Autonomous vehicles – Just getting started

So far on this site, I have covered a lot about the future of transportation. But I mostly limited it to Powertrain. But I always wanted to explore more in other areas too. What better than self-driving AKA autonomous vehicles can do justice? Mind you, on the day I am writing this blog, I have absolutely zero knowledge in this sector. But this is not going to stop me from writing this blog. Let us learn together.

Autonomous vehicles – Briefing

Starting from scratch, an Autonomous vehicle is the one that can take people and cargo from A to B with or without human intervention. It is further classified as per the degree of human assistance – more on this later.

Numerous developments are happening in this tech every day. Starting from tiny startups that are still headquartered in garages to big giants like Tesla, BMW, etc are working and adding up their parts in this story. I cannot speak about autonomous vehicles without mentioning Tesla and Waymo.

We all know that there could be a day where cars and trucks could drive themselves. But it was Tesla that made it happen. Of course, there could be a number of prototypes even before Tesla was born. But Tesla managed to bring it to the real world in a production-spec car which you and I can experience. Handling an autonomous car in a controlled or simulated environment is way easier than making it happen with real humans. We can be a bit chaotic (could be a lot more chaotic sometimes).

These machines are actually handling pretty well in tolerating us – the disordered humans. (I am neither complaining nor want to prove any statement here). Of course, there is a dark side where these cars injured or even killed some people. This is saddening. But we need to understand that these cars are not smart enough and we need to keep an eye on the road and take control in any circumstance.

We see people uploading crazy videos on YouTube. Eating food, sleeping, sitting in the passenger seat and letting the car do the job of driving. God, they are scary! Typical ‘I own a Tesla’ people. DON’T DO THAT!!

Waymo is yet another startup that runs a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica and Jaguar I Pace. These are self-driving taxis and are backed by Alphabet.

Level of Autonomy – SAE Standards

Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has developed guidelines that classify autonomous vehicles concerning human intervention. A level 0 being complete human dependence, to level 5 being complete autonomy. Let us dig deeper.

Level 0

As I already said, any normal car that has nothing to do with autonomy fall here. Features like blind-spot monitoring, Automatic emergency braking, standard cruise control can be some examples.

Level 1

Level 1 is where the actual niche starts. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, we can consider automation from two different subsystems. Lateral and longitudinal. Lateral deals with steering corrections and longitudinal being acceleration and braking.

Level 1 refers to assistance that is either lateral or longitudinal. Adaptive cruise control or lane keep assist could be some examples.

Level 2

You might have guessed it by now. Level 2 autonomous vehicles come with both lateral and longitudinal assistance. Level 2 is the highest that we could achieve as of now. All Teslas, Waymos, etc comes here. In other words, we are way far from actual self-driving cars. Human intervention is very much required even for the smallest of decisions. So DO NOT SLEEP OR EAT IN YOUR TESLA.

Level 3

Things might get a bit tricky from here on. Both for understanding as well as applying it in real-world conditions. I can say that Level 3 is the more advanced version of Level 2, which requires lesser human intervention comparatively. Level 3 vehicles fail at high speed and foul weather. But the driver needs to be cautious here as well and his inputs are pivotal upon some critical conditions. For example, when a stupid driver makes an idiotic overtake, you should crash onto the divider to save some pedestrians. A computer program may not help you here.

Level 4

I can say that level 4 is a more robust version of level 3 where the system can handle most of the scenarios. These vehicles are designed to think and act during some critical conditions. Yet the vehicles are equipped with controls for human intervention which is required only on the harshest conditions.

Level 5

We talk about real self-driving cars only at this stage. Level 5 is the highest level we could achieve. Here no human intervention is required. Even if you think of taking things over, it may not be possible as there could be no controls. Currently, you could see these cars only at auto expos where automakers showcase them as their Vision future. A car without steering or any other controls.

Autonomous Vehicles – The Infrastructure

Just like EVs, Autonomous vehicles need robust infrastructure. Starting from the basics, the roads need to be top-notch. Lane markings, signboards need to be proper. If not, the car cannot understand where it is going and would be a disaster. Adding to that, we need to highlight sidewalks. dividers and other important factors on the road which the system can understand.

Then, we need good communication networks. An autonomous vehicle communicates with vehicles and roads through various sensors. This means we need good internet connectivity. Now, this is very important as we may encounter more IoT devices in the future and must work on this on priority.

Before these, we need proper research and development for this technology as we are way beyond level 5 autonomy. Good thing is, there are many players who are taking up this challenge and working on making it a reality. I don’t want to dig deeper on infrastructure and will cover more about this in a later blog.

Autonomous Vehicles and India

Compared to many developed countries out there, India is still underdeveloped on autonomous vehicles. This is partly because the government is not helping this niche. The primary fear of the government is commercial and personal drivers who can go jobless. Though we have a shortage of drivers in the fleet market, the government did not want the existing ones to lose their jobs – more on Jobs later.

The second hurdle is infrastructure. We do not have good roads with proper signboards that can support this tech. One monsoon is enough to make all the newly laid roads look crappy. Adding to that, the population density in India is very high, accounting for more vehicles on roads. In addition to that, we have diversified traffic comprising trucks, cars, buses, autos, tricycles, pickup trucks, two-wheelers, etc. This, along with more vehicles on the road leads to chaotic traffic.

But things would change and w may soon catch up with our global peers. Features like park assist, lane keep assist, etc have already entered the upper mass-market cars like the MG Gloster. With Tesla hitting Indian roads, things might pace up.

Autonomous vehicles And Indian Supply Chian Industry

The trucking industry is harder than you think it is. A study made by Save Life Foundation and Mahindra and Mahindra gives a clear picture of the life of Indian Fleet drivers. According to the study taken from over 1000 drivers across 10 cities in India,

• 53% of the drivers are dissatisfied with their profession.
• 84% will not recommend their family members to take up their profession
• 62% of them feel unsafe while driving on the road
• Average driving time is 12 hours or 417 km a day
• 50% agree that they would continue driving even if they feel sleepy
• 22% take up drugs while driving

I have just highlighted the points that are relevant to this study, and yes, there are more. Things like underpayment, Bribery, etc are some other issues.

Coming back, this industry faces a huge shortage of drivers. The report suggests that 20 to 30 percent of trucks in India are idling without drivers. This is a bummer to the economy. The situation might get even worse as the prevailing truck drivers do not recommend driving as a career to their family members. Lack of safety, low wages and harsh conditions would make more people walk out of this profession.

The trucking industry is the backbone of any country’s economy. We could have evidently seen it in the form of commodity price hikes upon diesel prices skyrocketing. If the fleet operators took up very long strikes for any reason, we could see the economy crumbling as there is no physical link between buyers and sellers. This would even freeze the cash flow leading to disaster.

I hope you could understand the importance of autonomous vehicles for survival. This is indeed a slow process, therefore, there could be a lesser impact on the existing drivers.

Finally

We are just at the beginning of autonomous vehicles and have a long way to go. This tech seems promising for the fleet industry and can enable betterment. I wanted to highlight some of the bitter incidents involving auto-driving cars involving in accidents. This has imparted fear among people. But we should understand we don’t have complete autonomy and the drivers also need to be responsible for those incidents.

It should be the responsibility of the government to control this technology and have some stricter norms like that of the aviation industry. Only that can help in enabling a Win-Win situation.