Bosch, Daimler, BMW executives see a window of hope for self-driving cars

With its six eyes (cameras) and six ears (radar sensors), the new Mercedes S class can see and hear enough to drive itself at speeds up to 60kph (37mph). Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche says the S class “marks the start of the era of partially autonomous driving.”

The European Giants of automotive industry (Daimler, BMW) are cogent about the future of automated driving but they say it will take time for regulations to catch up with technology. They also say that no one wants to remove the fun of being behind the wheel.

According to the Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche the main aim is to remove the boring bits of driving like driving in traffic while still retaining the fun bits of the driving. "We will never automate the cool part of driving … the uncool part, though, we can do without," he said during the Mercedes S-Class launch.

Wolf-Henning Scheider, who oversees Robert Bosch's chassis systems unit was also heard echoing same views. He said to have fully automatic driving, the car needs redundant sensors. "We need at least two sensors to measure the same thing and then check between them. And there is certainly still some development necessary to have both in place; they are not ready."

Another obstacle to overcome is making sure the system works flawlessly even when rain, snow or other elements reduce the car's ability to see and hear. Scheider said that by using cloud computing, car-to-car infrastructure and different sensor principles, it is possible to overcome the hurdles created by weather and other factors. "But there are many other questions to be answered to bring a fully automatic driving car on the road," he added.

BMW M has announced the end of production for the 4th gen BMW M3 Coupe at its Regensburg plant today. 

BMW sales boss Ian Robertson said that the technology available today is "more than capable" to drive the car in many situations but regulation requires that drivers keep their hands on the wheel. "We're in phase where technology has overtaken regulation, and the question is how quickly do the two align," he said in an interview.

Government regulators are being cautious. A 2011 EU study on autonomous driving concluded that a number of key questions still need to be answered, such as:

• What effect does higher automation in the vehicle have on the driver?

• How to improve the driver interface without over loading them with information?

• How to achieve standardization for automated vehicle control and interface design without legislation?

• How to improve driver training for automated systems?

• Should the EU continue to allow a gradual migration of skill or introduce some form of universal training?

• How to integrate automated vehicles with other road users?

• Will other road users also require training?

But many of the countries including U.S. are asking the automotive giants like Audi, Toyota to keep the self driving technologies to an experimental basis only as this system still cant be relied on a day to day commuting life.

This actions hints that the cars with self driving capabilities will still not be used in the coming years even though  the tech giant Google Inc., which is also working on the technology -- have suggested that fully self-driving cars may be as little as five years away from the market.