New Consumer Vehicles Bring Automated Driving Advances to the Road

In October 2016, Elon Musk announced that going forward, every Tesla coming out of the factory had all the hardware necessary for Level 5 automated driving and that the software to enable it should be ready within 2 years. Needless to say, there still isn’t a vehicle anywhere in the world that can operate in all conditions without human supervision. However, at CES 2022, Volvo, General Motors (GM), and Mobileye hinted at the future of personally owned automated vehicles (AVs). 

GM has been a leader in bringing partial driving automation to the consumer market. Its Super Cruise, the first hands-free highway driving system, launched in 2017. At CES 2021, the automaker highlighted two automated Cadillac concepts, a single-seat urban air mobility craft and its SocialSpace pod. The latter is essentially a more luxurious version of the Cruise Origin robotaxi. In 2022, the star of the show was the Cadillac InnerSpace concept: a sleek, two-seat luxury coupe with a massive curved screen inside and no driving controls. 

Cadillac InnerSpace Concept Highlights the Future Automated Luxury Coupe

(Source: Cadillac)

Cruise Coming to Your Garage

It’s unlikely that Cadillac will offer anything quite like the InnerSpace in the foreseeable future. However, CEO Mary Barra reemphasized GM's goal  to offer consumer vehicles using technology from its Cruise division for automated driving, targeting the mid-2020s for launch.

In spring 2021, Volvo announced that the next-generation XC90 SUV debuting later in 2022 will feature Luminar lidar as standard equipment. Initially, it will help enable enhanced pedestrian automatic emergency braking and Super Cruise-style, supervised hands-free highway driving. But Volvo’s Zenseact software subsidiary and Luminar are hoping to add unsupervised highway driving at some stage. 

Riding Unsupervised In California

Unlike the Level 3 Drive Pilot system launched recently by Mercedes-Benz in Germany, Volvo Ride Pilot is unlikely to be limited to 37 mph. The Mercedes system is subject to European regulations for automated lane keeping systems that include speed limitation. Volvo plans to begin testing its system on public roads in California this year, working within the same rules as other automated driving companies. California rules don’t impose an upper speed limit, and Volvo wants Ride Pilot operable at normal highway speeds. Volvo won’t commit to a specific timeframe for providing this feature to customers, only saying that it will be released when it passes internal safety milestones. 

New Volvo Electric SUV to Eventually Get Unsupervised Automated Highway Driving

(Source: Volvo Cars)

Mobileye also announced plans for the first consumer automated driving system using its technology. Zeekr, one of several EV brands owned by China’s Geely Group (which also owns Volvo Cars), expects to debut a consumer Level 4 AV in early 2024. Zeekr will use a version of the system Mobileye is testing and plans to use it for its robotaxi pilots in Munich and Tel Aviv later this year. 

Although Volvo Ride Pilot will allow drivers to read, text, or watch a video, they must stay behind the wheel and be ready to take control if alerted by the system, technically making it a Level 3 system. Mobileye calls the Zeekr system Level 4, which implies that the driver can sleep or not even be at the wheel. No details have been provided about the operational design domain for the Zeekr, such as where it can operate. 

The devil is in the details for all these systems. We can be confident that vehicles in the coming years will have greater levels of automation; however, how much control we give software is undetermined.