Christian Wolmar

False start | 5 July 2018

Billions have been invested but autonomous vehicles will not be on a road any time soon

I was worried that going to the autonomous vehicle exhibition in Stuttgart would be tantamount to an atheist walking into St Peter’s while the Pope was conducting a mass. There is something religious about the fervour with which adherents to the driverless credo practise their faith and promise us a new kingdom. Their proselytising has indeed convinced many. Politicians are making outlandish statements, such as Jesse Norman’s two weeks ago, that ‘Our entire use of roads is to be revolutionised by autonomous vehicles’, and pouring large sums — a promised £180 million so far — into bizarre research projects such as the development of strange robot cars slower than a Reliant Robin and allowed only on pavements in Milton Keynes.

The public, too, has been won over. Ask the average Joe in your local or even Basil in his club, and they will sing the praises of a technology that will apparently end carnage on the roads and allow them to check their Twitter accounts while being driven to work.

The assumption that this technology will soon transform our lives has been speeded along by gullible journalists who fail to look beyond the extravagant claims of the press releases pouring out of tech companies and auto manufacturers, hailing the imminence of major developments that never seem to materialise. Yet a careful reading of these announcements is sufficient to expose the limitations of what is actually being promised. As one of the exhibitors in Stuttgart explained to me: ‘The problem is that the marketing people get wind of something in the company and push it to the maximum without any real awareness of the limitations. That explains much of the hype.’

If the more extreme claims were to be believed, we would already be adapting to the new reality of driverless cars.

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