Ars Technica has a fascinating interview with Kaveh Hushyar, CEO of Telemetria Telephony, who argues
I believe in 2020, the car will drive itself. The infrastructure will be in place, and that infrastructure will be very significant and hefty. But in that target environment, you and I don’t have to be sitting behind the wheel. In that environment, everyone will be a passenger, and you want to have full connectivity with full access to any media, or any person anywhere via the best videoconferencing available. So you need a rich media experience in the car.
At the same time, there will be a significant amount of safety applications that will be running in the car, making sure that the car is fully protected and is communicating through the infrastructure to other cars. That would be the nature of how I see the driving experience transforming in ten years plus.
Obviously, as CEO of an in-car connectivity solution firm, Mr Hushayr is heavily invested in a driver-free future… but is his vision the product of more than just wishful thinking? I certainly have some difficulty imagining giving up driving before I turn 40… but then, I’m not sure that most of my peers would. Surf over to AT and read the whole interview before letting us know what you think.
Will this happen just before or after the flying cars?
Fat chance.
Driving is a profound expression of independence, which is why mass transit has never flourished in the united States.
Anger over loss of independence is easily sparked by mere traffic jams, or discussions about Big Brother and OBD-III, or universal health care.
Hmm…. I’d be ok with it as long as poor people had to keep driving themselves.
We will still own our own cars. We just won’t drive them while we talk on the phone, eat breakfast, and apply make-up. The cars will drive themselves while we do all of those things and surf the net.
Mass transit hasn’t flourished in the US because the federal government favored building roads after WWII, since the general consensus was that it was the best way to avoid a return to depression conditions….it use to be called Keynesianism.
As for freedom and driving, you’ve never lived in a place like NYC, have you? Owning a car in most parts of New York City is like being in one of the circles of hell. On the other hand, you can swipe your metro card on a bus or in a subway station, get off at your destination and not be worried about parking, insurance, repairs, gas, accidents, etc.
What you need to do is get out of Cousin-Love, Arkansas and see a bit of the world….might keep you from writing such dumb things.
@Skor:
While your experiences in New York City are instructive, they represent a fraction of the people in the United States, and an even smaller fraction of the amount of people who could afford a computerized automobile that required literally no input but a destination and a couple of pushes of some buttons or whatever.
Let’s put it simply: If you live in NYC like Skor, or in San Francisco or LA or Tokyo, they will have developed cars that drive themselves, or something similar. This is out of necessity, because driving in those places sucks. If, on the other hand, you live in rural or less populated areas, then this will not catch on very quickly, because it costs a shitton of money for the infrastructure.
I, personally, will be living in a place where I neither live next to stuck-up city people that think they’re smart because they live in NYC, nor in a place where people have sex with their cousins or cows or any such sickening things. Thus I’ll buy a Wrangler or FJ Cruiser and go live out with the wolves and caribou on the Alaskan tundra.
Also, Skor, since you mentioned Cousin-Love: Cow sex, human sex and cousin sex are all morally wrong. Wolf sex is the only way to go. Either that or dragon sex, but dragons don’t exist so there you are.
But I guess you being a classy gent from NYC would rather tap Bombalurina, huh? That’s all good, I’ll admit I’d rumpleteazer.
skor’s comments remind me of a recent article at CNN moping about how few Americans travel abroad. Typical douchebaggery comments followed about how enlightened the posters were and how ignorant other Americans are for not doing as they do.
I have traveled a good portion of the world (Ireland, Germany, Turkey, Qatar to name a few) and I’ve got two bits of good news. First of all, not all people who’ve been fortunate to globetrot become know it all douchebags. Secondly, and this will serve as a cold hard dose of reality for some, the rest of the world isn’t as great as some would have you believe. You’re not missing a whole lot of things that couldn’t be topped by something in the U.S.. I could list reasons why, but that could lead to the same king of douchebaggery as claiming someone’s from Cousin-Love, Arkansas for having a different view point.
@reclusive_in_nature, the douchebaggery comes from red state tea-tards who pule endlessly about how all government is socialist.
Yup, the tea-tards all want freedom from government oppression. They don’t want any of that Euro-socialist mass transit. No one is going to force them because otherwise you’ll have to pry the Chinese surplus AK-47’s from their cold, dead hands. They want to be independent, and drive their cars wherever they want, on countless miles of super highway, ALL OF IT BUILT WITH FEDERAL DOLLARS. Because in the tiny diseased minds of your typical red state tea-tard, money that the government spends for their benefit is freedom, tax dollars spent on someone else is socialism/welfare.
Yes sir, you try any of that kind of social around Possum Testicles, Arizona, and we’ll shoot photogenic congresswomen in the head with a Glock.
I’ve lived in “Cousin-Love, Arkansas” for over 10 years. Trust me, the people here with whom I work with and do business with (also transplants) would appreciate the opportunity to have a vehicle that is capable of some level of self-piloting along long stretches of highways.
You see, people on the east and west coasts (as I was prior to moving here) often forget that this nation’s mid-section is not where you are going to find much in the way of major airport hubs and passenger rail service. I’m not going to make some snarky remark regarding the advantages of living here (versus my former existence in the Northeast), simply because I’m smart enough to understand that every area of this country – and every community – has its trade-offs.
So before making a sweeping judgment that people in the flyover states are too stubborn or too stupid use mass transit, I suggest you look at some U.S. maps, particularly those that display features such as major airports, passenger rail stations and subway or bus lines.
Skor, you are the worst bigot I’ve ever seen here by far. You are a pathetic, sad individual. Seek help and stay off here. You don’t have any interest in cars, why are you here?
@MikeAR. You’ve got it wrong, I like cars, and I’ve owned quite a few of them. What I find tiresome is people who go off about how they have a god given right to drive. It’s their money and they’ll spend it anyway they want to, they did it all themselves, no body helped them, blah, blah, blah. Fact is that if it wasn’t for the government, the paved street in front of your house would still be a muddy goat path. Fact is that if it wasn’t for untold billions of tax dollars, most of paid by people back East, life would be impossible in a large part of flyover land. Who do you think built the water and electric infrastructure in those places? What private electric utility would have strung 50 miles worth of cable out to Anthrax, Tennessee so an extra from the movie Deliverance could have his very own ‘lectic lite bub? So go on and keep posting about how you are “independent”, not like those socialist people from back East. In a few hundred posts you may be able to convince yourself.
Skor, you are pathetic, the kkk has nothing on you for bigotry. You need to get out and see the world because people aren’t like you think. Have you ever been outside your narrow little world ot met anyone who is different from you? Keep on spewing your bile, it just shows you for the bitter little racist you are.
By the way, if you have a license, you do have the right to drive. It’s not God-given but the state has given the the right. Use you right and travel some and maybe your Deliverance fantasy will come true
reclusive in nature: +10
Mass transit is a function of population density. Here in the four corners of NM, AZ, CO, UT, we’re not able to swipe a card and get on the subway. DC yes. Atlanta yes. Farmington or Shiprock, NM no. It’s easy to be an enlightened morally arrogant judgemental a$$hole when you live in the midst of a densely populated infrastructure that supports mass transit. On the rez without wheels? You’re screwed!
@skor: Mass transit does you no good if you want to travel more than 50 miles in the US. Or, if you like taking a bus ride for 24 hours to go 500 miles, great.
Maybe you’ve never taken a camping trip across the country or a day trip to the mountains, but a car is a much better way to do it than by bus.
Half of the US does not live in big cities, so your high-school ‘tard’ comments are an insult to half of the country – you know, the part that feeds you.
Incidentally, I was describing the chances of dependent driving in 2020 – you should tell us why this is such a certainty without attacking the values of people who actually like owning cars.
@gslippy, Half of the US population is rural? Really? Perhaps where you live…Armadillo Snot, New Mexico…people have never heard of a the US Census Bureau. According to the US Census, 80% OF THE US POPULATION IS CLASSIFIED AS URBAN. I know, the Census Bureau is just another one of those Eastern egghead things that real ‘Mericans have no use for.
You still don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. Try and concentrate real hard when you read the following. The only reason you can live where you live…out in the middle of nowhere…is because all of the infrastructure, roads, water supply, electricity, WAS PAID FOR WITH EASTERN TAX DOLLARS. I’m tired of listening to tea-tard prattle on about how they don’t want any mass transit socialism, WHEN THEY OWE THEIR ENTIRE EXISTENCE TO SOCIALISM.
You can now go back to chanting, “Where is the birth certificate?”
Skor, you are sick. Please leave here, you have nothing to contribute but slurs and insults. Plus you’re not very good with facts. Did you ever think that the 80% urban includes people (they are people you know, even if you don’t consider them to be) living in small towns and cities in the South and West? For census purposes I’m urban but I don’t live in NY or Chicago. You seem to have a hard-on for New Mexico, have you ever been there? It seems like you think what works for NYC will work in New Mexico, trust me, it won’t. Get out and travel some you might learn some things, including a little decency and humility.
@skor: Is Pittsburgh ‘east’ enough for you, or would you like to know my voting record as well, to know whether I qualify to have an opinion on whether Americans will ever give up their cars on their own?
And you still haven’t explained why they will. Instead, we’re treated to a steady diet of insults about anyone outside NYC – remarkable.
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(Hopefully the 1990s vintage ASCII art worked out OK)
An automated system in Shiprock, NM? In 2020 or 2120? Uh, yeah…
Since my windows based PC at work locks up at least once a day, I really dont think I’ll allow the same geeks to run my car.
No, your computer is perfectly fine, it just locks up because of your settings… here, see? Wait, it locked up again, so it must be this other thing. There, it’s fixed now, see? Wait, it locked up again. Well then for sure it just has to be this other problem… very common problem and most people don’t even know about it. Easy to change that and now it’s fixed, see? Wait, it locked up again… Hmmm. OK, well there is nothing wrong with your computer, it just locks up because of your settings…
Um, yeah, I have a feeling 2020 is a bit soon.
The technology will be there in 10 years. Prototypes are getting pretty close now, as google et al are demonstrating.
Pricing may not be there, at least in the mainstream market. You’re more likely to see pieces of automated driving continue to be first available as a options on high-end luxury cars, with some of those pieces trickling down to the mainstream.
Social acceptance won’t be ready. IMO.
I think that most new cars sold then will have some type of “road train” feature for rural freeway driving. But trying to retrofit all cars (especially those without drive-by-wire controls) isn’t going to happen.
I’m not concerned about the computers. Industrial computers are incredibly reliable because they are only asked to do specific tasks with no 3rd party devices or software.
Toyota can’t even program a “simple” electronic throttle with “idiot-proof” fail-safes.
What makes anyone think they can do more complex software?
The Prius. The software required to seamlessly integrate 2 distinct powertrains into a system where the driver is largely ignorant of the behavior (and can control the system with just 2 pedals) is one of the reasons no one sold a hybrid before the late 90s.
By “idiot-proof” throttle, if you mean idiot drivers who push the wrong pedal and do nothing else, then I agree- but then again Toyota isn’t the only carmaker to have a problem with that.
I test drove a Mazdaspeed3 with an electronic throttle — and the throttle was having a software glitch. I could barely get enough gas to lift the clutch without killing the engine. I don’t know if I’d recommend getting into one of those and holding the throttle to the floor while you’re tooling around the dealership lot, but that’s exactly what I ended up doing. Made it up to a solid 10 or 15 mph after half a minute or so.
I suppose that could have been some sort of failsafe mechanism too.
That bubble car photo looks very familiar to me from something like an old Popular Science magazine from my childhood. I accepted the concept then, but I would be reluctant to give up the sheer pleasure of driving, even after 40 years as a licensed driver. It’s still a lot of fun- particularly behind the wheel of vintage iron.
Isn’t this an all-or-nothing proposition? Even if the infrastructure was in place and 100% of new cars (even econo shite-boxes) were fully automated, as long as there is some doofus in his rusty old 2014 Prius driving like an A-hole, it’s still going to take human eyes and brains to see that car, anticipate his likely actions and react with hands on controls before he merges into your passenger door.
The automated cars will have a pretty limited ability to detect and respond to the actions of other cars that are “off the grid”, unless I drastically underestimate the technology.
Force everyone to buy a new car to make the system work? I doubt it. Force everyone to retrofit automation into their existing cars for nearly the cost of a new car? Good luck. How do the experts plan to accomodate a generation of human-controlled cars along side the first generation of automated cars? The futurists seem to leap over the transitional phases and show us how wonderful the end result will be.
The infrastructure will be in place, and that infrastructure will be very significant and hefty.
Ya. Right. The US federal government is in deficit spending to the tune of $1.5 trillion a year and growing. In Japan and Western Europe the population is in contraction and their younger generations don’t really care about driving or personal transportation. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions in China still depend on mass transit, bikes, feet, and ox carts to get from point A to point B. India’s usable primary highways are measured in thousands of miles, not even in tens of thousands. Heck, cities like Seattle had been debating on how to replace 1.6 miles of elevated highway for over a decade with no solution.
So in the next nine years we will magically find the trillions of dollars to deploy this kind of infrastructure, retro-fit every car on the road to support it, and provide the infrastucture to oversee and maintain our robot overlords.
Ya…right. If anyone wants to buy a heavily used Yugo I can sell you one for $12.5 million – anyone? Anyone?
The infrastructure will be minimal. See Google’s driverless cars in CA and the vans that navigated from Italy to China through some very large and congested cities.
We don’t even have the money to repave crumbling highways or rusting out bridges. Even if the intrastructure cost one penny, it’s too much. What good is a driverless car if the roads they drive on are falling apart.
You also didn’t address issues like how do you mandate a retrofit or replacement of 245 million vehicles in the United States; and who pays for it. Test sleds with a group of engineers sitting in them to deal with failures is one thing, the average Toyota Corolla buyer isn’t going to be happy if a self-driving car disables itself on the side of the road because of a sensor failure.
For that matter, what good is any car if the roads are collapsing? As I stated earlier, retrofitting isn’t going to happen. And with all the intelligence in the vehicles, not every car needs to be wired into a network.
Some cars are already dependent on sensors for steering and throttle inputs. Airplanes are fly-by-wire too.
2020 seems reasonable for hands free interstate travel. It won’t be in rural New Hampshire anytime soon, though. There’s a lot of dead zones in this area. There is barely any AT&T cellular service from Concord to Keene and Keene to Milford, and the locals are fighting against putting in any new towers. They say they’re too noisy and cause cancer.
This is a pipe dream for 2 reasons:
1) Lots of laws will have to be changed since they presume that a human is driving a car.
2) Exposure to lawsuits.
The lawsuits are what’s really stopping it. No manufacturer has the cohones to do it. The high end cars like S-classes are a software update away from being able to drive themselves on the freeway. They have radar around the car to pick up other cars and sensors to pick up the lanes. GPS to know where it’s going, all networked on a CAN system. Brakes, steering, and throttle can all be electronically engaged.
Statistics are such I will be dead.
Dead and gone.
Deceased.
Arrgghhhhhhhhhhhhh.
sorry. I meant motorlegends@aol.com
If the autopilot company is willing to assume total liability, and their officers forego personally liability shields, for their system, then I’d be willing to consider it.
If the company and its officers aren’t willing to risk financial insovency, then they don’t have sufficient faith in their product for me to gamble my family’s life on it.
He’ll have to pry my cold dead hands off of the steering wheel of my drive-it-yourself clutch car.
@obbop: we hope you’ll defy statistics. if you want advice on ways of doing that, email me at motorlegends.com
Lordy, I hope not. I enjoy driving. Riding, not so much.
It might happen for the interstate system, other places… not so much. Not saying that I would “like” it for long distance drives (since I’m sure the system won’t let me program it for say 85mph) but I can envision it happening.
Since there’s no such thing as “luck”, with any good fortune, I may still be driving an Impala! Or not…I put my name on the list for an “air car” back in 1962, when I was 11. I’m still waiting! G’night, now! Probably see everyone on Monday morning!
I don’t know about the timing, but the desire is there. People do not want to drive. They want to talk on the phone, send text messages, eat breakfast, apply makeup, surf the net, watch movies and TV. And they do all of those things while they are supposed to be driving.
The next step will be that automatic driving will be optional on luxury cars. Later it will be available on all cars. Eventually it will be mandatory.
I wouldn’t miss commuting to work. I’d be okay with sleeping in and being able to shower and shave in the back seat. :)
As long as it’s not mandatory, I’m fine with self-driving cars.
Cross-country road trips, anyone? I can let the car drive all night, kick the seat to full recline, and get some shut-eye.
Nine short years to have electric cars capable of highway speeds for great lengths of interstate driving. All the infrastructure in place as well oh boy is this guy smoking funny shit or what?
The time savings are extraordinary. I say 2025-2030. It’s gonna happen..also robotic delivery rigs.
It could work before 2020.
Automatic drive could be option when buying a new car.
Phase one roll-out would allow a choice to have the system or not. (cost being the issue)
However they will need to mandate that all other cars have at least a transponder, even your old classic. (Look at this as a way to tax you and squeel to your insurance company)
Phase two would mandate it on all vehicles with a shut-off feature.
Phase three could be a shared “kinda taxi” automatic driven vehicle model. Computers will arrange for a car to be available at the right time, right place while maximizing the overall efficiency of the “taxi grid”. All this from your iPhone 12! There will be an app for that.
I am sure they will figure out a creative way to charge you.
That’s only nine years away. We’ll be lucky if our roads get repaved by then.
In the longer run, if it can be done at a reasonable cost it’ll probably happen. For every hour of “fun” driving, I’m probably spending four just toodling along waiting to get where I’m going. And it would solve a lot of problems — teenagers who aren’t really ready to drive, drunk or impaired drivers, sleepy drivers, lost drivers, people who’d like to be using their time in some productive way.
What you’re DRIVING is fine, but it’s your KIDS, Marty! Something has to be done about your kids!
Well, if I must have a car that drives itself, then dammit, it definitely better be a somewhat modified ’60 Cadillac with a bubble roof! (And one helluva airconditioner)
No one will ever convince me to take my hands off the wheel and let some C++ programmer and his gadgetry steer my car.
Not now, not next year, not ten years from now, not twenty years from now, not ever.
Never!
That’s the spirit!
Hopefully still a ’07 Charger RT.
For the second car I’m thinking an American-made diesel hatchback.
About as likely to happen as a car that drives itself right?
It won’t happen unless someone makes it happen, in the form of incentives or penalties from the government or the insurance industry.
Maybe its because I’m older, but I LIKE driving a motor vehicle, even in heavy NYC traffic. I take pleasure in operating a complex machine that takes me so many places so easily. Just like I and so many other people LIKE living in a suburb where a personal MV fueled by cheap gas is needed to do so. Yes, OWNING a car in NYC is expensive and inconvenient; that’s why most Manhattanites depend on MetroCards. And ZipCar. This technology is the answer to “How will autos be used when there are 10 times as many people and cars on the planet than we have today?”. I guess my grandchildren will be dealing with that one.
Lawyers will never allow self-driving cars in the US. Period.
This has long been something I’d like to see, and I’ve got to admit I daydream about it quite a bit during long drives across Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
As the road system is built for this, and as new vehicles become equipped with compatible hardware/software, I see it this as an opt-in system: In other words, there is an additional, special lane – not unlike an HOV lane – that is reserved for self-driving vehicles.
I’ll admit I’m skeptical of the time frame, but I prefer to see opportunities, not obstacles. After all, this is the country that put a man on the moon just eight years and two months after barely putting a man into space.
Yeah, I know that a lot of grumpy old men out there will argue that this country is not the same as it was in the 1960s, and that we’re all going to Hell in a hand basket. That’s their prerogative; however, I choose to be a clever, optimistic old man who happens to embrace change – even though I don’t always agree with certain messengers of change…
First off the heavy use of GPS worries me. I work for a land survey company which uses very accurate GPS tecnology (can get you within a few centimetres). But yesterday due to solar storms the GPS became very finicky and unresponsive. Could you imagine the chaos if this happen to your car while no one was paying attention. Second watch the episode of Top Gear when they talk about self-driving cars. I tried to find it but couldn’t. Their first point is that most commercial planes can take off, fly and land themselves right now, but how many people would jump onto a plane without a pilot? Their second and best point is about maintenance. How could you feel safe and relaxed knowing that somewhere on the road with you someone else has a car going that they did all the fixing on the car themselves. I am not talking about the people who would have the knowledge to actually maintain the car properly, but about those people who are just to cheap to get something fix properly.
I think that the first thing would see will be “auto-trains”, a series of cars with self steering abilities but slaved to a single vehicle in front with a human driver. This would be for long drives from point to point on the interstates.
There are test systems out there now. The advantage is that it requires less sophisticated sensor and control systems. It also avoids much of the liability risk. You essentially have a “chauffeur” human driver handling the parts that a human is good at and a computer has difficulty with.
Eventually the “chauffeur” function could be automated and perhaps transferred to the individual vehicles again. This is probably a bridge solution.
None of the automated systems will be useful in urban or more challenging road situations for quite a long time.