Forever promising, but never really ready, driverless cars have been touted as “the future” for many years, during which time there has been much excitement over autonomous technology but very little real-world justification for the billions spent researching it.
Driverless technology seems an expensive distraction from more practical, prosaic concerns such as walkable communities, bike lanes, buses and affordable electric cars. Which is why it’s peculiar that Britain seems to be pressing ahead with autonomous vehicles on public roads.
Developing driverless technology is also clearly very difficult. The world’s richest companies have recruited the world’s brainiest boffins but their combined might has failed to produce a useful product.
Perhaps they underestimated how hard it would be, or overestimated how quickly they could bring something to market; Ford’s 2016 claim that it would have a fully driverless car by 2021 seems rather silly in retrospect.
Either way, investors didn’t get much from the hundred-billion-or-so dollars they threw at autonomous vehicles, and the money for such projects began to rapidly dry up during the second wave of lockdowns.
It’s possible that a breakthrough is just around the corner, that impatient backers should have waited a little longer for a truly driverless car to germinate. But it’s equally possible that autonomous vehicles are better suited to more limited, specific applications, despite being hyped into mainstream consciousness by overexcitable tech types and a credulous media. But driverless mania is over for now, with Apple joining other tech and manufacturing giants in unplugging their projects.
And if anyone was going to do it, Apple would be in a good position to try. As probably the most famous technology company in the world, Apple was (and is) well-placed to disrupt the car industry in much the same way it disrupted the mobile phone industry.
Toyota and Ford would have gone the way of Nokia and BlackBerry; the iCar would have been what everyone wanted on their driveway.
The fact that the clear favourite couldn’t make it work, or at least didn’t see the value in continuing to try, suggests that perhaps the race to develop driverless cars is in fact unwinnable.
It’s never been clear which question driverless cars answered. Legacy manufacturers told us we’d buy cars from them just as we do now, only these cars would be autonomous, with TVs and coffee machines and lounge-style seats in the back because we wouldn’t need to actually steer them. Prototypes showcasing opulent interiors, with rear-facing chairs and no steering wheel, were a conspicuous motor show mainstay throughout the 2010s.
Meanwhile, tech giants like Uber and Waymo thought the future was in ride-sharing; you’d hail a robotaxi as you would an ordinary minicab, with a computer in place of an underpaid man in the driver’s seat. But these aren’t what customers are crying out for.
Instead, there’s huge and so far unquenched demand for small, affordable EVs. The cost of a new electric car is only one of the many headwinds that sector currently faces (demand for battery vehicles has plateaued despite the imminent fossil fuel phase-out) but it’s one of the factors putting off consumers. Manufacturers, including “disruptors”, would do well to address the demand for low-tech, low-cost EVs – even if the end user has to do their own steering.
By contrast, the foundation of Apple’s driverless project was yet another expensive EV. Even after the company had pared back its autonomous ambitions (in 2022 the car was set for a 2026 launch, albeit with limited driverless tech) the list price was thought to be in the region of $100,000 – more than three times the price of North America’s cheapest consumer EVs, and destined for unpleasant competition with more established manufacturers. Building the MacBook Pro of electric cars would have been a brilliant idea 10 years ago; nowadays, the motoring public needs a cheap Chromebook.
And that’s the case on both sides of the Atlantic. In Germany – which for years has been one of the world’s largest car markets – sales of electric cars are expected to slump this year, with analysts citing the unaffordability of new EVs as a leading factor, alongside charging concerns.
The country’s automotive industry association, the VDA, predicts a 14 percent fall in new EV registrations following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unexpected withdrawal of key subsidies. The average cost of a new electric car in Germany rose by about 4,000 euros to more than 52,000 euros (about £45,000) in 2023.
And in the US, research by Edmunds found that around half of all EV shoppers want one that costs less than $40,000 – of which there are only three or four. A fifth of buyers searching for an EV want one for under $30,000, which is something that doesn’t exist in North America yet.
Apple’s decision to cancel its autonomous EV project reflects both the near-impossibility of making a truly autonomous roadgoing car, together with the difficulties experienced by all car makers as we lurch unconvincingly into the electric age.
Margins are tight, consumers are nervous and regulators can’t make up their mind. But while Apple read the room and quietly canned its plans for a six-figure robocar, many legacy manufacturers are struggling to change course as quickly as they need to. It’s time for the world’s automotive giants to refocus their attention away from driverless, artificial intelligence, and headline-grabbing tech projects, and onto what customers need – practical, affordable EVs.
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