Start of the 550 mile piloted drive from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas: Ricky Hudi, Executive Vice President Electric/Electronic Development, (left) and Ewald Gössmann, Excecutive Director Electronic Research Lab California (ERL), (third from right) drop the flag for the Audi A7 piloted driving concept car.
In the preamble to a mid-1970s television show 'The Six Million Dollar Man', the narrator crooned, "We have the technology..." Scientists in the fictional series had the ability to rebuild a crumpled human into a bionic man but until a military usage gave the impetus, there'd been no reason to replace the former astronaut's arm, legs and one eye with superhuman parts.
Flash forward to 2015, when at the introductory session of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, Consumer Electronics Association Chief Economist Shawn Dubravac posited that society has reached an important "inflection point" in the digital age, shifting past the question of what is technologically feasible to determining whether the technology is meaningful. In other words, what is the "use-case"?
Consider the autonomous car, its technological feasibility all-but proven and being tested once more this week as a group of journalists 'drive' a prototype Audi A7 from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas, a distance of 900 kilometres. The technology is in place, but will consumers and governments deem it practical?
"The shifts and changes to come are even more pronounced," Dubravac, chief economist of the Consumer Electronics Association and author of the newly released book Digital Destiny, told journalists on Sunday. "If we digitize, connect and sensorize the car, and we do eventually have fully autonomous vehicles, then you don't even need to sit behind the wheel. In fact, you don't need to sit in chairs, you don't need to sit forward. That vehicle experience can fundamentally shift because of digitilization. You can put a bed in there, a desk in there, a hot tub in there, couches, whatever you want to do, because of digitilization."
Audi, nicknaming the car "Jack," says it is production-ready. The company deploys the catch phrase "piloted driving" rather than autonomous. Once speed hits 110 km/h, the driver is obliged to take the wheel. Until then, the car is said to be capable of changing lanes, passing, accelerating and braking integrating sensors, laser scanners, and high-rez cameras.
In theory, automated cars will reduce traffic congestion and accidents by eliminating the inferior human equation in favour of superior computer control.
Google continues testing cars so automated, they don't have steering wheels. On Monday, press preview day at the CES, BMW is also expected to provide updates on its automated "self-drifting" car. At last year's CES, the company introduced ultra-sonic radar and camera technology that outfits the car to pass and re-enter the lane as the actual driver watches – how? Relaxed? Tense? Handcuffed?
Dubravac says smartphones surpassed computers for the first time in 2014 – two billion in use worldwide versus 1.7 billion computers -- and the "third stage of the Internet is taking it to other places like wrists". He says the coming transition will bring the Internet to 50 billion devices. For example, Apple – which is absent from the CES -- introduced a wrist watch to be sold in the spring of 2015, pledging that the device is "less about reading words on a screen and more about making a genuine connection". In tune, on Monday BMW is expected to demonstrate how a car can be self-parked via the company's smartwatch.
Not all auto makers are buying in. Toyota, for one, believes philosophically that drivers should be responsible for the operation of their vehicles. What happens if a child darts unexpectedly in front of a car? It is instead focused on introducing hydrogen fuel cell technology, an environmentally friendly means of powering an automobile. An announcement is expected on Monday afternoon regarding a technological development.
The German premium auto makers are all-in, as they'll say around the poker tables in the casinos. This past year, Mercedes tested an automated car nicknamed Bertha in California. The company sees a market in rental vehicles such as Car2Go [a Daimler subsidiary] and traditional rental companies – programming an automated vehicle could take the stress out of driving from the airport into an unfamiliar city.
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