The Self-Driving Car and the Smart Highway Imagine getting into your car and telling the driver to take you to the office, the airport, or the mall. You relax while you’re ferried to your destination and dropped at the door. Your car then waits discreetly for your return trip. Not too unusual if you employ a driver or use a limo service. However, that’s a little pricey for the mass market. But, imagine that your driver is not a human being but rather an affordable, computerized feature on your vehicle.
After percolating in the labs for decades, such technology is finally almost ready for deployment. And, it promises to revolutionize the way we drive, for better or worse.
As Bob Lutz, probably today’s most respected automotive visionary, explained in a recent issue of Fortune magazine, “We are without a doubt near the day when you can climb into a car on Long Island, program it to take you to your niece’s house in Chicago, hit enter and execute, and after the first 100 yards, once you hit a thoroughfare, the car takes over automatically and you just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
According to Lutz, who has held top jobs at Ford and Chrysler and is currently vice chairman of General Motors, “Sooner rather than later, we’ll be able to take the driver right out of the driving equation.”
Sooner would be better than later, because the need for such a system exists right now. The U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration measures the effects of congestion in terms of human time and individual wage loss. Its studies reveal that congestion results in at least 5.7 billion person-hours of delay each year in the United States. Broken down by driver, the cost of congestion surpassed $900 in 1997. When the costs of lost wages and wasted fuel are added up for the entire U.S. population, the total cost of congestion is $72 billion a year.
Clearly, there is enormous demand for a better system. The progress in developing the new technology is being driven by the exponential growth of computing power and the dramatic decline in the cost of data storage. Those factors are critical because cost is a critical issue for vehicles. Automakers have to be able to develop systems that are “fail-safe” at an affordable price.
As Lutz explains, the technology already exists. “We have radar technology that can be tied to cruise control and brakes, which automatically adjusts your speed based on following distance and pre-programmed settings. It’s still a little bit raw, but it works great. The technology can allow cars and trucks to follow each other in very closely spaced caravans. This maximizes fuel economy and dramatically reduces congestion.”
He adds that suppliers are also developing side-vision-based lane-departure warning systems that read the edge of the road and the white lines. And the next-generation global positioning satellite system will improve in accuracy from within yards to within inches.
These technologies will enable the building of so-called Smart Highway systems. Best of all, it won’t require tearing up every highway in order to bury wires under the pavement, as experts once feared would be necessary. With the next-generation GPS system, the road infrastructure won’t need to be changed at all.
The new GPS will also coordinate a car’s speed with its location. For example, Lutz says, if you’re in a state with a 75 mile-per-hour limit and you cross into a state with a 65 mile-per-hour limit, the GPS will automatically reduce your speed. He says it will also be able to pinpoint entrance and exit ramps, based on software programmed into the car’s receiver and on the accurate position reading.
He concludes, “With radar-based automatic distance-sensing systems, imaging and lane-adherence technology, and the GPS system, we basically have the enablers to do fully autonomous driving.”
This trend is made possible by the car’s evolution from a mechanical device to an increasingly computerized one, in which digital signals take the place of moving parts. That means microprocessors can control the most basic driving functions, like steering and braking.
At the same time, there is a parallel evolution in sensory technology. Most advanced safety systems are equipped with sensors that look inside the car, tracking tire rotation, brake pressure, and how rapidly a driver is turning the steering wheel.
But next-generation sensors, including radar and hidden cameras, are looking outside the car, giving it the ability to “see” its surroundings.
For instance, in 2004, Toyota started selling its Lexus LS430 sedan with radar actually embedded in the grille. If the car’s computer processors sense a collision is imminent, they will cinch up the seat belts, increase the driver’s braking pressure, and in some cases alter the suspension, moving the car closer to the ground.
Even more impressive, the next Mercedes-Benz flagship model will be able to drive itself ? at least at low speed. As reported in the Australian daily, The Age, the next all-new S-class, due in 2005, will be available with a radar system that allows the car to automatically creep forward, stop, and restart in slow-moving traffic.
The creeping radar system will use some of the sensors and hardware that will be in place for the vehicle’s active cruise control, called Distronic, which matches the car’s speed to that of the vehicle ahead during freeway travel.
The 2004 Distronic Adaptive Cruise Control is the world’s first adaptive cruise control. A radar sensor in the grille can pinpoint the location of a moving car ahead of you. Distronic can automatically adjust the throttle ? and even apply up to 20 percent of the car’s braking power ? to help you maintain the distance you have selected between your car and the vehicle in front of you. Electronics that assist the car’s ride, handling, and stability will be further refined in the new model, which will have about the same overall dimensions as the present car.
In an even more revolutionary development, Toyota engineers in Japan have developed a car that can perform a perfect parallel park between two other cars. The system is being launched in Japanese showrooms late in 2004 as an optional extra on the second-generation Prius hybrid car.
The system took three years to develop and is being touted as a step towards the self-driving car. The self-parking system uses a rear-mounted camera and a computer program to perform its task.
After electronically measuring a parking spot and marking out a “turn-in” point with a virtual flagpole, a computer turns the steering wheel automatically, guiding the rear of the car into the spot. It can monitor white lines and gutters, ensuring no scraped wheels and making the driver look like an expert every time.
The anticipated benefits in terms of recovery of wasted commuter time, increased safety, improved traffic flow, improved fuel economy, and, potentially, even improved national security, are enormous. The challenge is to create the incentives necessary to make this happen and to manage the transition from a fully manual traffic system to a fully automated one.
With that in mind, we offer the following seven forecasts for your consideration:
First, between 2015 and 2020, the smart highway will become a reality. Vehicles will be equipped with sensors and wireless communications systems. One or more lanes will allow vehicles to be guided at closely spaced intervals at controlled speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. Using networks of computers, the vehicles will share information with each other about their speed, braking, turns, and so on. This will reduce gridlock, and maximize the number of cars that can use the highway at the same time.
Second, we forecast that self-driving vehicles will cut highway fatalities by 50 percent, or about 25,000 lives per year, by 2020. Eliminating human error increases passenger safety by eliminating careless accidents.
Third, the smart highway will be made possible because of advances in GPS technology. Today, more than 30 million people rely on using GPS regularly, Scientific American reports. Improved satellites will be launched between 2005 and the end of the decade, providing more accurate signals than we have today. The cars on the smart highway will calculate their exact location using these new GPS signals. Due in part to this application of the technology, worldwide revenues from the GPS market will triple, from $3.5 billion in 2003 to $10 billion in 2010, according to Scientific American.
Fourth, the smart highway will help the U.S. overcome the safety hazards that will arise when our aging population refuses to give up their car keys. As the Baby Boom generation reaches their 80s and 90s over the next few decades, they will not want to give up their mobility, but their weakening eyesight and slower reflexes will lead to an increase in traffic accidents. Driven by demographics, the “smart highway” will reach the tipping point and “self-driving” will become mandatory equipment on every vehicle by 2025.
Fifth, the industry that stands to suffer the greatest loss from the smart highway is the insurance industry. When drivers can lower their risk and liability for automobile accidents and property damage nearly to zero, the demand for insurance will drop sharply. This will be a dramatic reversal from the current trend of rising profits for the industry. Property and casualty insurers nearly tripled their profits during 2003, earning $32.3 billion compared to the $13.5 billion reported in 2002, according to Weiss Ratings, Inc., the nation’s leading independent provider of ratings and analyses of financial services companies, mutual funds, and stocks.
Sixth, in our era of terrorism, the smart highway also offers a way to monitor the exact location and speed of every vehicle on the road as well as its stated destination. As this technology becomes ubiquitous, much of the threat from car bombs and terrorist tanker drivers would disappear. The potential cost to privacy would have to be weighed in the balance.
Seventh, in this new world, jobs that are based on driving will disappear. Cab drivers, bus drivers, and truck drivers will become relics of a bygone era. Obviously, the Teamsters Union is not going to like this scenario, but it’s part of an inevitable shift in the economics of value creation. Fortunately, these workers will be retrained to occupy other economic niches.
References List :
1. Fortune, June 14, 2004, "Detroit’s Mr. Car Guy Says Driving Is Dead," by Bob Lutz. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by Time Warner, Inc. All rights reserved.2. The Age, March 29, 2003, "Drive-Itself S-Class Eases Up to the Line," by Greg Kable. ⓒ Copyright 2003 by John Fairfax Holdings, Limited. All rights reserved.3. The Sydney Morning Herald, August 20, 2003, "Look, No Hands: Self-Parking Car Brings Salvation for Truly Useless Drivers," by Toby Hagon. ⓒ Copyright 2003 by John Fairfax Holdings, Limited. All rights reserved.4. The Financial Times, August 6, 2003, "Warning Lights Flash for Transport Planners," by John Griffiths. ⓒ Copyright 2003 by The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved.5. For more information about insurance revenues and profits, visit the Weiss Ratings, Inc. website at:www.weissratings.com/News/Ins_General
