VW
VW Sedric: The robot taxi for short-distance traffic could find its use as a shuttle bus at airports. Until the car is regularly on major roads is still years go by – if it comes at all.
Fully developed robot cars, which do not require a driver at all, will not be around for another five years, says Volkswagen CEO Thomas Sedran. He can not recognize a business model because of these long periods and the extremely high costs. Also, the complexity of the problems is enormously high – similar to a manned Mars mission.
Volkswagen invests enormous sums of money in the future fields electromobility. autonomous driving, Mobility services and digitization. Overall, according to plan 44 billion euros by the year 2022, A good 30 billion of these are expected to flow into the field of electromobility alone.
Even the topic of autonomous driving take the Wolfsburg seriously, so the group recently recruited one Top manager from Apple: Alexander Hitzinger (47) is not only brand representative for technical development at Volkswagen, but is also to build the “center autonomous driving” in the group.
That it Volkswagen Show stock market chart But perhaps the topic of autonomous driving is not quite as urgent as it is in other future fields. Now, one can recognize a statement from Thomas Sedran, CEO of the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brand.
At the Geneva Motor Show, the manager said in conversation with the English-language service of the news agency ReutersAccording to him, completely driverless vehicles will be fully developed in five years at the earliest and are simply too expensive.
Fully autonomous cars require a high-tech infrastructure, costly lidar and radar systems, as well as no less expensive agreements with providers of cloud computing and cloud mapping – mature technology at the highest level, the experts also as level 5 automation describe. The complexity of the associated problems compared Sedran with those of a manned mission to Mars.
Only a few cities will have necessary structures for robotic cars
A sophisticated mobile infrastructure, high-resolution digital and always up-to-date maps as well as perfect road markings as a condition for the operation of robot cars will inevitably not be able to give it everywhere. At most, “only in very few cities,” Sedran continued in the conversation. And even then, according to the current state of things, technology works only in ideal weather conditions. Heavy rainfall and large puddles, for example, required the intervention of a driver.
Given the long periods of time and the high cost of robotic cars, no viable business model can be identified, Sedran pointed out. Even for a car with a level 3 automation level, the technology for sensors, processors and software would currently cost around 50,000 euros. “It’s just too expensive,” says Sedran.
REUTERS
Volkswagen Board Member Thomas Sedran
That sounds a lot more subdued, as group colleague Johann Jungwirth said about 17 months ago. In an interview with manager-magazin.de, the Chief Digital Officer said: “Self-driving cars will be a super profitable business for Volkswagen.” In the interview, the manager was also convinced that fully autonomous vehicles from Volkswagen would be used in five cities as early as 2021.
Above all, the billion-dollar development costs are the rivals BMW and Daimler now to an alliance in robot car and autonomous driving. The strongest rivals in the premium car business share the high development costs in their robot car alliance. On the other hand, they also want to move faster, because Google’s daughter Waymo has the nose in the technology by prolonged testing, experts say.
Seeks to hear Volkswagen also cooperates in the future fields of autonomous driving and robot cars on. Thus, a participation in the Ford division for autonomous driving is conceivable. However, nothing is decided here, it is said in the middle of January.