"The self-driving car is the wave of the future for the world's largest car companies. It is the holy grail that will get millions of buyers to purchase vehicles that require no driver at all. The race has car companies investing billions of dollars in the technology. Leading the way are Tesla, Alphabet's Waymo, and several new Chinese companies. One leader of the global car industry says they will have a very, very long wait."
"Lidar (light detection and ranging) uses lasers to create 3D images, allowing cars to collect data about their surrounding environment. He commented to the Financial Times, "Close to one million people lose their lives every year to car accidents. If a technology company builds a vehicle that kills one person every year, that's one-millionth of the difference, but it will have trouble surviving.""
"Li's comments come at a time when Chinese companies, like China tech giant Baidu, say they are close to a fully self-driving system. In the United States, the leaders are Tesla and Waymo. The two U.S. companies are running tests around America. The purpose is to convince regulators and drivers that these systems are much safer than others operated by humans."
Global carmakers and tech firms are investing heavily to develop self-driving vehicles, with Tesla, Waymo, and Chinese companies leading tests. Lidar uses lasers to create 3D images so cars can sense surrounding environments and companies like Hesai supply critical sensors. High development costs may not produce near-term returns. Fatalities in human-driven cars are common, but a single autonomous-vehicle death would draw intense scrutiny and threaten a company's survival, affecting regulator attitudes. U.S. firms run public trials to demonstrate superior safety, but widely publicized crashes, such as a recent Waymo collision in Arizona, undermine public confidence.
Read at 24/7 Wall St.
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