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BMW Announces Self-Driving Car a Day After a Tesla Fatality Is Confirmed The Fully Self-Driving Car Is Still Years Away
(35 minutes later)
FRANKFURT — Undeterred by a fatal accident involving a self-driving Tesla car, the German automaker BMW announced on Friday that it would begin mass-producing a car capable of operating itself in 2021. Even as automakers and technology companies have been promoting a euphoric vision of the future in which cars will drive themselves and serious crashes will be rare, their engineers have been engaged in a sobering debate.
BMW will produce the car in cooperation with Mobileye, an Israeli company that supplies cameras and other sensors for self-driving cars. The semiconductor maker Intel will also provide technology for the vehicle, to be called the iNext. Just how autonomous can and should cars become? the engineers are asking. Is there an inherent danger in technology that invites human drivers to sit back and relax — but still requires them to be ready to hit the brakes or grab the wheel at the first sign of trouble?
A day earlier, Tesla disclosed that an Ohio man was killed in Williston, Fla., in May while his Model S electric sedan was in self-driving mode. The car failed to brake when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of it, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on preliminary information. Those questions have taken on a new urgency after the revelation this week that the driver of a Tesla Model S died in a crash in Florida while the electric car was operating in its Autopilot mode.
It is the first known fatal accident involving a vehicle driving itself using sophisticated computer software, sensors, cameras and radar. The Florida Highway Patrol identified the driver who was killed as Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio. The man, Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was driving on a divided highway, when a tractor-trailer truck made a left turn and crossed in front of Mr. Brown’s lane of traffic. Tesla said neither Mr. Brown nor the car’s self-driving system noticed the white truck against a bright sky, and the brakes were never applied.
The accident could undercut one of the main arguments in favor of self-driving cars. Proponents say that cars operated by computers will be safer than cars driven by people, who can be irrational, incompetent or inebriated. For now, other automakers are giving no sign of slowing down their efforts to push forward with cars that can drive themselves. But mainly they say the technology isn’t ready yet — which for many is an implicit rebuke of Tesla’s willingness to tempt tech-minded drivers to turn tomorrow’s vision into today’s road reality.
The death of Mr. Brown, a Navy veteran, could also push back predictions of when self-driving cars will become commonplace. The Renault-Nissan alliance has promised to have 10 models on the road by 2020 that will have autonomous driving abilities, though they will not necessarily be able to drive themselves all the time. On Friday, even as the world was absorbing news of Mr. Brown’s death as the first known fatality of the autonomous driving revolution, the German automaker BMW said it intended to offer a “self-driving car” — but not until 2021. And it will have much different technology than is now available on the Tesla Model S.
Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Fiat Chrysler, said in May that self-driving cars were about five years away. “Today we are standing at the brink of a new revolution,” Harald Krüger, BMW chief executive, said at a news conference in Munich.
Harald Krüger, the chief executive of BMW, acknowledged the fatal crash involving Tesla’s autopilot feature, saying it was “really very sad.” He also said BMW would need “the next few years” to perfect its autonomous driving system. Mr. Krüger added that the Tesla crash was “really very sad” and said BMW would need “the next few years” to perfect its autonomous driving system. “Today the technologies are not ready for serious production,” he said.
“Today, the technologies are not ready for serious production,” he said. The world’s largest carmaker, Toyota, is a notable holdout in the rush toward completely autonomous cars. Last year, the company said that it would invest $1 billion in a Silicon Valley-based research effort to focus on cars that will function as “guardian angels,” saving human drivers from errors, rather than replacing them.
Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s chairman and co-founder, also suggested that self-driving technology was close but not ready for use unless human drivers remained engaged. Automakers and technology companies still need to do enormous amounts of “validation and simulations” in artificial, closed testing environments to be certain the technology is safe, he said. Tesla, which started its Autopilot feature last fall, has emphasized in discussing Mr. Brown’s death that the system isn’t intended to take over complete control of the car and that drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel and remain alert and engaged.
“I think it is very important, especially given this accident and what we hear in the news, that companies are very transparent about the limitations of the system,” Mr. Shashua said. “It’s not enough to tell the driver you have to be alert. You need to tell the driver why you need to be alert.” The point highlights the difference in approach that separates companies working on self-driving technology.
He added that the BMW car that Mobileye was working on would be capable of piloting itself on highways, but not necessarily in more complex urban settings. Ford Motor, Google, Volvo and others are aiming at offering fully autonomous cars that can operate safely without human intervention at all — an approach engineers call Level 4 automated driving. Those companies are wary of semiautonomous, or Level 3, technology that can drive the car for stretches of road under certain circumstances, but requires drivers to be ready to take over.
According to the Tesla website, the company uses Mobileye components, but developed the self-driving system in the Model S itself. Tesla’s Autopilot is not even a fully fledged Level 3 technology, and some experts say it is a risky approach.
BMW has cast itself as a pioneer in new technologies and an aggressive defender of its turf against encroachment by technology companies like Google and Apple. “There’s a huge inherent danger and it’s well proven — the computer making a mistake and the driver not taking over quickly enough,” said Mark Wakefield, a managing director at Alix Partners, a consulting firm with a large automotive practice.
The German company has prototypes of self-driving cars, and it produces a battery-powered car called the i3. Despite the i3’s use of cutting-edge technologies like lightweight carbon-fiber bodies, the car has not generated as much excitement as Tesla models. The trouble is that while semiautonomous systems like Tesla’s are guiding a car, human drivers can be lulled into feeling they are able to turn their attention away from the road. Mr. Brown, like some other Model S owners, posted videos showing the driver with no hands on the steering wheel. In one video, a driver climbs into the back seat.
Another German carmaker, Volkswagen, already has a partnership with Mobileye, which it announced in January. Mobileye, based in Jerusalem, provides sensors for self-driving cars as well as software that helps the vehicles to follow roads and terrain, read signs and detect hazards. Pete Cordaro, the owner of a vending machine company from Connellsville, Pa., owns a 2013 Model S that does not have Autopilot. But he drove a loaner with the feature earlier this year while his was being repaired. He loves his car and has deposits to buy two Model 3 compacts when that car is available, yet he is “on the fence” about getting Autopilot.
Major carmakers are watching warily as Silicon Valley companies circle the auto industry. Google has invested heavily in self-driving technology, and Apple has assembled a team that is working in secret on car-related projects. There has been speculation Apple might eventually produce a vehicle. While the technology “was the greatest thing” on closed highways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it could become confused in more complicated environments like construction zones, Mr. Cordaro said.
Both Google and Apple have been encroaching on car dashboards with technology that allows people to connect their mobile phones to interior display screens. “My experience is it’s really not completely safe except in limited-access highways,” he said. “It gives you a false sense of security. You get comfortable and think you can take your hands off the wheel but you really can’t. It should be called Auto-assist, instead of Autopilot, because that’s all it is.”
Even Amnon Shashua, an executive whose technology is part of Tesla’s self-driving feature, said on Friday that he did not think self-driving’s time had yet come.
Mr. Shashua is co-founder and chairman of Mobileye, an Israeli company that makes camera and sensing technology. According to the Tesla website, Tesla uses Mobileye components but developed the self-driving system in the Model S itself.
Mobileye, along with the chip maker Intel, is at work in a partnership with BMW on the self-driving car that the German automaker described in Munich on Friday that is supposed to be available in 2021.
Mr. Shashua suggested that self-driving technology was close, but still not quite ready for actual use without human drivers remaining engaged.
“Five years is a very short time,’’ Mr. Shashua said. ‘‘On the other hand, it is a sufficient time to do the types of validations that are needed.”
The BMW car Mobileye is collaborating on will be capable of piloting itself on highways, but not necessarily in complex urban settings.
Automakers and technology companies still need to do “hundreds of thousands or millions of kilometers of validation and simulations” in closed testing environments to be certain the technology is safe, Mr. Shashua said.
“I think it is very important, especially given this accident and what we hear in the news, that companies are very transparent about the limitations of the system,” he said.
Although Tesla has publicly said that it has enhanced the Mobileye technology, the company has not commented on whether it has enhanced the system to protect against what the industry describes as “lateral turn across path”— the type of situation in the Florida accident.
Others in the automotive industry are working on sensor technologies meant to detect vehicles from all angles.
One approach is lidar — a system that uses rotating laser beams. Lidar is being used in the experimental autonomous vehicle being developed by BMW, as well as Google, Nissan and Apple. But it remains unclear whether the laser system will become down enough in price to use in mass-market cars.