Why have self-driving cars become public enemy number one?

Autonomous vehicles have had a bad rap this year. Apple’s announcement that it was hitting the brakes on its plans to develop an electric vehicle with self-driving capabilities has not helped market confidence.

The public seems to have lost faith in autonomous vehicles too, following reports that San Francisco residents set several on fire in protest in February, following safety concerns.

And these concerns are not entirely unwarranted, as it was reported this month that Tesla reached a settlement in a lawsuit after a crash in 2018 that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang when his car collided with a highway barrier while operating on autopilot.

Recent portrayals in film and TV appear to have cast autonomous cars as the villains:  High octane Netflix Sci-Fi series 3 Body Problem features a scene in which three hacked autonomous vehicles launch an attack on one of the drama’s main characters.

The 2023 film Leave the World Behind meanwhile, starring Julia Roberts, has a dramatic scene showing a logjam of Tesla cars losing their connection and crashing into each other.

While fears around autonomous vehicles existed before negative media coverage, there’s evidence that it may have exacerbated them.

According to a recent Forbes Advisor report, as many as 93% of US citizens have concerns about some aspect of self-driving cars, their main anxiety stemming from fear of safety and technological malfunctions.

Over 60% of Americans wouldn’t trust a self-driving car with their loved ones or children, the report added, and a similar number of consumers have lost confidence in Tesla due to recent safety and technology recalls.

The report was not completely negative however, sounding out a cautious note of optimism in autonomous vehicles’ abilities to empower disenfranchised groups. For instance, 20%  of respondents were enthusiastic about enhanced mobility for the elderly and people with disabilities.

But even this aspect is nuanced, as what is empowering to one group is seen as a safety hazard to another.  To reduce cyber attacks, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is introducing mandatory regulations for autonomous vehicles and electric car manufacturers.

While a positive move for security, one organisation representing the providers of solutions for disabled drivers and passengers, Mobility in Motion, is currently warning that the new rules will bring new challenges for those who need driving adaptations (Read more about it here).

Is Carhacking a thing?

So how much of our fears over driverless vehicles are unfounded? Is car hacking even possible or is it just the stuff of science fiction and Daily Mail headlines?

According to Siddartha Khastgir, head of verification and validation at Warwick Manufacturing Group based at the University of Warwick, hacking vehicles remotely to cause harm is possible.

“But at the same time, the industry and regulators have appreciated and acted upon the growing importance of cyber security and the need to protect autonomous vehicles from being hacked,” he assures.

He adds that the UN’s regulations provide uniform provisions for vehicle cyber security and its management systems – but all this hasn’t prevented film and TV from using dramatic licence, which in turn affects market and public perception.

“Marketing and media coverage of autonomous or automated vehicles go a long way in shaping public opinion and expectations of this technology,” says Khastgir.

Cian O’Cuinneagain, chief product officer of Cubic Telecom, a telecoms firm that provides connectivity to software-defined connected vehicles (SDCVs), agrees.

He adds that if the public saw the amount of safety procedures, and were given information on how the algorithms work, while it might not make as compelling viewing it would at least serve to ease their concerns.

“I always find it reassuring that the algorithms used in self-driving vehicles have a lot of fail-safe complexity built in,” he says.

“If a vehicle encounters an obstacle that it can’t navigate, it doesn’t do something crazy, it gracefully stops and hands over to a teleoperator and someone can navigate around it.

“In public passenger vehicles, I think it’s a question of communication, education, reinforcing real statistics about how these things work, how much safer they are, and also what it’s going to look like from a journey of transition perspective.”

Cubic Telecom is already facilitating fully autonomous vehicles in industrial environments such as agriculture and heavy industry, which O’Cuinneagáin, presents as proof that autonomous setups can synchronise and work together in a safe manner.

Elsewhere, simulator provider, Ansible Motion, is using virtual reality to help with safety tests and public reassurance in their simulator Driver-In-The-Loop.

“In reality, autonomous vehicles can’t operate on their own,” says Salman Safdar, subject matter expert of DIL at Ansible Motion.

“Manufacturers are looking to real people to evaluate and test advanced driver-assistance systems to establish trust between the human occupant and the ADAS-driven car ‘brain’,” he adds.

Ultimately, Ansible’s simulator helps drivers become more confident in a driverless car by witnessing and understanding how an autonomous car works, but in a controlled environment.

“Humans tend to look for cues in the vehicle’s behaviour that indicate it’s being driven correctly – such as slowing down in good time on the approach to a junction – and simulators are being used to determine if emphasising these cues might make passengers feel more at ease,” says Safdar.

“What’s more, knowing at what point to intervene in an unfolding scenario is key to striking the right balance between driver control and active safety – something that can be within a range of driver levels and abilities, not just experienced evaluators,” he adds.

The Apple problem

When Apple dropped its plans to build an electric car, the sources came from multiple outlets but not from the firm itself.  The project was kept a ‘secret’ for over a decade, and executives made the announcement to the internal team.

A few weeks before the cancellation was revealed, reports emerged that the tech giant was scaling back its ambitions from completely autonomous to self-driving capabilities.

What this means for the market could be viewed in two ways according to O’Cuinneagáin.

“I think a lot of original equipment manufacturers will not be totally upset that Apple is not going to be a direct competitor,” he says, “but it also shows how hard it is.”

O’Cuinneagáin notes that there’s a perception that the EV and self-driving car market is easier for newer players to enter compared to manufacturing traditional combustion engine-based vehicles.

In agreement, Khastgir says: “There is definitely a dose of reality that has finally struck the industry.”

As a result, he adds, pressures on generating revenue have forced many players to either shut up shop, or pivot.

“But I think it’s important as well to counter this with the reality that there are still emerging players,” adds O’Cuinneagáin.

Right now, Khastgir says SDC companies have one of two options. The first is to bank on the deep pockets of their investors, such as Waymo and Cruise – a recent report by McKinsey shows autonomous vehicle decision makers estimate more than $5 billion in investment is needed across the sector for fully autonomous robo-taxis alone until official commercial launch.

John Redford, the chief technology officer at UK-based start up Five, which pivoted from offering a full self-driving car model to a less cash-intensive, cloud-based development and testing platform, described autonomous cars as a “multibillion pound problem”.

Five effectively took the second option on the table which is to shift focus to more immediate revenue generation streams. This also includes Khastgir’s second option, which is offering advanced levels of driver systems over completely self-driving vehicles, which we see in GM’s Super Cruise or Ford’s BlueCruise.

The timeline until fully autonomous cars take to our roads, meanwhile, is extending. McKinsey’s survey predicts that fully autonomous robo-taxis and trucks will start to appear by 2030. Although, O’Cuinneagáin says SDV trials in various metropolitan cities will happen sooner.

As more legislation is passed and consumers grow accustomed to the vehicles as part of their overall transport mix, however, it may well be that killer cars are consigned to movie history along with other tired tropes that include Great White sharks, wronged mistresses, and creepy English villains.