Tech geeks descend on Las Vegas this week for the annual CES electronics show, which opens to the public on Thursday, though one of its most anticipated innovations may once again be setting expectations low: driverless cars.

Autonomous vehicles have long been heralded as the new dawn of transportation, and the world’s leading technology companies have invested billions of dollars in setting them up.

But despite steady progress, robotic travel is not yet viable on the open road. Even Elon Musk’s Tesla needs an “attentive driver,” though the billionaire claims his car will soon be self-driving.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), has since 2020 offered driverless public rides in Phoenix, Arizona, but on very well-marked roads.

Cruise, a unit of General Motors, was the first to secure approval in June to transport passengers in “robot taxis” in San Francisco, a mountain city with more complicated traffic patterns, but initially only at night and within restricted areas.

In Las Vegas, where nearly 100,000 attendees are expected to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) between January 5 and 8, the unmanned Uber started rolling out last month in partnership with the company Motional, but always with a human behind. case.

“This is a huge problem for any company that strips their safety driver of theirs,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor specializing in autonomous vehicles at the University of South Carolina.

Several incidents with Cruise vehicles have been reported and the US Highway Safety Agency (NHTSA) has opened an investigation.

For experts, software will improve over time and the ubiquity of driverless cars is only a matter of time.

“The real big question (is…): How fast will the company need to replicate in other cities like Los Angeles or Minneapolis, where it snows a lot? Is it always reinventing the wheel or is it getting easier?”Smith posed.

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While many companies are working on autonomous driving, some have scaled back their ambitions to focus on assistive tools such as speed control, lane changes or assisted parking.

US giant Ford decided in October to sell its stake in autonomous driving company Argo AI, saying it would prefer to prioritize less ambitious technologies.

Tesla CEO Musk has often promised that a fully autonomous vehicle is just around the corner, but for now his car features only “driving assistance”.

– ‘No fast track’ –

Developing self-driving cars involves “tremendous costs … with no fast track to profit,” said Jordan Greene, co-founder of the company AEye, which markets sensors that allow vehicles to better sense their environment.

Autonomous drivers are no longer dependent on technological advances but on company motivation to make the required investments, he said.

“Yes, there are challenges in terms of technology, but the biggest challenge is the business model,” he said.

Several potential markets will emerge for Greene, including driver-updated software remotely and periodically for a fee, as well as operating systems for PCs or smartphones.

The driver’s short-road transportation sector is also keen to develop autonomous driving solutions, he said.

Austrian company Holon plans to present at CES an autonomous bus for public transport, designed without a steering wheel or pedals.

For Marco Kollmeier, the company’s CEO, the failures in this area were “absolutely exaggerated”, with too much media attention to the self-driving Tesla accident.

“The real use of autonomous driving is not just putting the driver to sleep while driving,” he said. Services like Holon can “redefining public transport” by offering à la carte or fixed-route travel.

As for whether autonomous vehicles will face resistance from society, Greene is not too worried.

“It falls within a typical adoption curve,” he said. “When they said I would pay to ride in a car with a stranger, I couldn’t believe it. Now I just take Ubers.”

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