For many years, humans have talked about self-driving cars. They’ve appeared in sci-fi movies, TV shows, and books. In recent years, technology seems to have moved closer to this eventuality as well.
If you visit the Hyundai Waco location you can find cars that have technology that puts anything that was available fifty years ago to shame. However, while the tech keeps getting better, it is not yet possible to buy a fully self-driving car.
How close are we to having that technology widely available? It’s worth talking about, so let’s do so in detail right now.
Do Self-Driving Cars Exist Yet?
The short answer is that no, at this point cars that are fully self-driving do not exist, and they are not available for sale. That doesn’t mean that dozens of companies aren’t buried in research and testing to try and get us to that point.
The best that car companies can do right now is to come out with models with more sophisticated driver aid features than ever before. This is a field of technology that is generally referred to as ADAS, which is short for advanced driver assistance systems.
This field is not unique to a single car company or brand. Rather, virtually all the car companies are working on various tools that fall into this general category. Some work well enough that they have become commonplace in the modern vehicle market.
What Are Some Examples of ADAS?
Automatic emergency braking is one of the key ADAS examples that you might see in a brand-new car if you buy one. It allows the car to stop if it senses another vehicle or a sizable object in front of you and you don’t apply the brakes in time. The car will stop on its own, potentially saving your life or preventing you from suffering a serious injury.
Adaptive cruise control is another example. It lets you put the vehicle on cruise control if you’re out on the highway. Then, if traffic conditions around you change, the car automatically adjusts its speed without any input from you, the driver.
There is also blind spot detection. This involves sensors that the car has which tell you when there is a vehicle or a large object in your blind spot. It lets you know something is there with an auditory warning, a light on the dashboard, one in the mirror, or both.
While there are all exciting innovations, they’re still light years away from a truly self-driving car. Let’s look at what’s holding up the leap to fully autonomous vehicles.
The Levels of Autonomy
If you start to have a conversation with someone who is studying or researching how to get cars to the point where they can drive on their own, they are likely going to bring up the so-called “levels of autonomy” sooner rather than later. There are five levels of autonomy, and this scale has come to be considered universal for companies and individuals trying to develop self-driving cars.
Level 2 is what we were just describing. This level has been attained, and it involves features like lane control assist and the car accelerating or braking on its own.
These features are now readily available in several modern cars. However, while they represent an advance in technology over previous vehicles, you must still keep control over the vehicle to make sure nothing goes wrong.
Level 3 involves a vehicle being able to drive to a destination, brake, switch lanes, or turn without any direct involvement by the driver. If the system requests it, then the driver can intervene.
Mercedes Benz was the first car company to come out with a vehicle that featured some degree of Level 3 autonomy in 2022. Their Drive Pilot system has this tech. The company tested the technology in Nevada and California before deeming it safe for widespread use.
However, the driver must still keep a close eye on what the car is doing with this limited form of Level 3 autonomy.
The 4th and 5th Levels of Autonomy
The 4th level of autonomy is where a vehicle can drive itself with or without a driver behind the wheel. This stage is still under development.
The 5th and final level of autonomy is the true self-driving car stage as you have seen it in movies or read about it in books. At this stage, the vehicle can be said to be completely self-directed. In other words, humans are entirely out of the loop. These vehicles will be able to drive with someone in the car or completely on their own.
Is a Breakthrough Coming?
As for whether humanity is close to a breakthrough to levels 4 and 5 of autonomy, there are literally dozens of entities that are fixated on getting there. Many of them are spending countless millions of dollars to try and reach this point. They conduct new tests on partially self-driving vehicles every day.
There seems to be little doubt that stage 4 and 5 of autonomy are coming for vehicles. Consumers want them, and car companies also know that the first one to reach these plateaus should get all their money back from research and then some. However, no one has quite cracked the code yet, and nothing indicates it’s going to happen in the immediate future.
Many experts feel that self-driving cars that can operate without human beings in the loop at all might debut around 2035. That is just a rough estimate, though.
The situation with self-driving cars is much like the space race or when fully electric cars were the desired result. There are countless scientists and companies who are certain they can achieve these things. It’s just a matter of remaining persistent till a breakthrough comes.
For now, we will have to content ourselves as consumers with driving cars that have more new tech with each passing year. Younger individuals will probably have a chance to sit in a self-driving car when they get older.
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