I came across the news that WeRide just entered Belgium with their autonomous robobus in Leuven. In general, Europe is often seen as more advanced in areas like medicine and energy, while the US is ahead in things like computing and aerospace. Europe has a long history of leading innovation in science and engineering, and is home to many top universities and research institutes driving breakthroughs.
But when it comes to self driving cars, the US has had Waymo around for a long time. Europe is now starting to see things move with WeRide. I know that WeRide only IPO'd last year, but they've already spread fast across China, Singapore, UAE, and now France, Switzerland, and Belgium. So what do you guys think: will Europe shape its own path in AVs?
34 comments
It’s going to have to. Solutions designed for the US market aren’t going to be appropriate.
I’d rather have homegrown systems designed for our road design and traffic patterns. Even then I don’t have much confidence in systems that work well in one country working correctly in others.
The Belgian system might have dedicated pothole detection systems and the German system may need additional training to work out how aggressively to flash lights at other drivers. If the Polish system is trained on Polish drivers then there’s going to be some manual intervention to train it on what a speed limit actually is.
They’d better program those things to anticipate cyclists. Already a lot of assisted driving cars like Teslas leave very little room for them. But they won’t, they’ll rather spend a million on a lobby to standardize roads to their liking than 2 million on development.
Probably… maybe ?
Personally I see Europe as being probably the hardest continent to implement this… not just because of regulation but also just how some of our cities are built (i.e. not with the car in mind).
The US is car centric with large roads and lots of lanes. Europe has small roads with sometimes not much signaling as to what that road is doing. So I don’t see how a self driving car can interpret what’s going on. On top of that the US loves to say how much bigger they are but we’re are more condensed. Meaning on average our cities are busier and hence thst increase the chance of accidents. What’s more with much more pedestrians and cyclists than the US… well you see where I’m coming from.
Personally I’d prefer seeing further investments in soft transportation than self driving cars.
I’d rather bolster self driving public transport honestly, I don’t really see the logic in a self driving private vehicle.
Long story short, no. The safety of Autonomous vehicles still isn’t there and from what we have seen, manpower in terms of supervision is still required, thus making the “autonomous” promise kind of, fake.
Most of us see true autonomy as better public transport, the TEN-T network plan and EU investment to improve regional connectivity, and retaining intra-continental flights for hard to reach destinations such as islands and places on the other side of the continent (I.e flying Amsterdam to Greece as an example).
In the Netherlands, this will probably be the current approach of investing more on the OV Fiets network so that areas which have hard reachibility might get electric bike shares. In the big cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, improving train stations for better transfers and extending the metro will go a long way.
In Malta, better transit is sorely needed, but the improvements of the ferry network is a good start.
Germany, they need to invest heavily in DB. Their trains are the shame of Europe.
Can make many different cases for many EU countries, but AVs are best suited to those who don’t care about driving and those who don’t need to drive. Might as well improve public transport.
I just wish our public transport here in Northern Ireland would actually catch up to the levels of most other European countries instead of having self driving cars tbh
I hate it, we should remove cars from cities not add them in the form of robots. There are too many things that could go wrong and I genuinely don’t see a reason why a self driving car is needed in the first place.
VW already tests (under the name Moja, starts also in the US) their autonomous vehicles in Germany (the other manufacturers also, but I don’t know details)
It will come, but here it is way more complicated. Even cities like San Francisco with pedestrians and cyclists are way easier for this than nearly any European city. Smaller streets, not so clearly separated between different modes of transport (tram ways, bike lanes), way more signage and on other places lack of it.
I don’t think Europe has the infrastructure to go to full auto… nor the will, tbh.
Hungary has a very strong taxi driver lobby. In 1990, they blocked all the bridges in Budapest after a large fuel price increase until the government backed down.
If we ever get self-driving vehicles, they will be consumer-owned, otherwise, taxi drivers will be quick to put a stop to any attempt at legalization.
Priority is low. Most big cities of Shengen countries aren’t car-centric. We have enough public transport & bike infrastructure. Paris is moving away from cars quickly and doing a good job, and looks like other cities will follow.
For highways and rural areas, current assisted self-driving (glorified cruise control) is good enough for a lot of people.
So I don’t think there just isn’t much appetite, both from the public and from the government, to strongly support and push for self-driving cars. It’s a “nice to have feature” at this moment. Safer and more efficient public transport and pedestrian/biking infrastructure seem to be the natural priority.
I consider it be frivolous, and unneeded for the most part.
I do see the potential for it as a disability aid, being able to give much needed mobility to people that can’t drive.
But other than that, not really anything that would bring good to the common users.
I wonder what kind of problem is solved by self driving cars. I rarely drive and with walkable cities, a extensive cycle network and a decent public transport system a lot of the mobility is solved. On top of that, my country is densely populated and with lots of cyclist and pedestrians and lots of narrow roads its probably much more difficult to get reliable cars.
Self driving cars have all the problems of regular cars and more. Europe doesn’t have the strong AI sector that would develop such a thing, and driving infrastructure is simply more complicated here since there’s far more interaction with non-drivers and it’s often shoved into places that weren’t designed for it.
We need to invest in more efficient methods of mass transit, not some silicon valley pipe dream of getting rid of buses.
It’s a bad solution to a problem that never existed.
Imo self driving cars have no future.
Ten years ago, they were supposed to be everywhere in 2 years.
Turns out it’s not as easy to put in the streets as the innovators thought it was.
And there’s still the question of responsibility. Today everything is on the driver. But if there’s no driver, who become responsible in case of accident.
I’ve given this some thought the last few years and I think that self-driving cars will do wonders for society when perfected. I see them as becoming a way to travel without necessarily needing to own a vehicle and you might get the following benefits:
* Additional income source – your car can rent itself out when not in use
* Safer roads – if all cars are autonomous then accidents should become much fewer in number
* Drink driving – you really have to try when it’s so easy for your car to come and pick you up
* Less traffic as there will be fewer cars, better coordination between vehicles (do we still need traffic lights?) and fewer accidents
* No need for bus lanes etc as you don’t need buses anymore – it becomes much simpler for people to use public self-driving cars on demand
* Less waste as you will no longer need 3-5 vehicles when you are a family of 3-5 people (when the kids are older)
* No need for big car parks in city/town centres
I’m sure there’s lots more to come but these are the sorts of things I think about. I think it will be transformative.
If they approve self driving trucks in this decade there’s going to be worldwide riots. So many people work as drivers it’s going to be a giant mess.
Let’s just build more trains, trams and fix our current infrastructure. We don’t really need tech bro futurism, we just need what works. Infrastructure is much more important to be center of short term profit.
Europe, specially rural Europe is probably one of the toughest use cases for self driving cars, there’s plenty of dirt roads, missing markings, potholes and little obstacles to avoid (tree branches, open manholes, sudden pedestrians etc).
I’d much rather see fully autonomous trams and trains before we try to do the same for personal vehicles.
Completely pointless. Increase funding for public transport instead. Spend some money on improving infrastructure
Our metro is already self driving. There’s also a plan to make some of the suburban trains autonomous. Would love it if they expanded the network instead of focusing on toys for the ultrawealthy
We turned Rimac’s robotaxi that wouldn’t start during its presentation into a joke. We love out advanced technology/s.
Nothing against him, but our people love hating on anything innovative so much it’s ridiculous.
Poland has a funny case of accidentally outlawing them due to laws stating that a car shall have a driver inside.
Problem is that european self-driving cars require much more advancement in terms of proper safety and road adaptations as there are road differences between a city that from the start was planned with some logistics and at the time modernish layout vs building on top of what once was medieval spot.
So till they become advanced enough to actually be useful a long time will pass and till them we are better off with focus on building up trams, metros and railways
No idea, but I’m glad I moved out of Leuven (where I studied for a year) before that hit the roads. I don’t believe the tech is at a stage where autonomous vehicles are safe for the roads yet
Why would you want to cease all control you have over the wheel? That’s a fantastic way to get yourself driven off a cliff.
Also Scottish roads are tiny, many of them the size of just one lane. I’m not trusting an AI to take control when me and some other guy ahead of me, going in the opposite direction, are trying to figure out who should pull back first in order to let the other pass.
I’d rather have more public transport and bike-friendly infrastructure. Self-driving cars will just add even more idiocy on the roads.
We should focus on better connecting smaller rural communities to public transport
I like the idea – I like driving but I wouldn’t mind the ai take over on longer trips so I can spend time doing other stuff. Also i think when it is safe there will be a lot of advantages, a lot more cars on the already available roads because they can drive much much closer safely than a human could. Also, probably be able to drive a lot faster safely than a human could. It would mean less need for roads and faster travel times. Also it would be nice to let the car park for it self. Parking lots could be reasonably far away from things and the car can come back and get you.
That is the where is suspect it is heading anyway – but it might take some time
I personally don’t think it’s the solution for personal everyday commute. Public transportation is
It will put truck drivers out of work for sure (keeping in mind that all goods we buy / use needed transportation by truck at some point)
Mercedes is able to aperate lvl 3 self-driving on the Autobahn in Germany.
Honestly, any vision of the future in which self-driving cars are the pillar of transportation is one in which we have failed.
There will always be a need for motorized individual transport and the like and especially in transportation, there are probably large gains to be made, but you can have like 70%+ of the value of self-driving cars by reducing the need for cars in the first place. Which in turn would also decrease the drawbacks of cars that will not at all be adressed with self-driving cars.
I want to have my own private vehicle that doesn’t store information on my travels. Self driving cars will be spies
IMO, the low hanging fruit is to automate trucking on motorways. Seems like the urban part is hardest but just having trucks be able to get between industrial parks would be huge.
I think we’d be better off spending the money on public transport.