Podcast: The Bottom Line, The Future of the Car Industry

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If you can access it, the BBC's Bottom Line series had an episode called "The Future of the Car Industry" on Friday.

It's mostly about autonomous cars and car hailing/sharing.

The Future of the Car Industry, The Bottom Line - BBC Radio 4


Guests:

• Georg Ell, Director, Western Europe, Tesla Motors
• Matteo de Renzi, CEO, Western Europe, Gett
• Dr. Eberhard Zeeb, Senior Manager, Function and Software Driving Assistance, Daimler

Georg Ell said a couple of things I hadn't personally heard before:

1. when challenged about whether people would really opt their $100k cars into a car hailing scheme, he said (paraphrasing) "Maybe for friends and family to use"
2. Accidents when driving with AP are half the rate of non-AP driving across the Tesla fleet.

The difference in attitude and levels of caution between Daimler and Tesla were very stark on autonomous driving.

 

[ecarfan]

The difference in attitude and levels of caution between Daimler and Tesla were very stark on autonomous driving

I think in part that is due to the stark difference between Tesla AutoPilot real world capability and whatever Daimler offers on a small fraction of all the cars it sells.

 

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I think in part that is due to the stark difference between Tesla AutoPilot real world capability and whatever Daimler offers on a small fraction of all the cars it sells.

I think that's very true. Zeeb made what I thought were some good points, though:

• L5 and probably L4 systems will need a lot of redundancy, because the driver (front passenger?) won't expect to take over in the event of a systems failure. In fact, in an L5 car, they won't be able to.
• It's very likely that they will be at least one more revision of sensor tech before L4 and L5 are truly achieved. Pretty sure he said this to counter the 'buy the hardware now, get the software later' message that Tesla is using, but he may be right.
• L4/L5 is about the car being able to drive in any condition, anywhere - including maze-like city streets in old European cities, through a monsoon in Mumbai or Karachi, up difficult mountain passes in the Andes, etc.