Autonomous driving has already experienced some highs and lows. It still hasn’t been invented yet.
I have been writing about autonomous driving since 2011 and have experienced the discursive climax. This technology seemed to be an ideal type of the future. People quickly became enthusiastic and the industry hoped for unparalleled change. The idea was by no means new and also in the last decades created the basis for this technology.
At the beginning of the euphoria, which reached its peak in the mid-2010s, numerous forecasts were heard from the industry. Soon we will be ready for cars to drive themselves. In 2020, according to many of the promises shared, a significant proportion of people would sit in self-driving cars.
Then the first deadlines were broken. Elon Musk’s Tesla made the biggest promises. Every year, the head of the electric car pioneer stated that the technology would soon be under the hood. But today Tesla is still at level 2 out of 5. These levels, as they made the rounds and also at, for example bussgeldkatalog.de can be seen, represented the classification of success.
Leading companies such as Waymo, which is part of the Google Group, have now reached Level 4. This means that cars can already take part in road traffic and largely drive themselves. It has cost the industry billions in research money. So much money that many of the startups didn’t make it to the present day. So much money that even the car manufacturers had to reduce their research. Because the technology could not be offered as quickly as had been predicted.
Today it is assumed that Level 5 may never be achieved. The key to the technology is not just the sensors and the Infrastructure, which are also not as cheap as expected. Above all, it is artificial intelligence that will advance autonomous driving. Quickly analyzing the data, monitoring the systems and controlling the car – this requires AI systems that are better than what is on the market today.
Will that come? Perhaps? When is that coming? It’s set in the stars. So autonomous driving remains a vision of the future.