Musk’s Tesla car firm launched its driverless ‘robotaxis’ in Austin, Texas, earlier this week, as other tech giants roll out their own Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in the US and countries such as China and UAE.
However, experts fear the country’s complex road layout and millions of potholes could mean the mass rollout of driverless cars is as long as 20 years away in the UK.
Currently, the only car permitted to use its self-driving technology on public roads in the UK is Ford’s Mustang Tech-E.
This is enabled by Ford’s BlueCruise Level 2 advanced driver-assistance system, which allows the driver to take their hands off the wheel, but is not fully driverless as they must remain attentive and ready to take control at any moment.
However, according to one of the UK’s leading self-driving experts, Tesla’s bid has been slowed by seeking to have its entire range of models given the green light to use autonomous features, rather than taking Ford’s approach of seeking approval for just one model.
“Ford have actually gone through this pathway of getting a specific exemption for so many vehicles for a limited time. Tesla wanted approval for all of their vehicles. It’s really just a different approach from a regulatory point of view, and it’s nothing to do with actual system capabilities.
The pothole problem
Potholes on UK roads will be a problem for driverless cars (Photo: John Keeble/Getty Images)The Government has also given ride-hailing app Uber the go-ahead for trials of driverless cabs in some London boroughs from next year.
John Kushnick, legal operations director at National Accident Helpline, believes self-driving vehicles will first appear on UK streets as taxis and public transport, rather than through private ownership.
“You could need a car to get you to work every morning at eight o’clock. Book that with a firm like Uber. Once you’ve got to work, it can go off and do something else. So, you’re just using it, paying for it, for that period of time.”
Uber will trial its driverless taxis in London next year (Photo: Nam Y. Huh/AP)“What we actually find is that the roads in the UK are comparatively complex to some of those in North America, and that’s why some of the outstanding companies that we have developing in the UK have started to roll out their technology in the US,” says Mark Cracknell, programme director at Zenzic, the organisation set up by the Government and the motor industry to accelerate the development of self-driving vehicles.
“Unlike the grid-like roads of American cities or the meticulously planned streets of newer urban environments across specific APAC (Asia-Pacific) regions, the UK presents a far more complex landscape.”
“What we actually think, as the current trend of changes in vehicle ownership continues, is that you might have companies who operate fleets of these AVs, and you might subscribe to a car service, because it’s automated.
“It could well be that you start to see companies springing up in kind of the early 2030s who are offering these kinds of solutions.”
Musk’s nemesis over driverless safety
Tesla has been testing its robotaxis launch in Austin, Texas (Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/Reuters)While Elon Musk pushes ahead with a trial of his driverless Tesla robotaxis, one man has become something of a thorn in his side.
Dan O’Dowd is a software engineer with decades of experience with Nasa and even on the B2 stealth bombers that dropped the “bunker bombs” on Iran nuclear facilities last weekend.
He believes the robotaxis are not safe enough to be rolled out across the US, and he doesn’t mind saying so, despite being faced with cease and desist legal threats from Tesla.
“I’ve been in for Elon Musk in large part because he’s selling a defective product to consumers while telling them it will make them safer than if they drive themselves,” says O’Dowd, who now runs his own company Green Hills, which provides safety and security software.
O’Dowd, who through his ‘Dawn Project’ has run his own tests on Tesla’s vehicles purportedly showing safety failures, has even spent millions of his own money on Super Bowl and newspaper adverts in an attempt to highlight his claims to both car buyers and politicians.
Tesla demanded O’Dowd stop all “defamatory’ adverts, remove videos of his tests on Tesla cars, and issue a public retraction of his claims over Tesla’s safety record.
A legal letter added: “The Dawn Project continue to spread misinformation about Tesla, by falsely claiming that Tesla’s [full self driving] FSD (Beta) technology will not recognize children and by falsely stating that the feature will run over children when it is engaged.
“The purported tests misuse and misrepresent the capabilities of Tesla’s technology, and disregard widely recognized testing performed by independent agencies as well as the experiences shared by our customers.”
O’Dowd, however, has not ceased his criticism since receiving this letter three years ago.
“If Musk takes full self-driving and autopilot off the road, I’ll stop,” he says. “I’ll go do something else.”
O’Dowd is not as evangelical when it comes to all driverless technology. He’s quite a fan of Waymo, Google’s autonomous driving software.
“They’ve got thousands of cars and there’s the occasional error, something goes wrong, and they’re fixing it. They’ve already tested it safer than human drivers. It’s very doable.”
Tesla was contacted for comment.
Who pays the insurance?
“You’re going to have to have some level of strict liability,” says Kushnick. “It might be, for example, the manufacturers provide insurance rather than individuals. Because why would you be insured as an individual, if you’re not driving the car? It would have to be the manufacturers.
Another issue impacting a true driverless future could be the UK’s somewhat patchy mobile network.
“Equinix recently partnered with Hyundai to do just this, deploying global cloud assets for Hyundai’s HCloud which connects vehicles in a data fabric,” says Steele.
There is plenty of time to sort out the nitty gritty of how AVs are insured and how those vehicles may gather their information from mobile technology because, for now at least, the UK appears some way behind the likes of the US, China and Japan in accelerating towards a driverless future.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Musk’s push for driverless cars could be dented by UK’s potholes and winding roads )
Also on site :