Since 2010, companies have poured over $10 billion dollars into the pursuit of fully self-driving cars. Indeed, this could be thought of as money well spent, as car accidents continue to be one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Although talk and dreams were large, promises largely went unmet. For example, in the 1950s, GM imagined self-driving cars by the 1970s; and again, in 2018, they promised it within a year. Elon Musk had previously touted that Tesla would self-drive across the United States by 2017, but it hasn’t. Waymo released self-driving car taxis, but the high-end sensors were too costly for mass-production vehicles. All of these automotive leaders are finding that mastering all the situations we face as human drivers is tough for technology to grasp.
Not all automation is equal. There are six levels of automation. Levels 0, 1, and 2 require humans to actively drive and monitor the vehicle – in other words, features like lane-keep assist or active cruise control. Then, there is Level 3, which is a “bridge level” where the system can drive the car for a period of time, but the driver must be ready to re-engage with the system at a moment’s notice. Next, Level 4 is where the car essentially drives you, but there may still be limited scenarios where the driver may need to take over. Last, Level 5 is fully automated, meaning that the driver does not have to take control of the vehicle whatsoever.
Currently, no cars available for sale in the U.S. today are self-driving. There are only Level 2 capable cars, such as those equipped with Tesla Autopilot, Ford BlueCruise, or the GM SuperCruise. That being said, within the next five years, we may see Level 3 self-driving cars, which would be self-driving but require a human driver to take control whenever self-driving conditions aren’t met. This is more realistic, and industry leaders have largely backed off their big claims in recent years.
In addition to Level 3 automation, we might see other new products hit the road. For instance, Ferguson – a former Google employee -left the Google self-driving car project to build a fully autonomous vehicle for goods delivery – without the need for a person inside. Also, Urmson and Bagnell are developing self-driving trucks that drive mostly on highways – this is easier to master than self-driving car technology. For a car to pick you up from your house and take you to work, however, experts are currently estimating it’ll be around 2050.