Mercedes-Benz revealed the F 015 Luxury in Motion driverless car concept at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vagas. Photos / Supplied
Is it a God-playing fantasy, or just a Scaletrix complex that fuels the vision of the self-driving car? From the mechanical automatons in Greek mythology and ancient China, to Da Vinci's 15th century robot, all the way to R2-D2 and C-3PO from the Star Wars films, man thrilled at the idea of an inner-directed machine that makes its own decisions.
The self-driving car is certainly automotive catnip, with the industry researching the idea since its earliest days (see below). From radio control, to magnetic guidance spikes buried in the road and now the independently driving and reasoning car, autonomous driving potentially offers highly desirable prizes in the form of an accident-free future, increased road capacity and individuals freed from the drudgery of traffic jams. Anyone who has queued for hours in rush-hour traffic might concur that swapping the clutch pumping in favour of sleeping or reading is a welcome prospect.
But is this just a big hype engine lead by Google with the smoke-stack industry car makers following on, desperate to demonstrate that they are still relevant and take their turn in the limelight at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas? And what is the role of Governments, greedy for the centralised control and surveillance opportunities that automated driving could provide? Or the military industrial complex eager for driverless battlefield logistic support in high-risk areas?
Last year the cash-strapped UK Government committed a total of £19 million to a driverless car research project across four UK locations: Greenwich, Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes. The project went live on January 1, so the technology is getting ever closer, or is it?
"The autonomous car, oh yeah, I just can't wait for that to burn out because we've got perpetual motion and a time machine just waiting for their turn on the hype cycle," said Sean McAlinden, chief economist of the Center for Automotive Research.
It's interesting that the motor industry chose the CES in Sin City (aka Las Vegas) to unveil its most advanced projects rather than next week's Detroit Auto Show. Audi's exhibit drove itself 900km across the desert and BMW earned the ire of every car valet in the USA by unveiling a concept that can valet park itself, but it was Mercedes, which has arguably advanced the cause of self driving more than any other car company, which went furthest.
The F 015 Luxury in Motion concept is not only an interesting design direction (albeit one that borrows heavily from GM's Autonomy and Sequel concepts of the Nineties), but in its introduction, Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Mercedes-Benz Cars, addressed at least some of the issues facing the progress towards a driverless future.
The four-seat fuel-cell hybrid concept does have a steering wheel, but that's a direction that most car makers are headed in, where the autonomous car will take the strain out of the straight-line commuting or motorways and you still get to throw it around in the corners. However, the F 015's front seats can turn to face the rears even when the car is in motion and in theory all the passengers are drivers.
The fibre-reinforced and carbon-fibre-reinforced body is a fairly radical departure from the current range of Mercs, with a smooth outline, wheels pushed to each corner and pillarless construction with wardrobe-style opening doors, which can all be opened (thanks to some clever hinges) independently. It is fitted with a development of the driveline from the 2011 F125! concept, with a 120Kw fuel cell, a 29kWh lithium-ion battery and 5.4kg of gaseous hydrogen stored in carbon-fibre tanks providing a range of up 683 miles. Twin 131bhp electric motors power the rear wheels and provide a top speed of 124mph and 0-62mph acceleration in 6.7sec.
Mercedes-Benz F 015 concept
There are myriad communications and electronic systems, and the largely button-free dashboard is controlled with eye-tracking technology and hand gestures, while the translucent side windows can also be used as display screens to show an alternative world of forests and lakes as opposed to the Dartford tunnel. With all-round monitoring by stereoscopic cameras, the car knows where it is and, interestingly, the LED grilles 'communicate' with other road users and pedestrians indicating that the F 015 is aware of their presence and even indicating to pedestrians when it is safe to cross in front of the vehicle. Clearly being an autonomous car, it can drive itself off to park and be summoned again with a mobile phone or even a smart watch.
There remain a number of largely unanswered questions about the autonomous car, however. First is the durability and safety of the decision-making software. These were outlined by Professor Dr. Pim van der Jagt, MD of Ford's Aachen centre five years ago.
"The biggest problem is the range of different scenarios that a car might have to deal with," he said. "The average driver will travel half a million miles between an accident and as long as he or she is fully focussed they are probably safer than a system, which in certain conditions, might try to take over driving and make the wrong decision."
Even Dieter Zetsche, Mercedes-Benz chief executive blanched when told by his engineers he had to sit in the back of the self-driving S-class, which drove itself on stage for a press presentation at the Frankfurt Show 18 months ago. Only those completely deranged by the promise of technology would climb into a car with no steering wheel or brake pedal without at least pondering the consequences of a systems failure.
And who is in charge of this car? What happens if the autonomous car crashes into you, or calls it wrong in a split-second ethical dilemma of one bad decision over another - whether to head for the pram or the bus stop for example? Has the software a hierarchy of ethics such as proposed by Issac Asimov, the science fiction writer, in his 1942 short story 'Runaround' And who sues who in these circumstances? The legal ramifications are profound, scary and expensive, particularly in litigation-obsessed North America.
There are also the freedoms that the driverless car might take from us to enable it to work. First-generation autonomous prototypes took up to 20 minutes to scan and evaluate a complex traffic scene and proceed, or not. Prepare for a long wait behind one at tricky junctions. And to maximise their utility autonomous cars might require special lanes, or road space and it's here that the thinking gets hazy. If they offer no environmental benefit, are largely owned by wealthy middle classes and aren't conferring Benthamite benefits to the general population, then why the hell should we give the Google car its own road?
The auto industry has implied that autonomous driving means accident-free driving, but does it? If you can be certain that a driverless car won't crash then could you remove the weighty and expensive airbags and crash protection, which would make autonomous cars potentially cheaper and more environmental. And once that's done, could they mix on the public road with ordinary cars?
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Image 1 of 5: Dr Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars presenting the Mercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion.
e's also a dilemma for Mercedes here. An S-class that can drive itself is one thing, but the type of proposal we've seen at the CES in Las Vegas posits a different sort of future entirely. The commodification of the automobile is an unspoken nightmare that wakes industry execs in the dead of night. Isn't there a danger that autonomous cars, far from offering convenience with luxury, eventually morph into a new breed of pod-style driverless taxi, a scuttling consumer durable, where the luxurious contract of speed, power, freedom and swank implicit with the three-pointed star is redundant.
To be fair, Zetsche has never shied away from this debate. This week in Las Vegas he posited a world where Mercedes offered a new form of luxury, "an exclusive cocoon on wheels" which gave its owners the new luxuries of space and time unavailable to the drivers of ordinary cars.
You can't blame him for trying, or fail to admire him for tackling the issue head on, but in the world of driverless cars, the road ahead is far from clear.
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