GM Drops the Steering Wheel and Gives Robot Driver Control
GM Drops the Steering Wheel and Gives Robot Driver
Control
Automaker’s new Bolt won’t allow a human driver to take
over
Experiment will be a significant step forward for
self-driving
GM President Dan Ammann says a fully autonomous Chevy
Bolt, with no steering wheel or pedals, will be ready in 2019.
By David Welch and
Ryan Beene January 11, 2018, 9:01 PM PST Updated on January 12, 2018, 6:40 AM
PST
Next year, General Motors Co. will no longer need an
engineer in the front seat babysitting the robot brain that controls its
self-driving Chevrolet Bolt. The steering wheel and pedals will be gone, giving
total control to the machine.
When GM starts testing its autonomous electric sedan in
San Francisco ride-sharing fleets, it’ll likely be the first production-ready
car on the roads without the tools to let a human assume control. The
announcement Friday is the first sign from a major carmaker that engineers have
enough confidence in self-driving cars to let them truly go it alone.
“What’s really special about this is if you look back 20
years from now, it’s the first car without a steering wheel and pedals,” said
Kyle Vogt, chief executive officer of Cruise Automation, the San
Francisco-based unit developing the software for GM’s self-driving cars.
GM shares rose as much as 1.1 percent at 9:36 a.m. in New
York to $44.68, the highest intraday trading level since Nov. 29.
Pedal-Free Rides
GM will run the cars in a test batch for a ride-sharing
program starting in 2019, and they won’t be without a safety net. The vehicles
will travel on a fixed route controlled by their mapping system, and the
Detroit-based automaker is applying for federal permission to run the test cars
without a driver.
Vogt said the self-driving Bolt has redundant systems
built in to back up the driving systems. If there’s a problem, the car will
slow down, pull over to the roadside and stop.
GM’s experiment will be a significant step forward for
self-driving cars. The automaker and companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo
unit and startup Zoox Inc. have demonstrated cars that can drive with so-called
Level 4 autonomy. As defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers, cars at
that level can drive without human intervention but only in certain geographic
areas.
GM, Zoox, Waymo and others have all tested Level 4 cars,
but usually with a driver still at the wheel to take over in case the system
doesn’t work properly. Removing the driver will really test the technology,
said Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Motor Corp.’s Toyota Research Institute.
“If you’re testing Level 4 technology with a driver,
you’re not really testing it at level 4,” he said in an interview at the CES
technology show in Las Vegas this week.
Phoenix vs. San Francisco
Waymo and its precursor, Google’s self-driving car
project, have tested autonomous vehicles in urban areas for years. Its Firefly
prototype had no steering wheel or pedals and in 2015 took a blind man for what
the company called “the world’s first truly self-driving trip.”
Late last year, Waymo started an autonomous ride-hailing
service in Phoenix using a self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan. More
recently, it dispensed with safety drivers, though the vans still has steering
wheels.
GM argues Waymo’s tests are mostly in the greater Phoenix
area, where traffic situations are less complex than what it’s encountered in
San Francisco. A Waymo spokesman said in November that the company has tested
its cars in 20 different cities.
GM, which also tests in Phoenix, said in a safety report
released Friday that for every 1,000 miles of autonomous driving, its car
needed to make 1,462 left turns in San Francisco, compared with 919 in the
Phoenix suburbs. Cruise’s car had to navigate construction blocking the lane more
than 18 times as often in the Bay Area and had to deal with emergency vehicles
270 times, versus six Phoenix encounters, according to the report.
GM’s autonomous test cars were in 22 accidents in
California last year, according to data from the state’s Department of Motor
Vehicles. All other companies combined had five accidents. In a November
interview, GM President Dan Ammann attributed the accidents to testing in a
dense urban environment and noted the company’s cars weren’t at fault in any of
the incidents.
Rule Change
GM said its filed a petition with the National Highway
Traffic and Safety Administration to test the cars. Current U.S. auto-safety
standards contain several provisions that act as de facto requirements that
vehicles have driver controls such as a steering wheel and foot pedals.
Manufacturers can get around those standards by
petitioning NHTSA for exemptions, provided they demonstrate that the exempted
vehicle will be at least as safe as a conventional one. Current law caps the number
of exempted vehicles at 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer per year.
If NHTSA approves the petition, GM will still have to get
permission from states to run the steering wheel-free cars. Currently, only
seven states allow the technology to be tested without a safety driver, said
Paul Hemmersbaugh, GM’s chief counsel and policy director for transportation as
a service.
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