Dude, where’s my self-driving car?

WHEN Mike Rosenbaum weaves through Sydney’s peak-hour traffic, stopping, starting and stopping again, he looks a lot less frazzled than drivers around him.

His secret? Tesla Autopilot software is doing a lot of the work.

“I love it. It feels like it’s almost a superpower,” he said.

“You obviously have to keep your hands on the wheel and keep your wits about you but it can steer for you and you don’t have to keep putting your foot on the brake.

“I think it’s a game-changer and I can’t wait for Full Self-Driving to be released in Australia.”

The more advanced version of Tesla’s autonomous software recently received a wide release in the US and Canada, allowing some cars to take over more driving tasks while human drivers supervised.

But it has left Australian enthusiasts asking when they will be allowed to access it and similar technology to let cars drive themselves.

Industry experts warn the answer is not simple, with lingering questions about its safety and even its business model, a lack of suitable infrastructure, and serious consequences if the technology fails.

Despite these questions, transport authorities are cautiously forging ahead with new regulations and a potential 2026 launch in Australia.

When self-driving cars are allowed on local roads, it will follow more than a decade of testing the technology.

Autonomous trucks, cars, buses, motorcycles and shuttles have been tested on public roads in every Australian state and territory, starting in 2012.

iMove Australia managing director Ian Christensen said regulators had taken a “cautious and consultative” approach to each of those trials, with exacting requirements to safeguard drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.

“Autonomous vehicles have to get an exception from current regulations to be operated on public roads. It’s possible here but only on the basis of a specific permit,” he said.

But a new law being developed by the National Transport Commission could change that, allowing some self-driving cars to operate legally in Australia.

The Automated Vehicle Safety Law, due in 2026, will establish an “in-service regulator” for the technology and national standards for autonomous vehicles.

Mr Christensen said it would be a “big step” for the technology and would require a substantial commitment from automakers.

“Vehicles under this law will have to be able to pull over safely if they are faced with a situation that’s too complex or that they can’t handle,” he said.

“It’s an important requirement to make sure our roads and our communities are safe but it’s also quite a challenge for vehicle manufacturers to make sure not only can a car pull over safety but that it can recognise when it needs to pull over safely.”

QUT Centre for Robotics joint director Michael Milford said a lot would be riding on the new laws that needed to balance public safety with ground-breaking technology.

“There’s an important role for laws and regulations to protect the Australian public from getting screwed over by irresponsible companies,” he said. “It’s really important we get that right.

“You also want to make sure that the regulation isn’t so stifling that it discourages anyone from ever coming here with tech that could be beneficial.”

But Professor Milford, whose team is developing “positioning technology” for Ford’s autonomous vehicles, said there was more than technical challenges holding self-driving cars back.

After years of trials, advances and “outlandish predictions,” he said many companies were re-examining their autonomous vehicle ambitions.

“There’s been a moment of reckoning,” he said.

“Everyone discovered the technical problems are much harder than everyone hoped so everything has slowed down.

“Paired with that, the economic case for [self-driving cars] has become messier and much less clear. In 2017, people were talking about a $7 trillion market… and now people are thinking twice about whether it’s economically viable at all.”

In the last three months, Ford and Volkswagen shut autonomous vehicle start up Argo AI, self-driving delivery start up Nuro laid off 20 per cent of its workers and Motional, an autonomous start up backed by Hyundai, also announced lay-offs.

CMC Markets analyst Tina Teng said Apple would “delay its plans of launching self-driving [electric] cars” until 2026, and Uber pulled out of the market in late 2020.

Another hurdle for self-driving cars operating in Australia would be their surroundings, according to Arup future mobility lead Ben Haddock.

In order to operate truly smart vehicles, he said, cars would need to connect to the infrastructure around them, trading information with traffic lights, for example, in addition to reading road signs and lane markings.

This would be particularly important in crowded city areas, Mr Haddock said, where traffic, shared roadways, and traffic signals became more complex.

“Some cars can probably drive themselves on freeways: keep their speed, stay in a lane, change lanes, interact with space,” he said.

“Where you come off the freeway and you’re heading for urban areas, that’s when it’s more complex and you interact with different spaces. We are going to need a lot more infrastructure for that.

“I don’t think we’ll see fully autonomous vehicles with our current infrastructure in Australia.”

The news is not all grim for self-driving cars, though.

In addition to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Mode rollout in the US and Canada, Google is operating its Waymo autonomous ride-hailing service for customers in parts of San Francisco and Phoenix in the US.

A San Francisco start up called Cruise is also letting the public test “fully driverless rides” in its cars that come loaded with cameras, radar and LiDAR sensors.

The company’s vehicles have now travelled more than 965,000 kilometres with no driver inside.

Professor Milford said real-world examples showed just how “mature” the technology had become, though the challenges ahead meant over-hyped, optimistic predictions from the last five years were now obsolete.

“It’s definitely not dead,” he said.

“No matter how many experts you poll, and some of them are very opinionated, I don’t think anyone can say definitively that self-driving cars will happen and will be widespread, or that they definitively won’t happen and won’t be widespread. That’s the enigma.”

– BY JENNIFER DUDLEY-NICHOLSON/ AAP