As I head to Las Vegas for CES, I am assured by pre-CES meetings that self-driving cars will be a hot topic at the show. Faraday Future is set to announce their new car to compete with Tesla and is to have a self-driving feature as part of the new vehicle. Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, and Nissan will be announcing their self-driving cars.
But one of the big questions we are all asking is when will truly self-driving vehicles be in use? This is the question I asked Ford Executives when I spoke to them before CES.
Ford has become one of the most aggressive mainstream auto manufacturers and is very active in developing their own home grown self-driving car. I believe they also have what is probably the most realistic timeline for delivering their own autonomous vehicle and, more important to the overall discussion, what the timing will be over the next 5-10 years for the actual rollout of these “robot cars”.
Although we’ve seen Tesla add a self-driving feature to their cars and Google, Uber and others have mocked up self-driving cars that are being tested on roads already, we are not close to seeing truly self-driving automobiles on the road anytime soon. Although I am told that, from a technology standpoint, having a fully automated vehicle is possible as early as 2018. But as one can guess, the real roadblocks to getting self-driving cars on the road in this decade will be from federal, state and local regulatory agencies.
Ford told me they (and just about every other automaker along with players like Tesla, Uber, and Lyft) have been lobbying all of these agencies to help them create the types of laws that would allow self-driving vehicles to be on the road safely. But this is a time-intensive process and, given some of these regulations will also have to go through Congress, it will take awhile. Best guess by Ford is we could have the kind of rules in place for them and others to launch a set of fleet vehicles by 2021 or 2022.
Interestingly, Ford believes the first wave of self-driving cars will be fleets of these vehicles and will be dispatched on demand before they and others actually start selling autonomous vehicles directly to their customers. They see this as strategically important for the rollout of these cars as, during this period, it will give them a great deal of data needed before they actually sell cars to the public. That is why they made the big investment in Lyft although they could run their own fleet as well.
It appears this is the fundamental strategy of Uber and Lyft as well. They want to be the leaders in managing autonomous vehicle fleets and, while they would like to have their self-driving cars on the road sooner than 2020, the regulatory issues will most likely keep that from happening until at least 2020-2021.
This rollout strategy is both interesting and important since it starts to lay the groundwork for a completely new approach to our driving options and needs. The idea of having a fleet of vehicles at anyone’s disposal makes the issue of owning a vehicle a real question. In my case, it would be a cost of ownership vs combined cost of using an autonomous driving vehicle for all of my personal transportation needs.
I lease a car that costs me around $4500 a year plus gas and I drive about 13K miles a year. Once I know the cost per mile of using a fleet vehicle, I would be able to compare these costs and see if using a self-driving fleet vehicle makes sense. There will also be the response time to consider. For this to work for me, the car would have to get to me quickly.
Ford, Uber, Lyft, and others who will manage these autonomous vehicle fleets plan to have a large fleet lot in many areas of urban cities to make the response time as fast as possible.
While you may hear more aggressive timetables predicted than what Ford is suggesting, I suspect their forecast is pretty accurate. While I would really like to have either a fleet of vehicles at my disposal or own one myself, I just don’t see that happening until the beginning of the next decade.
Thank you for great content. I look forward to the continuation.