Nice interview here with SAE International for their monthly magazine “Update“. My piece is titled “Realities of traffic make automated driving a challenge”.

It is a conversation around what is missing to bring autonomous vehicles (automated driving to use the right SAE term) to the real world. I am glad that SAE asked as I have been discussing a lot over the years what is holding us back: technology, regulation, trust…? My view is that we have solutions for all of those, as long as we choose the ODD wisely. However, real-world traffic still poses the biggest challenge.

Along those lines, I created the following chart at some point. On the right you see the graphic of climbing a mountain, which I typically use as a prompt in my talks to say the following.

– If you want to get on top of the world, Mount Everest, you might get on a plane in San Francisco, make a connection in Heathrow, and get to Kathmandu.
– From the airport you travel to the basecamp at 5,300m altitude of Mount Everest
– At that point you have traveled well over 99% or so of the distance, but this is where it begins to get interesting…