Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) in the United States, the once-hyped self-driving revolution is once again in a frustrating downturn.

Photo 1: the development of self-driving cars is still slow. Last week, Tesla's boss, Elon Musk, admitted that the company's fully autopilot system (FSD) was not ready to truly drive without monitoring. Meanwhile, the IPO valuation of Mobileye, Intel's self-driving division, fell sharply, from $50 billion to $16 billion. A number of US media have also published articles mocking the failure of the self-driving industry after billions of dollars of investment.

Oddly enough, it all happened when the United States began experimenting with self-driving taxis. In San Francisco, passengers can take a driverless car from the famous painted Ladies Square in Alamo Square to the bar in Nob Hill for about $10, and can sit in the back seat and watch the steering wheel turn automatically. let the car pass through the traffic.

Photo 2: the pilot program of Tesla's autopilot system is launched by self-driving car company Cruise, which is majority-owned by General Motors. Like Uber, it has an app that you can use to call a car to pick you up at a price similar to that of Uber. But. When self-driving cars become popular, the fare should be cheaper.

It's unsettling when a driverless car stops next to you and listens to the sound of a robot telling you to fasten your seat belt and enjoy your journey. However, in fact, every trip went very well. When vehicles find obstacles, they become cautious drivers, which is very reassuring to nervous passengers, which may be why cars are reported to be stuck in traffic. Cruise recalled its self-driving car and updated its system after it collided with a speeding car. Cruise now plans to extend the pilot program to Austin and Phoenix.

For the general public, calling a driverless car from one part of the city to another feels like living in the future. Sometimes, all the money in technology seems to be invested in digital advertising, cryptocurrency and consumer applications. Your phone is full of applications and offers a variety of conveniences. But the ambitious, difficult and potentially life-changing field of self-driving cars provides a more practical example of technological progress.

Progress is slow, but it is an extremely expensive effort. McKinsey, a consultancy, estimates that the total investment in the self-driving industry has exceeded $100 billion since 2010. Last year alone, self-driving car companies received more than $12 billion, according to CB Insights, a research firm.

However, its development is also much slower than expected. The dream of a driverless car has existed for a long time, almost as long as a car. The modern era can be traced back to Google's autopilot project, now known as Waymo, which was launched in 2009. In 2018, driverless cars seem certain to be on every road within a few months. Uber claimed at the time that driverless cars would soon abolish human drivers, while Waymo and Lyft were launching self-driving taxi programs in Phoenix and Las Vegas. Everyone from Softbank Corp. to Apple is investing in self-driving cars.

Figure 3: Google Waymo self-driving car, however, since then, the fate of the industry has begun to decline. In the same year, a Uber self-driving car killed a woman who was crossing the road in Arizona. Then Uber testing was stopped and optimism in the industry collapsed. Two years later, Uber sold its driverless car division to local startup Aurora.

The challenge is huge, and the challenge is still great. Driverless cars must not only control the mechanical parts of the vehicle, but also understand the world around them and make decisions quickly when the environment changes. There is also no consensus in the industry on how driverless cars should operate. Cruise maps the roads it travels by combining road data collected by cameras and lidar. Lidar is a laser-based sensor, which Tesla calls "crutches".

If it were possible to build infrastructure for driverless cars from scratch, things would be much easier. The roads are busy and cluttered, and there are different users who make unreasonable decisions. Cars should not only see the obstacles in front of them, but also know whether they are going to move. If you want to move, which direction do you want to move?

The 4:Cruise self-driving car has been involved in a car accident. Cruise's self-driving taxi test is quite conservative. These cars can only run between 10:00 and 05:30 in the morning. If you want to show tourists the magic of self-driving cars, you have to wait until the evening to make sure you are in the right part of the city.

Despite the continued investment, money is still flowing into the industry. Driverless cars are either an example of sunk cost misunderstandings (paid and irrecoverable costs), or their slow start is not seen by the industry as an obstacle to final adoption. Uber has signed an agreement with Hyundai joint venture Motional, which has partnered with Lyft, another US ride-hailing giant, to provide self-driving car services in Las Vegas.

Cariad, Volkswagen's automotive software subsidiary, will invest $2 billion to establish a partnership with Chinese chipmaker Horizon. Waymo is planning to expand its self-driving taxi service to Los Angeles, while Cruise hopes its self-driving taxi without pedals or steering wheel will be approved by regulators.

This is a slow and expensive road, and it may take years to popularize it. But for many big companies in the world, driverless cars are still an inevitable road.

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