California DMV released 2021 self-driving road test report earlier this year, but it makes everyone feel more uncertainty. Waymo and some front runner companies challenge about this report.
These companies question the MPI data (Miles Per Intervention, MPI) in the report. they said companies have different standards to execute the road test, like testing routine, environment and the timing of system configuration to manually take over.
In this case, companies do not think DMV report has any reference value. Besides, all the road tests are proceeded only in USA. In considering of the traffic rules and road conditions variance worldwide, the timeline to commercialize autonomous driving will be even beyond our expectation.
Although this report has little reference value, compared with the reports years before, it still can gives us some heads-up …MPI data went higher year by year, topping from 30000 miles (2020) to 50000 miles (2021), although the test standards are quite different. To some extent, it means the self-driving technology performs better than before.
AI self-driving tech from China and USA will dominate the market next 10 years beyond. Starting from 2030, Germany and Japan carmakers will face the biggest challenge in decades.
Self-driving tech companies in China will switch their focus of road test location from USA to their home land , to scramble for domestic business opportunities.
The road to develop self-driving tech is long and expensive, so only few companies could reach level 4 or 5 in the long run. After spending multi-billion dollars, there are still plenty of challenges waiting for them.
I predict year 2030 will be the technology first breaking point, but we may wait until 2035 if willing to reach actual full self-driving with affordable price and well-prepared traffic rules.
Technology startup companies have to speed up the verification process of self-driving technology only by alliance with or merging automakers at this moment. It will be too ideal to push selling its technology to all carmakers … The arrangement of sensing elements of self-driving system, for example, needs to be tailor-made based on each car model, it’s impossible to develop an aftersales package to fit every car.
Famous Tesla Auto Pilot system was absent from this annual test report, which goes without saying.