discussed, the car was recalled.
Pretty much any station wagon or hatchback of the era would have failed that test. I'm glad that we now have even more stringent tests but it's clear that this was a rigged test and a media generated controversy rather than specifically nefarious company wrongdoing. Every applicable standard of the time was met - it just couldn't pass a test specifically designed to make it fail.