The chief executive of Volvo Cars says that autonomous driving systems still have a long way to go before they become commonplace.
While recently speaking with media members in Australia, Jim Rowan said that the technology needed for fully-autonomous vehicles already exists but believes regulations will prevent it from becoming mainstream in the near future.
“The technology for full autonomous is there already,” he told Car Expert. “Of course different speeds and different conditions and so on, but can we drive the car fully autonomous? Yes. Does regulation allow that? No. So I think regulation will be the barrier towards full adoption of full AD more than technology will.”
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Rowan added that fully-autonomous driving technologies will initially be permitted along highways and act as taxi services.
“Maybe it starts off on a highway in certain areas, probably California, designated lanes on the highway, designated routes from the airport to downtown,” he said. “You’re going to find, probably, that will be the first place that full AD is allowed to go. Almost like a taxi service. You know, you jump in, there’s no driver, or you can take your hands off yourself and use your own AD system. But driving inside a city where there are schools, and roadworks, where there’s a lot of change every day? I think that’s a long, long way off.”
While Rowan doesn’t expect normal motorists to start using full-autonomous driving technologies for quite some time, the Swedish car manufacturer is continuing to develop its self-driving software stack with the aim of having the technology ready when legislation permits its widespread use.
“The way we’re building that software stack is that we can keep developing ADAS all the way up to full AD,” he added. “Technology-wise, I’m pretty confident that we will have the technology in order to do that when legislation allows that to happen in certain conditions.”
