WardsAuto Podcast: EVs and Driving L4 Autonomous Vehicles

The car-driving public in the U.S., as well as Europe and China, is getting used to the idea that we are heading toward driving electric. By 2040, a scant 17 years from now, every new car sold is expected to be a battery-electric vehicle (BEV). But that is not the only big change coming. Over the same period, cars will get better and better at driving themselves.

When you wire a car with a whole lot of sensors and cameras and other hardware to make a vehicle drive itself, you create a pretty big need for electricity. An internal-combustion-engine (ICE) car and its electrical architecture are just not optimized for that kind of electrical draw. But an electric car is.

The auto industry is developing BEV vehicle architectures and autonomous-driving technology stacks at the same time.

The challenges for each technology are different. In the case of BEVs, the issue is how rapidly consumers will adopt BEVs in parallel with the build-out of fast-charging infrastructure, as well as the cost of batteries that impacts the vehicles’ sticker prices. In the case of autonomous driving, the big issues are how quickly the technology suites that enable hands-free driving can be certified safe and efficient; how quickly regulators will be satisfied that the systems are safer than humans with hands on the wheel and feet on the brake; and how quickly insurance companies, already soaking consumers for ever-increasing premiums, will be satisfied that autonomous driving technology can be trusted.

In this week’s WardsAuto Podcast, Senior Editor and Host David Kiley examines the mash-up between BEVs and autonomous driving, and he takes listeners on a ride with an L4 hands-free autonomous driving experience engineered by Ghost Autonomy, a Silicon Valley company with a technology stack comprising a system of cameras, sensors and software management. Kiley rides with Ghost Autonomy Chief Marketing Officer Jay Gierak as they discuss the future of driving.