I began this topic in my last post with a commentary on a recent partnership announcement between Dassault Systèmes and AKKA Technologies. The goal for this partnership is to offer high-end engineering services and solutions to help the global automotive industry. Having already explored the complexity and technology required to move this concept forward, my focus now will be to take a closer look at the safety and customer acceptance issues that must also be overcome.

Safety and Regulatory Compliance

Safety and regulatory issues will obviously be an important concern for manufacturers once driverless cars are on the market. The manufacturing industry will need to focus on accurately recording process and part information (including code options) to quickly identify and resolve problems as they arise.

More specifically, manufacturing driverless vehicles require a much higher level of genealogy and traceability in the process because when something goes wrong in the autonomous world, it’s not a minor blip—it has the potential of being a catastrophe. If there ever is a problem, the data available to support the build of a vehicle, what went into it, and who did what—you can’t wait around for three days to get that information. It needs to be available immediately because you have to ascertain the scope of the problem so that you can address it in the timeliest way possible. From an autonomous vehicle standpoint, everything will need to be done at a much higher level of responsiveness than previously required—both in production, and then having the information available post-production.

Here is where it makes a lot of sense for partnerships to be established in the manufacturing world. Engineering and Manufacturing will need to work closely together to overcome the significant challenge that lies ahead in the world of autonomous, self-driving vehicles. Here is a glimpse from the Minority Report film as to what might be possible in our future, albeit a future that might be a century from now!

Consumer Acceptance

The automotive manufacturing industry has embraced the autonomous vehicle future, but consumers may still be skeptical. The biggest challenge with consumers will be convincing them that driverless vehicles are safe. Consumers are quickly getting comfortable with vehicles that can drive down long stretches of highway in clear conditions, but safety and capability concerns quickly emerge when thinking about autonomous cars that can maneuver within densely populated urban environments.

There’s a big difference of driving a mile on a freeway vs. driving a mile in the city. There’s so many more objects that have to be identified and dealt with. This includes vehicles running perpendicular to you, traffic signs, traffic signals, parked cars, pedestrians, and then you’ve got the city construction crew that just decided to close the lane because they’re going to do some pothole repairs this morning. That’s typically not going to be on a pre-digitized map of any type.

Regardless of the fact that driverless vehicles aren’t exactly in the mainstream yet – driver-assisted   functionality is routinely available in the luxury segment and rapidly moving down into other segments. The transition will certainly be gradual over time. But, given the importance of maintaining innovation and establishing demand for new models, I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear of new, related announcements in the not so distant future. This is a “sexy” topic, as Tesla has shown. Therefore, the manufacturing industry must stay one step ahead to show that these ideas can not only be built, and but can be done while adapting to new engineering designs, new production process as well as a whole new level of tractability and genealogy requirements that will certainly be daunting to those without robust systems to accommodate!