Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Luke Schneider, CEO of Silvercar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think it’s not as close in terms of consumer deployment of autonomous vehicles. It’s still away. I don’t think it’s ready to hit the roads quite soon.

Luke Schneider: I read a Morgan Stanley or a JP Morgan report, not long ago, talking about how exciting self-driving cars are and how it’s going to be the next best thing since sliced bread. To design a micro-controller that can process as much sensory input as is required to pilot a vehicle with pedestrians, dogs, and weather requires a massive amount of processing power and it has to work every time. It’s not like it can just work some of the time. On the other hand, if you can think about this step wise, just having better regulated traffic speed has the potential to liberate hours of time for people—not for each individual car looking for its own best outcome, but for global optimum in terms of how traffic moves and how people get to where they’re going.

Sramana Mitra: No question. I think self-driving cars is great. It’s just not as close as people are pretending. It will take a while.

Luke Schneider: When you say self-driving cars, it implies that there is an endpoint. It is a continuum. The first chunks on that continuum are massive improvements to the current state of transportation. That’s pretty far off.

Sramana Mitra: What is your estimate? How far is it?

Luke Schneider: I think in the next five years, we’ll see some pretty serious computer aided commuting applications out there. I would say, in the next 10 years, combined with the electrification of power trains, we will see our first truly autonomous cars in certain use cases. Airports are great for this. It’s a controlled traffic pattern. It’s one way and you know where the trouble points are. I would bet that it’s going to be 15 years or more before anybody gets in a car without thinking about driving.

Sramana Mitra: It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Luke Schneider, CEO of Silvercar
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