There’s No Silver Bullet for Driver Assist

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are becoming increasingly ubiquitous on new modern vehicles. At a minimum, every new vehicle sold in North America has features like electronic stability control and rear backup cameras. But a spectrum of capabilities are offered to consumers across every vehicle form factor and price point, with a few vehicles offering conditional automation that allows a driver to go hands-off and eyes-off the road. However, there is yet to be a consensus on the best approach to building ADAS, and there probably won’t be for some time.

Some of this comes down to finding a balance between regulatory requirements, safety improvements beyond those requirements, and consumers’ ability and willingness to pay for features. Every additional feature such as blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, and lane centering typically requires more sensors, actuators, and compute capabilities, each of which adds to the cost of building the vehicle and the price that needs to be charged to maintain profitability.

Brands like Honda offer various versions of its Sensing suite, with different combinations of cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors. Some models, like the Civic, rely on a monovision front camera and rear corner radars, while a limited production version of the Legend sedan in Japan has five lidar sensors to enable eyes-off traffic jam assist.

At the April 2023 Auto Shanghai exhibition, Polestar showed off a new model, the Polestar 4 performance electric SUV coupe. This comes just 6 months after the Polestar 3, another electric SUV with similar overall dimensions. Polestar has opted to build each on a completely different platform. The Polestar 3 shares the Volvo EX90’s SPA2 platform, while the Polestar 4 uses the same Geely-developed SEA platform as the Zeekr 001.

An advantage of using the same platform architecture across multiple vehicles is the ability to reuse many subsystems with relatively minimal reengineering. Since these two similar-sized vehicles are on different platforms, they have different subsystems. The ADAS in the SPA2 platform is powered by an NVIDIA Orin system on a chip (SoC) and a suite of cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and a roof-mounted Luminar Iris lidar sensor. The SEA platform incorporates Mobileye’s SuperVision system, which relies on 11 cameras (including 8 high-resolution 8MP sensors), a front long-range radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and Mobileye’s REM maps—all controlled by a pair of EyeQ5 SoCs.

Both systems are expected to launch with ADAS that enable hands-off driving while requiring the driver to watch the road and be ready to take control when needed. Both systems will receive regular software updates, with the system on the Polestar 3 and EX90 expected to eventually get upgrades that will enable eyes-off and possibly even brain-off capability (where the driver can take a nap) for at least highway driving. This is a more costly system, but it will also have more potential for growth, even on vehicles built later in 2023.

SuperVision is a lower cost system, in part due to the lack of lidar. However, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua has made it clear that while the camera-based system is very capable, the current sensor array doesn’t provide enough of a safety margin to enable eyes-off or full automation. Mobileye is also developing similar systems with imaging radar and lidar added to the cameras, but these will launch in upcoming model years, with no upgrade path for vehicles built in 2023. It will be interesting to see which of the two systems offers better capability both in the near term and several years after being on the road.