INDUSTRY NEWS
Long, winding road for autonomous cars
BMW executive claims Uber’s self-driving technology was never Level 4 or Level 5 capable
BMW’s director of development has said the fatal self-driving Uber crash was "inevitable", insisting the ride-sharing company technology was never advanced enough to safely drive autonomously. Speaking at the BMW Group Annual Accounts conference, Klaus Fröhlich insisted Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy simply can’t be done safely with current technology. "At the moment, with the quality and ability of the sensors and the computer processing speed and performance, there is no possibility to have highly autonomous cars without accidents," he says. One of Uber’s fleet of Volvo XC90 SUVs, with controlling software modified by Uber, struck a female pedestrian on a road in Arizona and killed her. The company had its Californian automated vehicle licence revoked midway through 2016 for repeatedly refusing to comply with its restrictions. In a statement that looks extremely bad today, Arizona’s Republican Governor tweeted that, "This is what OVER-regulation looks like!" and invited Uber to deve...
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