Aston Martin chief executive Andy Palmer has told reporters at the Canadian International Auto Show that the brand will eventually introduce an autonomous car, but indicated it is in no rush to do so.
While speaking with The Toronto Star, Palmer said that the days of fully-autonomous vehicles driving people around are very far from reaching the market.
“If there are five steps (from no assistance from technology all the way up to the car driving itself), step three is when the electronics assist you to drive but the driver is still fundamentally in control. You can get to that relatively quickly. I would expect that to happen by 2020-2021. The next step, which is hands-off, eyes-off, is an awful long way away. I think there’s an awful lot of hullabaloo around it,” he said.
According to Tech Crunch, Palmer says that an autonomous Lagonda will eventually hit the market but failed to give a timeline on such a model. The brand’s CEO believes that issues of cybersecurity around self-driving vehicles need to be rectified before the brand will be comfortable making the most of the technology.
“My own preoccupation, and this is the direction I give to Aston, is that we’re a driver’s car, so we’re not in a rush to go driverless. My own deeply held belief is that first you have to solve the cybersecurity issue of cars, because once you go more and more autonomous, once you go to more points where the car can be attacked, you have all sorts of other risks,” Palmer suggested.
Palmer is currently in Canada as part of the AM-RB 001’s motor show premiere.
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