The auto industry is moving into “uncharted waters” with the legislation covering autonomous driving, BMW’s retiring chairman, Norbert Reithofer, told the annual accounts press conference in Munich.
“Technologically speaking, a lot is alrady feasible when it comes to highly automated driving,” he said. “However…the debate on the regulatory framework has only just begun – in Brussels as much as Berlin, Washington, Beijing or Tokyo.”
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Questions which need answering before fully self driving cars can be unleashed onto the roads include the division of responsibility between drivers, manufacturers, insurance companies and service providers, and what data enters and leaves the car, and in which conditions, he added.
“Our position at the BMW Group is clear on this subject: we want to make life easier for the driver at all times, we want to improve people’s safety and most of all we want to protect their privacy,” Reithofer said.
BMW board members are nevertheless convinced that autonomous driving will be an accepted fact of life within the next 10 years. Head of research and development Klaus Frohlich said: “The regulatory conditions still need to be clarified, but we can expect fully automated cars beyond 2020.”
And the head of Mini, Rolls-Royce, Motorrrad and Aftersales, Peter Schwarzenbauer, added: “We will be close to autonomous cars within 10 years.
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By GlobalData“The first step is that the car will park itself. In the second phase we will have autonomous driving in the urban environment. It will happen naturally on the west coast of the United States and in China. If you ask most Germans where they need autonomous driving they would say the autobahn but personally I think it will come first in cities.”
Frohlich admitted that rival companies may even share data from self driving cars to increase the safety of all drivers. “We have a common interest with these companies,” he said. “For autonomous driving you need excellent maps and the data from a car will lead to improved maps without any reference to the input data. The industry should be working on this, and is working on it.
“But the car will generate an increasing amount of data, some of which is very sensitive, and we will want to stick to the strict data protection safeguards.”
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