You’ve no doubt seen or heard about the YouTube videos of Tesla Model S drivers testing the car’s new autopilot software upgrade, which enables the electric vehicle to essentially drive itself—under certain conditions. Some drivers dangerously test these limits—for example, taking their hands off the wheel, against Tesla’s explicit instructions. In a few cases, the software appears to miscalculate and comes close to sending the EV into a bush or oncoming traffic. In other videos, drivers test autopilot on winding back roads instead of the straightforward highway driving for which it was designed.
This threat of operator error, says Jeremy Carlson, senior analyst of autonomous driving for IHS Automotive, Englewood, Colo., is why the major automakers have taken a much more cautious, measured approach to autonomous cars, meting out semiautonomous features that upgrade the driving experience without dismissing the driver.
“When you give this type of technology to consumers and hope they will use it within limitations, that’s not always how it’s used,” says Carlson. “The first accidents will have the potential to set back the progress the industry has made.”
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Automakers first began offering semiautonomous features as options to enhance the comfort and convenience of the driving experience. For example, adaptive cruise control adjusts your vehicle’s speed to keep it at a set distance from the vehicle in front so you just need to steer. But they have increasingly boosted safety as well. For example, automatic emergency braking (AEB) detects if a driver is slamming on the brakes and then increases pressure to shorten the braking distance.
“Adaptive cruise control is very much a comfort and convenience feature that has the most upside on the fuel efficiency of a vehicle,” says Carlson. “Then you have sub-autonomous emergency breaking, which is clearly a safety feature. But those are a family of applications that address one form of control in the vehicle but have lot of different benefits.”
In fact, AEB is so effective that in 2015, 10 major automakers pledged to make it standard on new vehicles.
And with these improvements, automakers are creating not only a more comfortable and safer driving experience, but also a much more efficient one.
“Automation increases efficiency because you’re able to very minutely, precisely control the amount of steering or braking that’s exactly commensurate with the situation you’re facing,” says Carlson. “That has an impact on fuel efficiency as well.”
While the fuel savings may seem modest, they can quickly scale up, presenting yet another factor trimming long-term gasoline demand.
Key Features
Semiautonomous features first debuted in luxury car brands such as Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and Volvo, but they have made their way into mainstream models. They can be divided into two main types: longitudinal, which controls forward and backward motion (e.g., adaptive cruise control); and lateral, which controls side-to-side motion (e.g., lane changing).
Some of the main offerings for both types include:
Forward-collision warning. Also known as a “collision avoidance system,” this feature uses a combination of a radar, laser and/or camera to detect a crash about to take place—for example, if you are driving too close behind another vehicle. It alerts the driver and/or automatically brakes and/or steers the vehicle to avoid or reduce the impact of the crash. One study by the Highway Loss Data Institute found that Honda Accords outfitted with a combined forward-collision and lane-departure warning system cut insurance claims for injuries to the vehicles’ occupants by 27%.
Lane centering/keeping and departure warning. Mercedes and Infiniti are among the many that offer “lane centering” systems that keep a vehicle centered and within its lane on highways with slight adjustments of the steering wheel. Lane-departure warning systems can alert if the vehicle is about to leave its lane before the driver has signaled his or her intent to do so.
Self-parking. One of the earlier semiautonomous features, now found on many mainstream models, self-parking uses a combination of a vehicle’s on-board computer, cameras and/or sensors, and power steering to safely ease it into a parallel or perpendicular parking space. A test by AAA found that drivers using self-parking systems saw 81% fewer “curb strikes”—when the tire hits the curb—and parked 10% faster than those who parked manually. When parallel parking, these systems were able to do so with 47% fewer maneuvers than manual parkers, and some were even able to do it in one maneuver.
When combined, features such as these nudge vehicles even closer to fully autonomous driving—even if it is for only a limited amount of driving time. Volvo’s IntelliSafe technology suite, for example, includes adaptive cruise control and a Pilot Assist function that makes small steering adjustments when the vehicle is being driven below 50 km per hour (31 miles per hour or less), to keep it in its lane. In 2017, Volvo will build on IntelliSafe and begin testing self-driving vehicles in Sweden, adding functionality that lets its XC90 SUV take control of steering, speed and braking when driving at lower speeds, and allowing the driver to keep his hands off the wheel.
On the mass-market side, Toyota is testing an automated “Highway Teammate” feature in Japan that allows the vehicle to merge onto and exit the highway, keep or switch lanes, and select routes all through the use of sensors and mapping data. The company hopes to introduce a product based on the feature around 2020.
“Putting them together, you have the dimensions of travel,” says Carlson. “That’s where you’re seeing a convergence of applications starting to take place. It’s no longer being discrete applications but bringing it together into very early autopilot systems.”
While it is tough to measure fuel-efficiency savings on relatively new technology such as these semiautonomous features, there is some indication that considerable savings exist. For example, one European field test found that adaptive cruise control combined with a forward-collision warning system could cut fuel consumption by 3% in passenger cars and 2% in trucks.
“Two to three percent may not sound like much, but it’s the same relative size of fuel savings as light-weighting, and potentially much higher,” says Carlson, referring to the process of designing vehicles with lighter-weight materials to improve fuel efficiency. The benefits are significant enough, he says, that regulators are considering granting automakers fuel-economy credits for including these technologies in vehicles. And for commercial vehicles that rack up hundreds to thousands of miles a week, a 2% to 3% savings in fuel could be even more significant.
Consumer Conundrum
Convenience, comfort, fuel savings: All are great benefits. But will consumers use them and, more important, do they trust them? For example, in the AAA study, 80% of drivers said they felt confident about their parallel-parking capabilities; only 25% said they would trust the vehicle to park itself. Separately, a 2015 J.D. Power study discovered that automatic parking was one of the top five features “never used” by new vehicle owners it surveyed.
And of course, as Tesla demonstrated, even if consumers use these semiautonomous features, they may not necessarily use them correctly. It’s why Google is testing only self-driving vehicle technology.
“[Google] realizes the difficulty the human driver introduces to an autonomous driving system,” says Carlson. For example, a semiautonomous vehicle equipped with self-driving capability could approach an intersection and attempt to drive through it, based on the green light and what its sensors indicate as a clear path. But the driver may not trust the vehicle’s judgment and instead grab the steering wheel, brake and swerve—into another vehicle. The liability implications are enormous.
Despite the two paths, Carlson does expect that in the distant future, semi- and fully autonomous will ultimately reach the same destination.
“There are different paths to technology, and a lot of them are fundamentally the same vehicle control methods and sensing technologies,” he says. “On a long enough timeline, they will blend together.”
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