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It seems like not very long ago, car owners worldwide were scared that EVs were taking over, thus eliminating all the fun out of driving while doing so. With that scare pretty much gone (1,000 hp electric hypercars, anyone?), we now need a new thought to be needlessly afraid of.
And it duly arrived in the form of autonomous cars. It seems like there is a conspiracy against people who enjoy driving, because self-driving cars appear to be hell-bent on succeeding where the electric vehicles failed.
Well, making a car drive by itself might prove to be a little trickier than swapping the fuel-burning engine for a motor, which means you can still enjoy your hot hatch or roadster for a few more years. How many? A good man to ask that question is Itay Gat, one of the high-placed executives at Israeli-based company Mobileye.
Despite having worked with most of the big names in the automotive industry, and still collaborating with some of them, Mobileye is best known for its involvement with Tesla's Autopilot. More precisely, it was the breakup between the two that seemed to capture the media's attention, especially since it came after the tragic death of Joshua Brown, who crashed in his Model S while using the semi-autonomous feature.
Both companies claimed they were the ones to initiate the split, with each invoking different reasons. Tesla said that Mobileye's solutions were not good enough while the Israelis were quick to distance themselves from what Tesla was doing and called Elon Musk's enterprise "reckless."
But all that's in the past now, and Mobileye is looking to the future. Not a very distant one, apparently, as Itay Gat believes we'll see fully autonomous cars by 2021 tops. He also expects the demand for assistance components to rise dramatically over the next years as more and more carmakers will start to fit them as standard features in all vehicles.
One of the biggest hurdles still left in the way of autonomous driving is the legislation, but Gat is optimistic. "The legislation is coming along and once the system's safety is proved, and that is exactly what we are working to show now," he told Automotive News.
As for infrastructure, he believes self-driving is possible without any further intervention. "The cars won't strictly rely on road markings or other specific signs, but will be able to adapt to a range of conditions," he concluded.
You can read the full interview on the Automotive News website, but the most important thing to take out of it is that somebody deeply involved in the phenomenon believes we're just five years from the day when cars driving themselves on the roads will become the norm.
Well, making a car drive by itself might prove to be a little trickier than swapping the fuel-burning engine for a motor, which means you can still enjoy your hot hatch or roadster for a few more years. How many? A good man to ask that question is Itay Gat, one of the high-placed executives at Israeli-based company Mobileye.
Despite having worked with most of the big names in the automotive industry, and still collaborating with some of them, Mobileye is best known for its involvement with Tesla's Autopilot. More precisely, it was the breakup between the two that seemed to capture the media's attention, especially since it came after the tragic death of Joshua Brown, who crashed in his Model S while using the semi-autonomous feature.
Both companies claimed they were the ones to initiate the split, with each invoking different reasons. Tesla said that Mobileye's solutions were not good enough while the Israelis were quick to distance themselves from what Tesla was doing and called Elon Musk's enterprise "reckless."
But all that's in the past now, and Mobileye is looking to the future. Not a very distant one, apparently, as Itay Gat believes we'll see fully autonomous cars by 2021 tops. He also expects the demand for assistance components to rise dramatically over the next years as more and more carmakers will start to fit them as standard features in all vehicles.
One of the biggest hurdles still left in the way of autonomous driving is the legislation, but Gat is optimistic. "The legislation is coming along and once the system's safety is proved, and that is exactly what we are working to show now," he told Automotive News.
As for infrastructure, he believes self-driving is possible without any further intervention. "The cars won't strictly rely on road markings or other specific signs, but will be able to adapt to a range of conditions," he concluded.
You can read the full interview on the Automotive News website, but the most important thing to take out of it is that somebody deeply involved in the phenomenon believes we're just five years from the day when cars driving themselves on the roads will become the norm.
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