Vehicle autonomy has been in the news for a while now. The technology rapidly went from something that could be possible in the distant future to a reality that is in some of our cars today. Currently, there are two major players “racing” to create an autonomous vehicle, Tesla Motors, and Google. But the question remains, is it really a race?
Before we delve deeper into the topic, two major points need to be made. The first being that what Tesla has in their car is not considered fully autonomous by the industry. Their technology is considered to be semi-autonomous due to the amount of driver intervention that is still required. The second is that the NHTSA has already come up with a standardised scale, 1-5, which rates the autonomy level of vehicles with one being the least autonomous and five being complete autonomy.
Tesla current system that is in public beta is currently rated as a two on the aforementioned scale. This is due to the driver needing to input navigation instructions, keep their hands on the steering wheel and needing to provide input to the vehicle occasionally to make it known to the system that the driver is indeed responsive. This can arguably be seen as only a slight step above lane assist, intelligent cruise control and collision prevention implemented in vehicles years before.
Google, however, is working to develop a vehicle that is closer to fully autonomous. The tech giant has the advantage that it does not have to produce cars to make a profit and can pursue vehicular autonomy as somewhat of a side project. The company has also recently stated that it does not plan to manufacture its own vehicles, but rather implement the technology they’re developing into existing manufacturers cars. Yes, this means you will not get to drive the Google car. The company is currently pushing to achieve autonomy levels four and five.
Clearly, the two companies are working to achieve the same goal. However, they’re taking very different paths to get there. So different in fact, that it is difficult to call what is occurring between Google and Tesla a race. Both are at very different stages in the process. Google is closer than anyone to achieving full autonomy while Tesla has been able to test their semi-autonomous technology on the public.
