<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=918799731584652&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
FCP Euro Service Kits

FCP Euro Kits

autonomous

It's a beautiful summer's morning and you're getting ready to head to work.

You walk outside to your freshly washed Mazda Miata, get in, pop the roof down and start the car. You head out and take the twisty road to the parkway. You get on the parkway and everything seems fine at first, then you hit a wall of traffic. For the next five miles, you are in stop and go traffic, shifting from 1st to 2nd and back over and over again. Wouldn't it be nice if you could have just hit a couple buttons and let the car deal with the traffic while you enjoyed the sun or answered some messages from the office? I sure think so, and so do a lot of automotive manufactures.

The autonomous car is coming sooner then we think. By 2020, most major automotive manufactures, including Nissan and Ford, have already stated that they will have semi-autonomous cars on the road. The technology needed to have semi-autonomous cars is already on the road and has been for some time now. Everything from electric power steering, to self parking, to adaptive cruise control to name a few. These are all necessary technologies that are needed to have a car drive itself on a highway without human assistance. All car manufacturers need now is a computer for all the systems to talk and work together for a semi-autonomous car to work. You can get a small glimpse of this technology working together today in the 2014 Mercedes S-Class.

But there is a big difference between semi-autonomous and fullly autonomous cars.

For one, you must be 100% focused and have you hands on the wheel with a semi-autonomous car or the systems will deactivate. You still need to have some interaction with the car today, which full autonomous cars will eliminate.

So, when will semi-autonomous cars become fully autonomous cars? A date hasn't been set but we know it can be done. Google has had a fully autonomous car on the road for a few years now and it works very well. Also, ford unveiled it's autonomous car this past year at the Detroit auto show, so they are jumping into the game as well. The main thing that is holding them back isn't technology, it's the cost and infrastructure needed for them to work efficiently and legally. For fully autonomous cars to work, the cost needs to come down quite a bit. The main system that is used to let the cars know what is around them costs tens of thousands of dollars. But even if the L.I.D.A.R (LIght Detection And Ranging), which is basically radar but uses light to see what is around, were to be economical today, we still need a system in place that would allow the cars to speak to one another and to things around them. This is were the infrastructure issue comes in.

The good thing is that automotive manufactures and governments are aware of the current shortcomings with fully autonomous cars and are working to build the infrastructure and develop cheaper and more compact LIDAR systems so that we may be able to purchase a fully autonomous car in the near future.

What is your opinion on semi and fully autonomous cars? Are you looking forward to being able to drive you car when the roads are clear and good, and let the car do it when the drive becomes dull and boring? Or do you think autonomous cars are going to end the automobile as we know it and should be stopped. Let me know in the comments below.

About The Author: Andrew Owendoff

AndrewAndrew has been working with us at FCP Euro on and off for many years. He brings to the team over a 10 years of automotive experience and has worked on many vehicles from Volvo, Mazda, and Ford. Beside doing normal maintenance, he his also an avid modder and has done everything from exhaust systems and stereos to tuning and turbo swaps. He can be reached at aowendoff@outlook.com


author image
Written by :
Andrew Owendoff

Andrew has been working with us at FCP Euro on and off for many years. He brings to the team over a 10 years of automotive experience and has worked on many vehicles from Volvo, Mazda, and Ford. Beside doing normal maintenance, he his also an avid modder and has done everything from exhaust systems and stereos to tuning and turbo swaps. He can be reached at aowendoff@outlook.com


More Related Articles