The Wayve Ford Mustang Mach-E has been cruising successfully hands-free through north London traffic for about 40 minutes and now faces a tough test: an unprotected right turn into a busy street. A parked black cab spoils the view on the left while the usual broad spectrum of London vehicular traffic dashes on by, not giving an inch. But the Ford behaves remarkably humanly, creeping out until it spots a gap and then nips into the flow without drama.
The demonstration is a powerful case-maker for what UK firm Wayve calls AV 2.0, where artificial intelligence (AI) makes decisions rather than the car following a pre-programmed set of rules.
Robotaxi 1.0 in this definition is Google’s Waymo, the pioneering autonomous service successfully operating in five US cities with a claimed 10 million rides under its belt.
Waymo's 2000-strong Jaguar I-Pace fleet is instantly recognisable and has done much to normalise being ferried around without a driver, with Waymo actually overtaking Uber rival Lyft in terms of share of the taxi market in San Francisco.
But the huge bank of sensors that makes those Jaguars so recognisable is also the hurdle to wider acceptance – they cost a lot of money. Waymo hasn’t given any indication of what the bill really is to convert an I-Pace into a robot, but estimates start around $30,000, due to multiple cameras and radar and lidar units.
Wayve still has a sensor rig on its test Fords but claims it has drastically reduced that hardware bill to between $1000 and $2000.
“We’re seeing a paradigm shift here from AV 1.0 to AV 2.0,” Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, told Autocar.
However, Wayve’s next-level approach to hands-free driving is far more than about stripping cost from sensor set.
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Until these things cause a fatal accident that is, then they'll be taken off the roads completely. Normally in the UK it's the insurance companies who make a lot of these decisions.
As an older driver living remotely from any town or city and with a 100+yard drive down to the nearest road I can seen the attraction. Taxis are rare and expensive as the nearest supermarket is 12 kilometres away. Being able to use an app to get my car to come to the front door and take me to the bar for a swift pint and then on to the supermarket, park up until I'm ready and then back home sounds OK. I used to love driving but with the absurd speed limits, over-regulation and all but identikit cars my enthusiasm has waned. My twenty-five years ago self would be appalled.......
And you'll gladly pay a large sum for the convenience? , it'll probably cost you more to do this than run a vehicle you actually own..
I"m all for it. I"d much rather be sharing the roads with a well engineered autonomous solution than the 98% of conplete muppets that seem to be on the roads these days as the police just ignore basics like turning on your lights at dusk or correct lanes at roundabouts etc.