There are many difficulties in each link. What happened to driverless cars?

Since 2013, the term "autonomous driving" has been appearing more and more in front of us. Before, our impression of autonomous driving was only in science fiction movies or novels. The concept of autonomous driving for those born in the 70s and 80s can even be summarized by the classic TV series "Knight Rider". Even those who have known about autonomous driving before only have some knowledge of professional technology companies or R&D teams such as Google and MIT at the level of news introduction.

In fact, the development of driverless cars is not smooth sailing. Whether in terms of technology, attitudes of governments, laws and regulations, or consumer acceptance, all of these have put forward various challenges to the development of driverless technology. At present, it is generally predicted that by 2020, truly driverless cars will begin to drive on the road. In addition to the technology giants and car manufacturers that we are familiar with, such as Google, Tesla, Volvo, and Nissan, which are developing driverless technology, car R&D projects such as Apple, which are only in the news and rumor stage, have attracted much attention.

As a new technology that can change our lives in the future, driverless cars are still in a stage of discovering problems, facing problems, and solving problems. As a technology enthusiast, it is naturally necessary to understand some representative stages in the development of driverless car technology.

Google takes the lead, followed by various car manufacturers

In fact, the company that we received the most information about driverless cars from was Google, and Google has always been the most representative company in the field of driverless cars. As a high-tech company, unlike traditional car manufacturers, Google's research and development of driverless cars is basically focused on the technical field, and is basically at a very advanced stage. Whether in technology research and development, road testing or communication with state governments, Google is the most active and effective company.

Currently, Google's driverless cars have begun testing in many states in the United States, including 22 Lexus SUVs and other 33 prototypes, with a cumulative test distance of more than 2 million miles. At the same time, Google can also conduct more than 3 million miles of driverless simulation tests every day through its huge data center. This simulation test can also adjust the performance of driverless cars on highways based on the actual driving environment, and repair and improve simulators to ensure that driverless cars can actually drive on the road.

Under the leadership of Google, many car manufacturers have begun to see the importance of driverless driving and have begun to form their own R&D teams to develop driverless technology. For example, electric car manufacturer Tesla has already begun to equip its products with the Autopilot function. Although it is only a beta version and still requires the driver to keep his attention on the car, Autopilot already has the most basic semi-automatic driving features such as lane keeping, automatic braking and automatic following. Even the company's CEO Elon Musk is full of confidence in the Autopilot function. Although the early autonomous driving is not truly driverless, it can provide twice the safety of human drivers. Elon Musk also said that Tesla will promote the development of driverless technology through the analysis of billions of miles of driving data, and this data is more than the sum of almost all competitors.

In addition, many traditional car manufacturers, including Nissan, Volvo, Audi, BMW, etc., have seen the potential of driverless cars and have also joined the research and development of this technology. For example, BMW plans to build a driverless concept car based on the hybrid car i8 and named it I Next; Audi began to test driverless cars based on the A7 model as early as 2013, and has successfully driven from San Francisco to Las Vegas; and as a Swedish car manufacturer, Volvo plans to invest 100 cars in field tests starting next year, including Europe, North America and China; Finally, as one of the representative manufacturers of Japanese cars, Nissan also has a very open attitude towards driverless technology, and has reached a five-year cooperation agreement with NASA to jointly commit to the research and development of driverless cars in road and aviation applications, and said that its driverless cars will be officially on the road by 2020.

In addition to developing autonomous driving technology on their own, some traditional automakers are also committed to cooperating with third-party professional companies, and the most famous of them is Mobileye from Israel. Mobileye provides a series of ADAS advanced driver assistance systems, allowing traditional automakers to directly transplant the entire solution into their automotive products, which not only saves the cost of independent research and development, but also has higher versatility and reduces the difficulty of use for users. In the future, Mobileye will also become one of the universal platforms for autonomous driving technology solutions.

Various accidents are a bucket of cold water

Autonomous driving technology is becoming more and more popular, and everyone seems to be looking forward to the future development prospects, such as relieving traffic pressure, car sharing, becoming a mobile entertainment center, etc. It seems that everyone has begun to enjoy the convenience that autonomous driving brings to our lives in advance. However, in May this year, a traffic accident in Florida, the United States, immediately poured cold water on the government, manufacturers and users. It turns out that true autonomous driving is still quite far away.

On May 7, a Tesla Model S with Autopilot turned on collided with a tractor trailer on a highway in central Florida, USA, killing the driver in the car. At the time, the Model S was driving on a two-way road with a central median, and the autopilot function was turned on. At this time, a tractor trailer crossed the road in a perpendicular direction to the Model S. Under strong sunlight, the driver and the autopilot failed to notice the white body of the tractor trailer, so they failed to activate the brake system in time, resulting in a rear-end collision, and the driver was unfortunately killed.

Afterwards, Tesla and Autopilot immediately became the focus of the world's attention. There were many accidents involving Model S and Model X, some of which overturned, and some crashed into guardrails at high speed, but fortunately there were no casualties. But it seemed that in an instant, autonomous driving began to "come down from the altar".

Not only Tesla, but also Google, a leading company in driverless cars, has also had many accidents with its test cars. However, compared with Tesla, they were all minor collisions, and the most serious one was a scrape with a local bus, but no one was injured either.

Although driverless cars have painted a beautiful blueprint for us, there are still many challenges to make it a reality and enable it to drive around us more safely and stably. First of all, the driverless car technology itself is still being improved. As long as it is a computer system, there is a possibility of errors, but for driverless cars, once an error occurs, it is very likely to bring fatal consequences. Tesla's accident in May is a good example. Therefore, manufacturers need to constantly solve various potential problems of errors and reduce the error rate to a minimum.

In addition, if driverless cars are driving on the road, they are not just "taking care" of themselves. After all, there are all kinds of human-driven cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians on the road. Even if driverless cars can ensure compliance with traffic rules, other traffic factors have greater uncertainty. When facing these uncertainties, driverless technology should take the most appropriate and optimal approach to solve them and maximize the safety of passengers in the car and people outside the car. This is also a question that needs to be fully considered. Some people even raised the question of whether to focus on protecting passengers in the car or reducing the harm to pedestrians outside the car when avoiding accidents. At this time, driverless cars have to face not only technical issues, but also ethical and moral trade-offs.

Governments are cautious

Autonomous driving manufacturers have set their initial goal for 2020. In addition to the fact that the technology itself needs a long time to be perfected and tested, governments also need some time to formulate corresponding laws and regulations based on the characteristics of autonomous vehicles. In terms of attitudes towards autonomous driving, governments of different countries also have different views.

First of all, in the United States, the home base of Google and Tesla, due to the special national conditions of the U.S. federal government, different states have different attitudes towards driverless cars. For example, Nevada was the first state to approve Google's driverless car for road testing, and this was the first time that a driverless car was legally approved to go on the road. However, the Nevada government requires Google to equip the driverless car with a steering wheel and brakes, and there must be a driver in the car to prevent accidents. However, such a requirement seems to be inconsistent with Google's ultimate goal of driverless cars. Google's driverless prototype car is not equipped with a steering wheel, because Google believes that true driverless driving means that all driving rights should be handed over to the system without human intervention.

California has the same attitude as Nevada, but the regulations in California are more detailed and stricter. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has finally decided not to sit idly by and watch the increasing number of driverless cars being tested on the road. It hopes to draft a temporary draft regulation to manage it. The California Department of Motor Vehicles requires that a driver must be present when a driverless car is driving, and the driver of the driverless car must be trained before taking up the job, and also needs to show a special vehicle license.

However, Google also expressed its dissatisfaction with the regulation. "Safety is our top priority and the biggest motivation for us to develop self-driving cars," Google spokesperson Courtney Hohne said in an interview. "We are very disappointed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles' regulation, which also limits the space for further development of self-driving cars."

In addition to requiring the presence of a driver, the California Department of Motor Vehicles also wants all driverless cars to be tested by a third-party agency to evaluate their performance and confirm whether they can eventually be put on the road. The draft plan requires automakers to submit monthly reports detailing the performance and safety of their products. At the same time, the authorities also want automakers to ensure that if they collect user information, they must ensure that the vehicles are equipped with technology to detect and prevent cyber attacks.

Europe, represented by Germany, seems to be more cautious. As the center of the European automobile industry, many companies including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Bosch, etc. have begun testing driverless cars in Germany. After the Tesla Autopilot accident, German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that in the future, the "black box" in the car should be activated when the driver turns on the driverless function, and when the driver decides to start the driverless function, the car status and the road conditions ahead will be recorded throughout the process, so that the responsible party can be determined when an accident occurs.

As a representative country of the Asian automobile industry, Japan is relatively open to driverless cars. Since the end of last year, the Japanese government has begun to relax the laws and regulations related to driverless cars and drones, allowing purely self-driving cars to be tested on the road in 2017. This move is seen as a welfare policy for Japan's driverless cars, which will promote the development of Japan's driverless cars to follow the pace of Google's driverless cars. Toyota, Nissan and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. all plan to launch fully self-driving cars in 2020, and these automakers also hope to use the platform of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to show their driverless cars to the world.

In the Chinese market, the fate of driverless cars seems to be still very uncertain. According to Bloomberg, China's auto industry regulator said it would work with the police to develop testing rules for self-driving cars. At a recent forum, a person in charge said that the regulations will be finalized in a specific time frame, and before the regulations are issued, cars with self-driving functions should not test their functions on highways. This is undoubtedly a cold water for the current hot development of self-driving and smart cars. After all, many traditional automakers and Internet companies in China have already begun research and development and testing of driverless cars.

The changing market landscape

As a technology that is not mature in all aspects, if manufacturers and companies want to speed up the progress of driverless technology, banding together is undoubtedly the best way. After all, cooperation between the Internet, chips and traditional manufacturers can give full play to their respective advantages, save unnecessary cost waste, and accelerate the maturity of driverless technology. The most representative of these is the cooperation between BMW, Intel and Mobileye. These three companies can be regarded as industry leaders in their respective fields. Whether they are vehicle manufacturers, chip suppliers or technology solution providers, the cooperation between BMW, Intel and Mobileye will undoubtedly bring the greatest impetus to the development of driverless technology.

However, there is always a break. Since Tesla has been involved in a series of accidents recently, Tesla has announced that the cooperation with its supplier Mobileye will end and the contract will not be renewed upon expiration. Although Elon Musk did not say it explicitly, the recent news of accidents has undoubtedly had a very big impact. Elon Musk believes that Mobileye's cooperation with other automakers has affected its ability to keep pace with Tesla. The so-called other automakers should be the aforementioned Mobileye's announcement of cooperation with BMW and Intel. In addition, according to news from Recode, after ending the cooperation with Mobileye, Tesla is likely to start developing its own computer vision chip system internally.

In fact, it is an indisputable fact that driverless cars are the development trend of the future science and technology field and the automobile industry. However, although the prospects are broad, it is not easy to truly realize them. Whether from the perspective of technology, laws and regulations, ethics or people's usage habits, there are a lot of difficulties that need to be solved one by one.

But we all believe that the scenes that previously only existed in science fiction movies will become real life in the future. For ordinary people like us, it is still very worth looking forward to.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.