Then there is the question of liability, Chandrasekar pointed out. “What if a driverless car gets into an accident? Who will be blamed? You’ll get a tangle of lawsuits.” However, products liability law has been “remarkably adaptive” to new technologies, and, on the whole, the courts “have generally proven quite capable” of addressing this issue when it comes to new technologies and products, noted Brookings Institute researcher John Villasenor. “Given this strong record of adaptation to new technologies, there is no reason to expect that the legal system will be unable to address the products liability issues that arise with respect to autonomous vehicles,” he wrote. Interestingly enough, technology will be a trouble spot when it comes to marketing automotive vehicles. “The sheer amount of failsafe redundancies you’ll have to create, the AI you’ll have to build into the car to determine, for example, when the driver is ready to take control of the car, are issues,” Chandrasekar noted. “What if the driver’s taking a nap when the vehicle wants to revert control to him?” It’s likely these problems will largely be solved by 2025-2030, Chandrasekar said.
Currently, Google’s autonomous vehicles have about $150,000 worth of equipment, making them a very expensive proposition. By 2025, self-driving car technology will cost about $7,000 to $10,000, IHS predicted. This will fall to about $3,000 by 2035, when only fully autonomous vehicles will be offered. However, one issue -- safety -- may continue to plague auto manufacturers. There is no such thing as perfect software -- all code has flaws, some of which appear earlier than others -- and the public outcry that might result if one person were injured or killed because of a software glitch in a driverless car could be devastating. Some people compare autonomous vehicles to jetliners, which essentially are flown by autonomous systems, “but they forget the pilot is still there, a highly trained professional, who takes over if something goes wrong,” remarked Mark Fitzgerald, associate director of automotive practice at Strategy Analytics. Also, “jets have incredible maintenance procedures,” he pointed out, “whereas car owners may do their oil changes and not take the vehicle to the dealer.”
JUNE 2014 | www.PBEMag.com | PERMIAN BASIN ENERGY MAGAZINE
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