Automakers desperately need cost reduction in autonomous tech. GOSY can provide it.
Self-driving vehicles could cost an extra $10,000 Thu, 04/23/2015 - 8:01am Jason Lomberg, Digital Editor, @JasonECNMag
Will self-driving vehicles lead to increased automotive safety? Probably. Will they have run up against entrenched cultural attitudes and a fear of change? Maybe. But will they cost more? Almost certainly. Got an extra 10 grand lying around?
Wired just ran a triumphant piece declaring that “the hardware is self-driving cars is pretty cheap.” The ultrasonic sensors – to measure the position of close objects – only run $15-20. The odometry sensors add an extra $80-120. But their idea of “cheap” is very different from mine. They reference a study from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) which concludes that full autonomy could add an extra $10,000 to each car.
The group ran a recent survey in which 55% of respondents would consider buying a partially self-driving car and 44% would be interested in a fully autonomous vehicle. Further, more than 50% indicated they’d pay more for autonomous features, and 24% claimed they’d pay up to $4,000 more for the privilege. 17% said they’d pay more than 5 grand extra!
That’s handy, because according to BCG, the initial self-driving features like highway autopilot with lane-changing and urban autopilot will cost between $5,000 and $6,000, while full autonomy will run 10K. BCG appears to be in favor of self-driving vehicles, but even they admit that autonomous vehicles will initially reside in the “premium segment” of the market (hello, Tesla Roadster!), and even the most optimistic projections imagine that it’ll take 15-20 after the initial introduction of autonomous features for self-driving vehicles – in any capacity – to reach a market penetration rate of 25%.
Even that 25% figure is based on a number of assumptions -- that autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles can overcome entrenched cultural factors related to, ya know, driving one’s self (which I can completely sympathize with), the willingness of a significant margin of consumers to plunk down an extra 5-10 grand for autos, and the umpteen infrastructure factors that need resolution. Some critics are predicting that self-driving vehicles could preclude the need for traffic lights, altogether – does that sound like an easy technological (and cultural) adjustment?
Mandating partial or fully autonomous vehicle features (like backup cameras before it) would, of course solve the 1st and 2nd issues (though consumers could then sidestep the 2nd by switching, en masse, to public transportation), but forcing consumers to spend thousands of extra dollars for something most of them don’t necessarily want wouldn’t be the most popular political ploy. Not to mention the fact that public transportation is less-than-viable in the more rural areas of the country, creating two bad solutions – pay more for your daily commute or … ride a bus or train that may not even service your area.
To their credit, BCG does predict a certain “break even” period for the extra outlay on autonomous features. They note that “autonomous features could generate at least $2,300 in cost-of-ownership savings over four years, given annual fuel savings of 15 percent through increased efficiency and a reduction in insurance premiums of 30 percent per vehicle as a result of fewer accidents.”
One thing’s for certain – self-driving vehicles won’t arrive on the market like conquering heroes, painlessly and with a bare minimum of expense.
