In the shade of the company’s most recent innovations in the field of disguise, it is easy to overlook Volkswagen’s attempts to bring autonomously driving cars to the streets. Especially since everyone else seems to do the same thing and everyone else seems to do it so much better. Europeans love Tesla, Americans can’t get over the Mercedes F015 and “Google’s self-driving car” always delivers when a journalist doesn’t know what to write about.
Volkswagen is a bit late to the party. Last year they presented the Budd-E, an electronic van, that could drive autonomously if it existed, because what VW actually presented was a mere concept study. At a time when Google’s vehicles already got crashed by other cars, the Mercedes drove around in San Francisco and Tesla (S Model) and BMW (5er) have parts of the technology in their serial cars already.
One thing that is easily forgotten though is that autonomous driving will work infinitely better for every other car that also drives autonomously. The benefit for a city with only self-driving cars will be greater than the sum of benefits for the individual car owners, think traffic jams, resource efficiency, parking spaces and so on. And in case the future doesn’t hold Teslas, BMWs and Mercedeses for everyone, it will be Volkswagen’s job to deliver. Volkswagen analogously means ‘car for the people’. It is not so much about innovating but making innovation available and affordable. It is debatable whether its new 150 kW charger system is a step in that direction. In Germany it takes a while to find a 50 kW charger already, but it seems to be consensus among car producers to aim for 30 minute charging time for 80 percent battery life. There seems to be trust in the state concerning infrastructure development (within Europe that is).
The car Volkswagen presented at this year’s CES was basically a VW Bulli. A continuation of its old transporter series. My parents drove a fossilized, rusty version of that car when they were my age, the thought of the next generation driving a then old fully automated VW T11 on their road trips is actually more futuristic to me than a Swiss dentist in his Mercedes F. Innovation is for everyone.
NB: No camouflaged advertising for VW intended, everybody knows Toyota HiAce is the better car.
My first thought is – why are these cars so ugly! 😉 I mean it, the designers want to underline how futuristic that is and they really make them so ugly 🙁 (but I have to add Toyota HiAce is not pretty either! So maybe it’s not just the sign of our times, lol)
I already mentioned it under a different post that I’m personally not a big fan of self-driving cars. I’m not really sure if I want an AI system to decide about my life. So the ethical doubts are pretty big for me. And I don’t think anyone should decide how to program the cars, what decisions should they make in dangerous situations…
Not to mention that as a very active driver myself, I simply enjoy driving a car! It relaxes me, I’m focused on a pretty simple activity and have time to clear up my mind. If I won’t have to be focus, the pleasure will be much smaller 😉