It will likely be the late 2020s, or even 2030, before car companies dispense with the steering wheel and Australia is even falling behind in the take-up of electric cars. What needs to change?
Companies have delayed their driverless car launches as they look to overcome complex problems.
Turns out the first 95 per cent was the easy bit. We can now see the car industry has been wildly optimistic when it comes to autonomous driving.
The year of 2020 was the one that was supposed to bring to showrooms the first “Level 5” cars, which is to say cars able to drive everywhere with no steering wheel, pedals or other driver controls. The huge gains in the preceding years made many believe we’d spend the coming decade being chauffeured around in vehicles vastly safer than today’s individually controlled steel boxes, while watching in-car entertainment.
