How many years will it take until we see autonomous cars out there on the road?

Florian Lennert, an expert from the Innovation Centre for Mobility and Societal Research in Berlin talks about intelligent cars and the reliability of robotic vehicles.

DW:

Cars will be driving autonomously. Isn't that too risky to rely on computers?

Florian Lennert:

This is something that is much discussed at the moment, but I think that autonomous systems can actually improve safety in a number of situations.

Situations like what? Usually, it feels kind of risky, and some people might even be afraid of it.

We forget that we ourselves are also quite risky beings. So many accidents are caused by driver errors, and obviously, computer-assisted systems can often improve that safety performance.

And what about actually leaving the steering to the car itself. Would you like to do that? I love to drive myself, so, what about you?

Of course, many people do enjoy driving and being in the driver’s seat, as we say. However, there are many situations where you want to access individual mobility but don't have a driver's license, like when you're too old or disabled. So, there are a number of people who could benefit from being able to access autonomous vehicles. I think it also gives us an opportunity to rethink mobility in cities in a more fundamental way.

And sometimes, it might be even nice to leave everything to the car, for example, when you're in a traffic jam, right?

That's right. On the other hand, the reason we have traffic jams is that we have far too many cars in cities. This is becoming a major problem for cities worldwide. If we can re-invent individual auto-mobility, which means that we provide mobility to individuals in many different ways on demand, then we can start replacing that old fossil, 'private automobile', which is really a very inefficient way of organizing urban transportation.

What does that mean exactly? What kind of mobility are you dreaming of? And with what kind of vehicles?

Well, we also need to rethink vehicles. At the moment, we use cars that weigh two tons to transport an individual who weighs seventy kilos. This is obviously economic and energetic nonsense. We need to think about how we can build lighter city vehicles that don't need to travel as fast, and how we integrate them then into car-sharing and/or autonomous taxi services.

So, it's actually not about sitting in a car by yourself, but it's more about individual mobility - or just getting from here to there?

Yes, we need to re-organize cities to enable the widest choice of travel modes for the individual, and not just limit it to the private fossil automobile. If we think about small electric cars and shared taxis as part of an overall on-demand transport system in the cities, where you connect public transport, buses, bikes AND these autonomous vehicles, then that's an exciting way we can re-organize transport in the future.

Our automobile companies, which rely on the old model of just producing cars, are they prepared for that new concept?

I think they understand very well that there's a challenge on the horizon. They are making very good money off selling these traditional cars at the moment, so, unless demand drops, they will continue to do so. But still, they're investing heavily, and are obviously technology leaders on these issues, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

(Interview: Ingolf Baur)