Tesla and Google are both driving toward autonomous vehicles. Which company is taking the better route?
Tesla and Google are both driving toward autonomous
vehicles. Which company is taking the better route?
By Tracey Lien July 3, 2016 6:00 AM
Google and Tesla agree autonomous vehicles will make
streets safer, and both are racing toward a driverless future. But when Google
tested its self-driving car prototype on employees a few years ago, it noticed
something that would take it down a different path from Tesla.
Once behind the wheel of the modified Lexus SUVs, the drivers
quickly started rummaging through their bags, fiddling with their phones and
taking their hands off the wheel — all while traveling on a freeway at 60 mph.
“Within about five minutes, everybody thought the car
worked well, and after that, they just trusted it to work,” Chris Urmson, the
head of Google’s self-driving car program, said on a panel this year. “It got
to the point where people were doing ridiculous things in the car.”
After seeing how people misused its technology despite
warnings to pay attention to the road, Google has opted to tinker with its
algorithms until they are human-proof. The Mountain View, Calif., firm is
focusing on fully autonomous vehicles — cars that drive on their own without
any human intervention and, for now, operate only under the oversight of Google
experts.
Tesla, on the other hand, released a self-driving feature
called autopilot to customers in a software update last year. The electric
carmaker, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, says those who choose to
participate in the “public beta phase” will help refine the technology and make
streets safer sooner.
Tesla drivers already had logged some 130 million miles
using the feature before a fatal crash in Florida in May made it the subject of
a preliminary federal inquiry made public on Thursday.
The divergent approaches reflect companies with different
goals and business strategies. Tesla’s rapid-fire approach is in line with its
image as a small but significant auto industry disruptor, while Google — a tech
company from whom no one expects auto products — has the luxury of time.
With the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
yet to release guidelines for self-driving technology, existing regulation has
little influence on corporate tactics.
That makes Google’s caution even more surprising, as it
has long operated with the Silicon Valley ethos of launching products fast and
experimenting even faster. But in developing self-driving cars, the company has
splintered from its software roots. It is taking its time to perfect a
revolutionary technology that will turn Google into a company that helps people
get around the real world the way it helps them navigate the Internet.
“I’ve had people say, ‘Look, my Windows laptop crashes
every day — what if that’s my car?’ ” Urmson said at a conference held by The
Times on transportation issues. “How do you make sure you don’t have a ‘blue
screen of death,’ so to speak?”
The stakes are simply higher with self-driving cars than
with operating systems and apps, Urmson said. That’s why Google has yet to
bring its self-driving technology to consumer vehicles even though it’s been in
development for seven years and logged more than 1.5 million test miles.
Fatal Tesla crash exposes lack of regulation over
autopilot technology
Tesla insists its vehicles go through vigorous in-house
testing and are proved safe before they reach consumers. And, according to the
company, putting them on the roads makes the software — which learns from
experience — only better.
“We are continuously and proactively enhancing our
vehicles with the latest advanced safety technology,” a Tesla spokeswoman said
via email.
And there’s truth to that, said Jeff Miller, an associate
professor in the Computer Engineering Department at USC, who said there is no
way to stamp out every problem from technology before launching it. At some
point, this kind of technology needs to be thrown into the real world.
“Every single program in the world has bugs in it,” he
said. “You have imperfect human beings who have written the code, and imperfect
human beings driving around the driverless cars. Accidents are going to
happen.”
But this doesn’t mean these products shouldn’t launch.
“We have been testing the vehicles in labs for a good
number of years now,” Miller said. “Like with airplanes, eventually you’re
going to have that first flight with passengers on it.”
Getting the technology to work is only half the
challenge, though. As Google learned when its employees took their hands off
the wheel, the other half is ensuring that the technology is immune to human
error.
It’s not enough for the technology in a vehicle to simply
work as intended, said David Strickland, a former chief of the NHTSA who now
leads the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a group that includes
Google, Volvo, Ford, Uber and Lyft. Part of the safety evaluation has to
account for how the technology could be misused, and companies must build
protections against that.
Tesla and other automakers have launched automated cruise
control features with built-in sound alerts if a driver’s hands are not
detected on the wheel. But these checks aren’t fool-proof, either.
“Having developed software and hardware products … I can
point to the incredible inventiveness of customers in doing things you just
never, ever considered possible, even when you tried to take the ridiculous and
stupid into account,” said Paul Reynolds, a former vice president of
engineering at wireless charging technology developer Ubeam. “If customer
education is the only thing stopping your product from being dangerous in
normal use, then your real problem is a company without proper consideration
for safety.”
Google and other automakers aim to solve the human
problem by achieving the highest level of autonomy possible. The NHTSA ranks
self-driving cars based on the level they cede to the vehicle, with 1 being the
lowest and 5 the highest.
Tesla’s autopilot feature is classified as level 2, which
means it is capable of staying in the center of a lane, changing lanes and
adjusting speed according to traffic. Google is aiming for levels 4 and 5 — the
former requires a driver to input navigation instructions, but relinquishes all
other control to the vehicle, while level 5 autonomy does not involve a driver
at all.
Volvo plans to launch a pilot program for its level 4
autonomous car next year. BMW has signaled ambitions to develop levels 3, 4 and
5 autonomous vehicles.
The problem with level 2, critics say, is that it’s just
autonomous enough to give drivers the false sense that the vehicle can drive
itself, which can lead to careless behavior.
Tesla disputes this — its owner’s manual details the
feature’s limitations — and it says drivers are actually clamoring for the
product. Tesla executive Jonathan McNeil said in a February investor call that
the autopilot feature is “one of the core stories of what’s going on here at
Tesla.”
The sudden rollout of the tool in October is in line with
a company that has made a name for itself as a boundary-pusher that appeals to
those willing to take a risk on technology with world-changing potential.
Its regular software updates bring flashy,
first-of-their-kind functions to cars already on the road — a way to build
loyalty among current owners and court new ones. Indeed, 40-year-old Joshua
Brown, who died when his Tesla Model S failed to detect a white big rig against
the bright sky, posted two dozen videos showing the autopilot technology in
action.
Analysts aren’t surprised that Tesla is moving faster
than Alphabet Inc. — Google’s parent company and the second most-valuable
publicly traded company on American markets. Cars, after all, are Tesla’s
business.
Google makes money from its search and advertising
business and has its hands in hardware, software, email and entertainment.
Self-driving vehicles are one of its “moonshots” — ambitious projects with no
expectation for short-term profitability. They are lumped into Google X, a
secretive arm of the company that has experimented with ideas such as using
balloons to connect the world to Wi-Fi and the head-mounted gadget Google
Glass.
The company has no plans to manufacture and sell its own
vehicles. Instead, it likely will partner with automakers, hoping its
autonomous-driving software will come to dominate the market the same way its
Android operating system dominates the smartphone industry.
“Google has the time, and they can develop things
quietly,” said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with Auto Trader, “whereas
Tesla is under some pressure to build this car company and start making a
profit.”
As self-driving technology becomes commonplace,
regulators, automakers and consumers will have to decide whether rolling out early
products is worth the potential risk, said Shannon Vallor, a philosophy
professor at Santa Clara University who studies the intersection of ethics and
technology.
“It is far from obvious that the ends here do justify the
beta testing of this technology on public roads without better safeguards,”
Vallor said.
Comments
Post a Comment