Bosch says it has all the necessary hardware and software for full autonomy but says regulatory hurdles are what’s holding it back.
During an interview with Autocar, Bosch senior vice-president of automated driving, Kay Stepper, said the first fully-autonomous vehicles will hit the roads by 2025 once the red tape is cleared.
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“We need to differentiate between technical and non-technical problems,” Stepper said. “At the moment we can honestly say from the technological, hardware and software sides that we have what we need to roll out [autonomous technology] tomorrow. It’s here. Yes, we have much more testing and validation to do and more refinement to do, but we’re there.”
“The major obstacles are the non-technical ones, like the regulatory framework in different regions,” Stepper continued. “It’s very different in Europe than in China or the US, and that will very much impact the timing of the roll-out.”
Bosch believes ride-hailing services and commercial trucking will prove to be two of the key areas where autonomous driving technologies can shine but acknowledged there still remains some apprehension about self-driving vehicles.
“I’m excited about autonomous driving, and many of our customers are, but not everyone is,” Stepper said. “There’s a good level of animosity in parts of the population. Some have a hard time accepting this as an everyday reality.”
Bosch has been working on autonomous technologies for quite some time and has dedicated significant resources to furthering these technologies with Daimler, for example.
