Taxi robots, vehicles without steering wheel, driving “without the hands” … despite huge investments, the car which finds its path alone is far from being to the point, especially in an urban environment.
by Jean-Michel Normand
When, in 2017, Ford embarked on the autonomous car race, investing its first billion dollars in the start-up Argo Ai, the manufacturer planned to market the full “without the hands” 2021. Five years have passed and the return to reality is tough. The taxi robots accumulate bugs and cars without steering wheel always represent a terra incognita.
In October, Ford announced, like Volkswagen, its withdrawal from the promising start-up. A slate of $ 2.7 billion (2.6 billion euros), which plunged the quarterly accounts of the American group, with a loss of $ 827 million. “Producing fully profitable vehicles on a large scale is a distant horizon, and we will not necessarily have to create this technology ourselves”, notes Jim Farley, the boss of Ford.
The Dearborn firm (Michigan), near Detroit, is not a special case. Aurora Innovation, a young shoot -linked to Volvo, is in bad shape, while the driver -free car project developed by Audi was stopped in order to be integrated into the Volkswagen group, in the process of reviewing its strategy in depth.
For its part, Apple slows down the pace and considers that it will be necessary to wait at the earliest 2026 to see its autonomous vehicle project – which it plans to charge just under 100,000 dollars, according to Automotive News magazine – Take shape, despite an annual investment of $ 1 billion. 2> Technical blockages
In total, according to the Bloomberg agency, $ 75 billion was invested in autonomous vehicle development programs, mainly on the part of American manufacturers and German firms. For results the least we can say is that they are slow to materialize. “Research and development efforts around the autonomous car are colossal for profits that are not significant. In fact, manufacturers understand that the game is not worth the candle”, underlines Eric Espérance, specialist in automotive questions at Sein of the Roland Berger cabinet.
If so-called level 3 driving (which allows you to drop the steering wheel, while remaining capable of regaining the vehicle at any time) begins to become a reality on certain very high-end models (but below 60 km/h and on very specific sections), level 4 (full autonomous driving, without driver) is part of a very uncertain horizon.
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