Oh, This Is Bad News For Tesla!

The industry is beginning to abandon self-driving.

Photo by Brecht Denil on Unsplash

Autonomous driving and robotaxis are the future! Right? Well, don’t be so sure. There are a wide variety of problems with these systems, ranging from the fact that they aren’t as safe as they claim to be to the fact that none of them has a clear path to profitability. But possibly the largest issue is that no one seems to want them. That is set to throw a huge spanner in the works for the entire industry, but especially for Tesla.

Some manufacturers have been getting ahead of this curve.

Stellantis has a Level 3 autonomous system called AutoDrive that is “available and ready to be deployed”, which can enable drivers to take their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road at speeds below 37 miles per hour, no matter the lighting or weather conditions. That makes Autodrive one of the most accomplished consumer self-driving systems available and puts it significantly ahead of Tesla’s FSD. It should hopefully turn Stellantis’ currently iffy fortunes around and enable them to become a dominant force in the market, particularly if this system were offered in their more luxurious brands, such as Chrysler or Maserati.

But no, they have chosen not to release it and will instead keep it on hold. Apparently, there is “limited market demand” for autonomous cars.

And it isn’t just Stellantis that has noticed this.

A recent AAA poll discovered that 13% of Americans trust autonomous cars, and 61% of American drivers are “afraid” to ride in a self-driving car. You might say that this is a natural attitude when it comes to new technology, and given time, they will come around. But that isn’t true. Autonomous vehicles have been operating in the US since 2018, yet the rates of people actively afraid of them have actually increased. Indeed, back in 2021, AAA found that 54% of Americans were afraid of autonomous cars. So, what is going on?

According to AAA automotive engineering director Greg Brannon, “Most drivers want automakers to focus on advanced safety technology.” And that is the issue, because no autonomous system is anywhere near as safe as a human driver.

Waymo is the safest so far, with an average critical disengagement every 17,060 miles. In other words, every 17,060 miles, someone has to intervene to prevent an accident, whether that person is a passenger, a remote operator, or similar. By comparison, human drivers have, on average, roughly one incident every 500,000 miles! Even the most pessimistic statistics for the average distance between incidents for human drivers are tens of times larger than that of the safest autonomous car on the market.

Understandably, people value their safety over the mild convenience of not having to drive for a little while. And that is why the demand for these systems, which are less safe than you or me driving, is shrinking even further as more people discover their unreliability.

This is bad news for almost every automaker, as they have all invested countless billions in developing their own self-driving systems, and that money appears to have mainly been a waste.

But it is especially bad news for Tesla.