Technical, Economic, Policy Obstacles Remain on Autonomous Vehicles, Say Panelists

Building AVs is “very difficult,” Iagnemma said, saying real-world scenarios need to be tested. AV systems are “made by people -- hardware fails, software fails,” he said. Over the past year, it has become accepted by the industry that redundant hardware and software are needed in self-driving cars, he said. “You need a backup plan.”

Cost is a significant obstacle for carmakers, said Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who pegged the cost of “these sensor-encrusted vehicles” at $250,000-$300,000 for OEMs. And that’s just on the vehicle side. Cellphone data usage in the connected car can be 50-500 gigabytes per month, driving a bill totaling thousands of dollars, he said. “If you roll out 10,000 of these vehicles, those numbers can add up” and have a material impact on carmakers’ earnings -- without returning revenue in early stages, he said.

On the policy side, the AV market affects not only carmakers and tech companies but also has implications for as many as 300 entities including insurance companies, unions and rental car companies, said Cherilyn Pascoe, staffer at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Federal regulations need to be updated to keep pace with the innovation, she said, and safety is the top priority on the policy front, followed by determining the federal role vs. that of state and local jurisdictions.

“We need to get to a place where new standards are developed that are updated and leave behind outdated standards,” said Pascoe. Some carmakers want to change how a vehicle is designed because they think their approach is safer, she noted, citing removal of the steering wheel that would prevent a driver from grabbing the wheel of an autonomous vehicle and changing the mode of operation. General Motors announced this month it will build SUVs without steering wheels, pedals or manual controls at a Michigan assembly plant. Pascoe sees exemptions from the federal government that allow manufacturers to make such changes temporary: “We have to get to a place where new standards are developed,” she said.

On the implications of last week’s accident -- in which an Uber vehicle struck a pedestrian who later died of her injuries (see 1803200044) -- on consumer trust of AVs, Iagnemma said the incident shines a light on important questions about uniformity of practices across the industry on safety and testing. Although an accident with a self-driving Tesla vehicle two years ago didn’t appear to have a slowing effect on the nascent industry, Iagnemma conceded that with the first documented death from an AV vehicle accident, there’s a risk that the public could come out of the Uber accident "with a partially formed view.”

Jonas of Morgan Stanley said it’s unlikely the accident will affect the mindset of institutional investors who have an inherent understanding that with new technologies “things will go wrong.” He cited airbags as an example, saying deaths have been caused by airbags that “occasionally go wrong,” but there hasn't been a movement to remove them from vehicles because of their net benefit. It puts the onus on the scientific community to show the number of miles driven with AVs proving they’re safer than human-driven vehicles, he said. From an ethical perspective, he questioned the moral equivalency of a drunk driver who kills someone and “deserves to go to jail” and a computer that kills someone trying to save lives. “We’re not going to know what those points are until we test the legal system and the regulatory system,” Jonas said. The law of numbers, he said, will involve “the occasional loss of life.”

The Senate committee has been working with governors, mayors and state departments of transportation over the past couple of years to determine states’ roles in the AV future, said Pascoe. Currently, the federal government regulates the vehicle and the state regulates the driver. “If you take the human driver from the picture, it becomes a little complicated,” she said. Pascoe urged a “clarification of what everybody has agreed is the federal vs. state role,” she said, with states ratcheting up legislation on AVs, some eyeing economic benefit and others wanting to regulate safety. She expressed hope the Senate will vote on AV legislation over the next couple of months, after the House’s unanimous passage of the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution Act (HR-3388) in September.

Pascoe referenced “lots of bipartisan support from a number of states,” saying disability advocates are strong proponents of legislation that would advance AVs, along with carmakers and tech companies.

Jonas suggested it’s too early for the industry to set standards for self-driving vehicles, saying mistakes need to be made and the national security element “can’t be ignored.” If the U.S. doesn’t get AV right, other countries will, he said. “We might look back at autonomous cars as the training ground for the weapon of the future,” he said, calling the autonomous car a “terminator programmed to save lives.”

Initial applications for AVs will be for mobility on demand, said Iagnemma, to “take you where you need to go.” Early models won’t be ready for Boston winters, for instance, he said. It will be a decade before the technology trickles down to the OEM market when “fully driverless” is a feature consumers can choose when buying a new car, he said.

Safety must remain front and center, said Pascoe, as stakeholders jostle to grab a share of what one estimate calls a $7 trillion industry. “That’s why we’re seeing such a tremendous effort from states” to attract testing and R&D centers, she said. “As exciting and cool as AVs are,” she said, it’s important to remember that 37,461 lives were lost on highways in 2016. “AVs have tremendous potential to save lives and transform the way we get around.”