8/24/23, 7:25 AM The driverless car revolution is stuck in the slow lane | Financial Times

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Opinion Driverless vehicles

The driverless car revolution is stuck in the slow lane

There is still no consensus on how autonomous vehicles should work

ELAINE MOORE

© Maria Hergueta

Elaine Moore OCTOBER 23 2022

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8/24/23, 7:25 AM The driverless car revolution is stuck in the slow lane | Financial Times

The hype cycle of driverless cars is on yet another depressing downswing. Last week,
Tesla boss Elon Musk admitted that full self-driving software was not yet ready to be
used without someone sitting behind the wheel. Mobileye, Intel’s autonomous driving
unit, cut its valuation expectation from $50bn down to $16bn. Multiple media outlets
have published stories mocking the sector for its failings after billions of dollars of
investment.

The peculiar thing is that this has all happened just as robotaxis arrive on the streets
of San Francisco. For $10 or so, you can catch a driverless car from the famous
Painted Ladies on Alamo Square to the bars of Nob Hill, watching from the back seat
as the wheel turns itself to manoeuvre the car through traffic.

The test scheme was launched by Cruise, an autonomous vehicle business that is
majority owned by General Motors. Like Uber, it has an app that you can use to call a
car to meet you. Prices are similar too, though presumably the rides should be cheaper
if it takes off.

It is disconcerting to see a driverless car pull up beside you and listen as a robotic
voice tells you to put on a seatbelt and enjoy your ride. But every journey I have taken
has been perfectly smooth. The cars are cautious drivers when they spot obstacles,
which is very reassuring for nervous passengers. This could also be why there have
been reports of cars stuck in the road and blocking traffic. After a crash with a
speeding vehicle, Cruise recalled its robotaxis and updated the software. It now plans
to expand the scheme to Austin and Phoenix.

Hailing a driverless car to get from one part of town to another feels like living in the
future. It can sometimes seem as if all the money in tech is being poured into digital
advertising, cryptocurrencies and consumer apps. Live in San Francisco for long
enough your phone will fill up with apps for every conceivable convenience. But
autonomous vehicles, an ambitious, difficult and potentially life changing sector, offer
a more tangible example of tech progress.

It has been an outrageously expensive endeavour, of course. McKinsey put the total
invested at over $100bn since 2010. Last year alone, funding into autonomous vehicle
companies exceeded $12bn, according to CB Insights.

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8/24/23, 7:25 AM The driverless car revolution is stuck in the slow lane | Financial Times

Development has been much slower than expected too. The dream of driverless cars
has been around for almost as long as the automobile itself. The modern era can be
dated back to Google’s self-driving project, now Waymo, which began in 2009. By the
time I arrived in San Francisco in 2018 it seemed as if driverless cars would surely be
on every road in a matter of months. Uber claimed that it would soon do away with
human drivers while Waymo and Lyft were launching robotaxi schemes in Phoenix
and Las Vegas. Everyone from SoftBank to Apple was investing in autonomous
vehicles.

Since then, however, the sector’s fortunes have waned. The same year, an Uber self-
driving car killed a woman who was crossing the street in Arizona. Tests were stopped
and optimism collapsed. Two years later Uber sold its driverless car unit to local start-
up Aurora.

The challenge remains substantial. Driverless cars do not just have to control the
mechanics of a vehicle, they have to understand the world around them and make
rapid decisions when circumstances change. There is still no consensus on how they
should work either. Cruise maps the roads it drives by mixing road data collected by
both cameras and lidar — laser-based sensors. Tesla has called lidar a “crutch”.

If it was possible to build the infrastructure for driverless cars from scratch things
would be simpler. Roads are busy and messy. They are full of different users making
irrational decisions. Cars must not just see the obstacle ahead but know whether it is
about to move and, if so, in what direction.

Cruise’s robotaxi test is a fairly conservative one. The cars can only drive between
10pm and 5.30am. If I want to show visitors the wonders of autonomous vehicles I
have to wait for night-time and make sure I’m in the right part of the city.

Still, the money keeps coming. Either driverless cars are an example of sunk cost
fallacy or their slow start is not seen as a hindrance to eventual adoption. Uber has
signed a deal with Motional — the start-up that works with Lyft to offer autonomous
vehicle rides in Vegas. Volkswagen’s automotive software subsidiary Cariad is
investing $2bn in a partnership with Chinese chipmaker Horizon Robotics. Waymo is
planning to expand its robotaxi service to Los Angeles and Cruise hopes to get
regulatory approval for robotaxis without pedals or steering wheels.

It has been a slow and expensive road. It may still be years before the cars are
widespread. But for many of the biggest companies in the world, driverless vehicles
are still inevitable.

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8/24/23, 7:25 AM The driverless car revolution is stuck in the slow lane | Financial Times

elaine.moore@ft.com

Letter in response to this article:

Look both ways before stepping into a driverless car future / From Sheila Hayman,
Advisory Council, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, London NW1,
UK

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023. All rights reserved.

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