How will driverless cars develop in the future?

Recently, Musk made a lightning visit to China, which aroused people's attention to the landing of Tesla FSD (full self-driving system ) in China. Previously, Musk announced that he would release a self-driving taxi product in August, but the two agencies in California responsible for regulating self-driving taxis said that they had not received Tesla's relevant plan application. Currently, Tesla only holds the lowest level of self-driving car road test permit from the California DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), which allows testing with the presence of human safety drivers.

Not everything is good

Dr. James Jeffs, senior technology analyst at IDTechEx, pointed out that the Robotaxi (driverless taxi) industry has begun to flourish in the past three to four years. Driverless services are being launched in many cities in the United States and China. IDTechEx's latest report "Future Automotive Technology 2024-2034: Applications, Trends, Forecasts" predicts that by 2034, the industry will generate more than $470 billion in revenue annually through services.

This is backed up by the California DMV's self-driving data, which shows more vehicles on the road, more miles, and longer distances between takeovers, year after year. However, there are two sides to every story, and the news from San Francisco suggests that not all is well.

Cruise beats Waymo

Autonomous testing data shows that in 2023, fleets testing in California submitted more test miles than ever before. Alphabet's Waymo has always led the way in test miles, and this year is no exception. In 2023, Waymo's 438 registered vehicles submitted nearly 3.7 million miles, accounting for about 65% of all autonomous vehicle test miles submitted in 2023. This is the number of miles submitted when the onboard safety driver is testing the system and making sure everything is working properly. And more importantly, this is the number of miles submitted when there is no driver in the car at all. In 2023, Waymo submitted a staggering 1.2 million miles of driverless testing, surpassing all miles previously recorded by all testing companies.

Waymo was beaten, though, by another leading player, General Motors' self-driving subsidiary Cruise. Cruise operated a commercial Robotaxi service in San Francisco for most of 2023. During testing, the company logged more than 2 million driverless miles, nearly double that of its main competitor Waymo. However, Cruise didn't put in as many miles in safe autonomous testing with driver monitoring. Despite having more than 500 cars registered as self-driving test drivers, only 325 were awarded mileage, totaling just 580,000 miles.

Cruise beat Waymo in the number of takeovers, which occur when the test driver feels the vehicle is not behaving as planned. This could be because the sensor suite failed to detect something, the vehicle's planned trajectory was deemed dangerous, or even because a nearby human driver was driving erratically (a common occurrence in the data).

Last year, Waymo submitted 212 takeovers, each for 17,311 miles, which is not satisfactory. Studies have shown that the average human driver in the United States will have a collision about once every 200,000 people. In addition, Cruise did not record any takeovers. Over the years, Cruise's takeover performance has been growing rapidly, with only 9 takeovers in 2022, 4 of which were improper human driving. Even so, 580,000 miles of testing with zero takeovers is a remarkable achievement.

Data shows that Robotaxi is becoming more experienced and safer over time.

Another San Francisco Story

Self-driving car testing has been controversial around the world. In San Francisco and across California, it has also been resisted by taxi and ride-sharing drivers who say the new technology poses a threat to their livelihoods. However, the biggest concern about deploying driverless services is safety.

There have been several minor, even somewhat silly, incidents during California Robotaxi testing. For example, in March 2023, a Cruise struck a fallen utility pole as it crossed a closed intersection. And an incident in October 2023 raised deeper concerns: a pedestrian was struck by a human-driven car that pushed her into the path of a Cruise. Cruise failed to stop in time and, while trying to pull over, dragged the pedestrian 20 feet, stopping with its wheels crushing her legs, causing serious injuries. After the incident, Cruise's driver-out testing and Robotaxi service licenses were revoked by the California DMV. Competitor Waymo is still in operation.

Waymo also encountered challenges in February 2024. A Waymo collided with a cyclist, causing minor injuries. The reason was that a truck blocked the Waymo's view. When he appeared in the Waymo's path, the Waymo braked urgently as soon as it saw the man on the bike, but still hit him.

That month, a Waymo was set on fire and vandalized after entering a crowded street in San Francisco's Chinatown at night. Some said that human drivers would know to avoid the area during those times, but Waymo didn't.

Of course, there have been some collisions involving Robotaxi since testing began. The California DMV has a relevant collision log that records nearly 550 collisions from 2019 to 2023; of these, 288 occurred when the vehicle was in autonomous mode, not in manual mode by the test driver. Of these, 22 were attributable to failures in the autonomous driving system.

Additionally, there were only 11 accidents when the vehicles were operated without a safety driver, and only one resulted in a major injury. In addition to the October accident, there was only one other minor injury due to a tire blowout when the vehicles were operated without a safety driver.

As a result, in nearly 4 million miles of driver testing, only one Robotaxi caused a serious injury to one person. Compared to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) report, a total of 2,497,647 people were injured in road traffic accidents in the United States in 2021. At the same time, the total mileage of the fleet on the road was only 3.1 trillion miles. In other words, the typical road injury rate is once every 1.25 million miles.

The data does show that Robotaxi vehicles cause far fewer accidents than human drivers. In addition, Cruise can learn from the October accident and update its software . If the same incident occurs again, it should perform better. Human drivers, on the other hand, will not do the same and will always have the same collision. While one driver may learn and improve, this will do little for other drivers. For these reasons, it makes sense for the industry to continue to advance autonomous technology.

ADAS plays an important role

Key Advanced Driver Assistance Systems ( ADAS ), active safety and passive safety features are now widely used in new cars. In 2022, more than 80% of new cars in the US, EU+UK+EU and Japan were equipped with automatic emergency braking (AEB). This is driven by safety, and certification bodies such as Euro NCAP are increasingly focusing on these active safety systems.

AEB typically uses radar , cameras or both, which makes it relatively simple to include adaptive cruise control (ACC) and lane keeping systems (LKA). Even so, these are more often offered as optional extras, meaning overall deployment is low.

Blind spot monitoring (BSM) is becoming more common and can help improve safety. These systems require two to four additional radar sensors.

Across all features, the United States is the largest adopter of ADAS features on average.

In terms of the number of radars per vehicle at different levels, each vehicle is equipped with a total of 1.46 radars, and the total market size in 2022 is about 120 million. Most of them are used in L2 vehicles, almost every vehicle has a front radar, and about half of the vehicles are equipped with a BSM system. Since the system uses two radars, one on each side of the vehicle, it will add one radar to each vehicle.

Europe has particularly high adoption rates for Level 0 and Level 1 radars, which shows the growing prominence of AEB systems as standard across all levels. This is required to earn top scores from safety bodies.

Except for flagship and cutting-edge models, the adoption of ADAS features such as ACC, AEB and LKA has increased. Safety is the main driver for the adoption of these features, especially AEB, which helps improve the safety of vulnerable road users, and Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS) that helps avoid highway collisions. These systems are equipped with sensors such as cameras, automotive radars and automotive lidars . Once these systems and sensors are installed in the vehicle, it is easy for OEMs to start offering convenience features such as ACC and Highway Pilot Assist (NOA), creating additional value for OEMs.

The popularity and growth of ADAS has had the biggest impact on today’s automotive sensor market, with multiple cameras and radars required per vehicle. Sensor suites will continue to grow as new features emerge, the industry further deploys Level 3, begins developing Level 4, and Robotaxi, which can carry up to 40 sensors, begins to take off.

L3/L4 technology emerges

After years of waiting, false starts, and great hopes, the era of self-driving cars is here, and it will profoundly transform the transportation industry over the next 20 years.

For some time, the automotive industry has been stuck at Level 2. Consumers can use technologies such as ACC and LKA, but until now, they have been responsible for the vehicle. Some hands-free systems have been launched, such as GM's "Super Cruise" and Ford's "Blue Cruise".

In reality, Level 3 systems have been around for a long time. Audi tried out a Level 3 A8 with cameras, radar, and lidar in 2017, which was then limited to Level 2 by regulators. After some important legislative changes, Honda successfully certified the Legend for Level 3 use in Japan in 2021, but only delivered 100 units. It was the Mercedes S-Class that achieved Level 3, which was certified in Germany and parts of the United States. Time and again, Mercedes has demonstrated automotive technology in the S-Class that eventually trickled down to other areas of the automotive market.