Era of Smart Cars
Global automakers’ smart car competition is heating up. The Hyundai Motor Group is planning to unveil its first self-driving vehicle in 2016 or later. To this end, it is going to wrap up the development of a self-driving system for use on expressways by 2016.
Audi, in the meantime, recently announced that it is carrying out the world’s first experiment on self-driving in a traffic congestion situation in Florida. The system, dubbed Traffic Jam Pilot, enters self-driving mode when the vehicle goes 64 kph or less, and then lets the driver to take the wheel when the traffic gets better.
GM already finished test driving Cadillac vehicles that include Super Cruise for expressway driving. The feature is scheduled to be commercialized in two years. BMW is proceeding with its research on self-driving technology it unveiled seven years ago, and Volvo is working on automatic traveling using wireless communications.
The Japanese government is planning to cut the automobile tonnage tax in half for three more years for the popularization of trucks and buses equipped with advanced safety functions such as collision warning and automatic braking. The Fuji Chimera Research Institute recently predicted that the number of cars equipped with high-tech safety systems like the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) will increase rapidly from 2016 to reach 60 million by 2030. The ADAS is a system that is characterized by wireless communications-based location information exchange for inter-vehicle distance maintenance and sensor signal-based avoidance of collisions with pedestrians and other cars.