BOSTON, May 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Over the last three
to four years, the driverless robotaxi industry has begun to
flourish. Driverless services are coming online in multiple cities
across the US and China.
IDTechEx's recent report, "Future Automotive Technologies
2024-2034: Applications, Megatrends, Forecasts", predicts that the
driverless robotaxi industry will be generating over US$470 billion annually through services in 2034.
This is certainly supported by the driverless data coming out of
California DMV, which shows another year of more miles driven, by
more vehicles on the road, and more distance between
disengagements. However, there are two sides to every story, and
the news coming out of San
Francisco suggests that not everything is getting
better.
What the autonomous testing data says
In 2023, the fleet of vehicles testing in California submitted more testing miles than
ever before. Alphabet's Waymo has always been a leader in the
number of miles driven during testing, and this year was no
different. In 2023, Waymo submitted nearly 3.7 million miles using
its fleet of 438 registered vehicles, which is around 65% of all
autonomous vehicle testing miles submitted in 2023. This is
the number of miles submitted with a safety driver onboard testing
the systems and making sure everything is working as expected. So
perhaps more important is the number of miles submitted through
vehicles without a driver on board at all. In 2023, Waymo submitted
a staggering 1.2 million miles of driverless testing, more than all
miles recorded by all testing companies in all years prior.
However, this was beaten by another of the leading players in the
robotaxi race – Cruise.
Cruise operated a commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco for most of 2023. During its
testing, it racked up over 2 million miles of driverless activity,
nearly double that of its main rival, Waymo. However, what was
interesting is that Cruise did not put anywhere near as many miles
into its safety-driver-monitored autonomous testing. Despite having
a fleet of over 500 vehicles registered for driver-in autonomous
testing, only 325 captured any miles, and they only clocked a total
of 580,000 miles.
Where Cruise did beat Waymo was in its disengagements.
Disengagements happen when the test driver feels the vehicle is not
behaving as planned. This can be because the sensor suite has
failed to detect something, the planned trajectory of the vehicle
is considered dangerous, or even because a human motorist nearby is
driving erratically (which is surprisingly common in the data).
Last year, Waymo submitted 212 disengagements, giving them a ratio
of 17,311 miles per disengagement, which isn't great. For
comparison, the average US human driver can expect to be involved
in a collision roughly once every 200,000, according to IDTechEx's
research. Cruise, on the other hand, recorded no disengagements -
zero, zilch, nada! Cruise's disengagement performance has been
increasing rapidly over the years; in 2022, it only had nine
disengagements, four of which were caused by poor driving by humans
in nearby cars. Even still, to record zero disengagements over
580,000 miles of testing is quite the achievement.
According to the data, the robotaxi industry is getting more
experienced and safer with each passing year. But the streets of
San Francisco are telling a
different story.
What the news and events in San
Francisco say
There has always been some controversy over autonomous car
testing in San Francisco and
across California. They have seen
pushback from taxi drivers and ride-share drivers, with the new
technology posing a threat to their livelihoods. However, the
biggest worry when it comes to the deployment of driverless
autonomous services is their safety.
Over the course of robotaxi testing in California, there have been several small and
perhaps even silly incidents involving these vehicles. For example,
on the 21st March 2023, a
Cruise vehicle went through the caution tape of a closed
intersection where there was a downed telegraph pole, which the
Cruise vehicle then hit. But, on the 2nd of October 2023, an incident sparked a deeper sense
of concern. A pedestrian was hit by a human-driven Nissan, which
launched her into the path of a Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle
failed to stop in time and, while attempting to pull over, dragged
the pedestrian 20ft before stopping with a wheel on her leg,
causing serious injury. Following the incident, Cruise's driver-out
testing and robotaxi service permissions were revoked by California
DMV. Rivals Waymo were still able to operate but has recently had
challenges of its own.
In Feb 2024, a Waymo vehicle had a
collision with a cyclist, causing minor injuries. This happened as
the cyclist was obstructed from the Waymo's view by a truck. The
cyclist emerged into the path of the Waymo, which braked heavily as
soon as the cyclist became visible but was unable to avoid a
collision. The cyclist suffered minor injuries but didn't need to
be taken to hospital and was able to leave the scene on their
own.
Later in the same month, a Waymo vehicle was set on fire and
vandalized after it entered the crowded streets of San Francisco's Chinatown on the busy night of
the Lunar New Year. Some have claimed that this was a mistake on
behalf of the car and that a human driver would know to avoid the
area during this time. However, this should not excuse the actions
of the crowd.
Of course, since testing began, there have been collisions
involving robotaxis. California DMV has a log of all collisions
that involve autonomous testing vehicles, a log that IDTechEx has
read and analyzed. Between 2019 and 2023, nearly 550 collisions
have been recorded; of those, 288 occurred when the vehicle was in
autonomous driving mode, as opposed to in manual mode being driven
by a test driver. Of those 288 collisions, IDTechEx finds that 22
can be attributed to a fault of the autonomous driving system.
Furthermore, only 11 occurred when the vehicle was operating
without a safety driver onboard, and only one caused a major
injury. There have been other injuries involving autonomous
vehicles, but aside from the incident on October 2nd, only one other minor
injury has occurred when the vehicle was without a safety driver;
that one was ultimately down to an unfortunate tire blowout. So,
there has been one major injury caused by an autonomous robotaxi in
nearly 4 million miles of driver out testing. By comparison, NHTSA
reported a total of 2,497,647 injuries from road traffic accidents
in the US in 2021. At the same time, the total fleet of vehicles on
the road completed just over 3.1 trillion miles. In other words,
the typical injury rate on US roads is once every 1.25 million
miles.
While what happened on October 2nd
was undoubtedly a terrible incident for the person involved, the
data does indicate that robotaxis are already causing fewer
incidents than human drivers. Additionally, the silver lining of
this tragic collision is that Cruise can learn from it, update its
software, and update its fleet. If the same incident were to be
repeated, it should perform much better. Human drivers do not do
this. Humans have the same collisions all the time, and while one
driver might learn and improve, it will have little to no impact on
the rest of the drivers. For these reasons, the industry needs to
keep pushing ahead with autonomous technologies.
IDTechEx has tracked the performance of robotaxis since records
began and uses this information to inform its autonomous vehicles
forecasts, which can be found in key industry reports "Autonomous
Cars, Robotaxis and Sensors 2024-2044" and "Future Automotive
Technologies 2024-2034: Applications, Megatrends, Forecasts".
Downloadable sample pages are available for all IDTechEx
reports.
For the full portfolio of autonomous vehicle market research
from IDTechEx, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research/Autonomy.
About IDTechEx
IDTechEx provides trusted independent research on emerging
technologies and their markets. Since 1999, we have been
helping our clients to understand new technologies, their supply
chains, market requirements, opportunities and forecasts. For more
information, contact research@IDTechEx.com or
visit www.IDTechEx.com.
Images download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/6k7bkoqqjrf4haakde4ve/h?rlkey=6evjtzr1rycuioojdwod5tnff&dl=0
Media Contact:
Lucy Rogers
Marketing and Sales Administrator
press@IDTechEx.com
+44(0)1223 812300
Social Media Links:
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/IDTechEx
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idtechex/
Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2401555/IDTechEx.jpg
Logo:
https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2338688/IDTechEx_logo.jpg
View original
content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/mixed-messages-on-maas-market-readiness-idtechexs-analysis-of-new-driverless-vehicle-testing-data-from-california-dmv-302131838.html