USA – Startling claims were made by two panellists on the mainstage of the Anaheim convention centre on the first day of the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo (28th April). The first – Peter Ludwig, CTO and co-founder of the company (Applied Intuition Inc) which is supporting Traton’s vehicle software development – announced that software-defined vehicles will make today’s vehicles look as outmoded as the steam train. The second claim came from David Liu, co-founder and chief executive officer of autonomous driving company Plus, who said that self-driving vehicles will be the industry’s greatest invention since the diesel engine. These men have business interests in the development of software-defined and autonomous vehicles; we would expect them to say as much. A moderate response to the advent of these technologies came from Sherry Sanger – executive vice president of strategy and marketing at Penske Transportation Solutions – who sat on a different panel: she warned delegates not to rashly take up a new technology or “solution” without first having a clearly-defined problem for it to solve.

It would be helpful, then, from the outset to define exactly what these two new kinds of vehicle are and what benefits they are supposed to bring to the operator who uses them. The autonomous vehicle is self-explanatory: using cameras, radar, or lidar – or a combination – the vehicle perceives its surroundings and other road users and activates the appropriate response in real time to avoid an accident. Readers by now may be familiar with the levels of autonomy devised by the Society of Automotive Engineers, starting with assistance systems which support the driver and ending at full automation, where the driver is no longer required. The potential benefits of this final scenario are obvious: fewer people needed to operate and monitor fleet vehicles, fewer restrictions on time spent on the road, and fewer chances of human error leading to accidents.