Automotive News Europe - February 2020 - 15

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model for these, then companies
such as Uber or Waymo will take it
over," Stürmer said.
Tavares said PSA was working on
technology beyond Level 3. "Level
4 or Level 5 will be interesting for
shared mobility like autonomous
shuttles or robotaxis," he said.
"Those cars are shared among
many users, and therefore they can
be more expensive."
Targeting those use cases could
actually reduce development costs,
Tavares said. "They will be used in
simplified environments with dedicated lanes and clear signage," he
said, "And the simplification of the
environment will make the validation of the software easier" as well
as reduce the number of scenarios
that need to be validated.
Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark suggested that at some point electric
and autonomous cars could replace
certain flights within Europe. "Let's

There will still be
people who want
to drive, and you
will still be allowed
to drive for many
years to come.
-- Bentley CEO
Adrian Hallmark

say you could do 200 mph (322
kph) safely for three hours. Where
could you get to? You could do most
of Europe."
But Hallmark warned that widespread use of true self-driving
cars won't be feasible for several
decades. "From our perspective,
there will still be people who want
to drive, and you will still be allowed
to drive for many years to come," he
said, even if autonomous cars are
able to travel on certain purposebuilt or adapted highways.

'Eye-watering' costs
Urban environments are another
matter, Hallmark said. The cost of
converting cities such as London or
Mumbai "that were never designed
for cars" into areas that can be used
by autonomous vehicles would be
"eye-watering" and beyond the
scope of local government.
This caution on autonomous vehicles doesn't mean, however, that
car companies and tech giants alike
are reducing their investments, even
if their ambitions have been scaled
back and timetables lengthened.
Last July, Volkswagen announced
it would invest $2.6 billion in Argo
AI, a software startup backed by
Ford Motor. Three months later, VW
said it would spin off the group's
self-driving business as Volkswagen
Autonomy, focusing first on putting
Level 4 commercial vehicles on the
road by 2025.
Not to be outdone, Daimler and premium rival BMW are joining forces
to develop their own Level 4 systems, dedicating more than 1,000
engineers to the joint project. Their
focus, though, most likely won't be
on a self-driving Mercedes-Benz
S class or BMW 7 series, even for
use in mobility on-demand services.
Daimler CEO Ola Källenius said last
November that ensuring the safety
of robotaxis in urban areas was
proving to be a harder engineering
challenge than first thought. Added
Källenius: "There has been a reality
check setting in here."
-- Douglas A. Bolduc,
Nick Gibbs contributed

FEBRUARY 2020

Cross-Company
Cooperation
What companies are doing
to share investments, reduce
risks and increase returns.

Audi
Martin Siemann
BMW Group
Joachim Kolling
Ionity
Michael Hajesch
Magna Steyr
Frank Klein
Microsoft
Robert Lokner
PwC Legal
Hubertus Kleene
Vienna University of
Economics and Business
Werner Hoffmann
Volkswagen
Commercial Vehicles
Thomas Sedran
Wiener Linien
Johannes Liebermann
Zenuity
Dennis Nobelius
A special session at the
Vienna
Motor
Symposium

2020

Congress Center * Hofburg
Vienna, Austria

vienna-motorsymposium.com
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Automotive News Europe - February 2020

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