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Journalism of Courage
For Mobileye Global Inc., an Intel-owned Israeli company that makes chips and systems for advanced driver assistance technology in cars, India was not exactly a priority market for the better part of the last 25 years. But for the Jerusalem-based auto equipment major – Israel’s most valuable publicly-traded company by market capitalisation – an unexpected surge in demand from India for its next-generation systems-on-chip, and sensing and mapping software for driver assistance technology over the last 12 months or so has resulted in order inflows from India surging to nearly four times what the company had originally forecasted.
The latest is an order from Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. for the supply of advanced driver assistance technology and a plan to jointly work on a fully autonomous driving system for India, announced by Mobileye at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Orders from other India-based auto majors too are piling up, as automakers in the world’s third-largest car market push advanced driver assistance tech as standard now on higher-trim variants of even mid-segment sedans and SUVs, prompting Mobileye to now upgrade India to the status of a priority market in Asia, alongside China.
Mobileye Chief Executive Officer Amnon Shashua, who announced the company’s new operating system called ‘DXP’ at the recent Last Vegas tech show, also indicated that alongside the growing interest for its latest suite of ADAS features from India, an even more unexpected trend is the demand for Mobileye’s SuperVision package – its latest generation driver-assist that leverages surround vision using a suite of 11 cameras to offer ‘hands-free’ autonomous capabilities for human-driven vehicles.
To a query on whether the response to its premium gear was limited to the Mahindra & Mahindra order, the company said the response was more broad-based from companies in India, seen as one of the most challenging driving environments in the world. “The response we’ve seen to demand for ADAS systems in India was in general, not just one customer. We are in the early stages of exploring SuperVision systems for India, so we don’t yet know what exact demand is — but we see great potential for both safety and convenience improvements,” Justin Hyde, Director, Communications at Mobileye told The Indian Express.
India has traditionally not been seen as a priority market for ADAS systems given its infamously dangerous roads and haphazard traffic patterns. The country has the world’s deadliest roads, with crashes killing and maiming over 800,000 people annually, according to the World Bank.
This demand for such systems comes at a time when there is a progressive democratisation of autonomous driving tools here, with car manufacturers starting to now offer advanced driver assistance systems as standard bells and whistles on their mid-segment vehicles.
According to Mahindra & Mahindra, a relatively high percentage of its XUV7OO owners have opted for the system, which includes lane keep assist, front collision warning, smart pilot assist, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control and traffic sign recognition.
The new Verna, Hyundai’s upgrade of its flagship sedan, comes equipped with front and rear radars, sensors and a front camera to allow for what is called ‘Level 2 ADAS’ functionality, meaning that it will not just detect obstacles on the road or issue a warning in the event of an unusual departure of the car from a designated lane, but also initiate corrective actions. The new Kia Sonnet, an entry level premium SUV, also now offers ADAS as part of its feature list in higher variants.
The ADAS suite offered by most carmakers now include features such as automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, blind spot collision warning, blind spot collision-avoidance assist, lane-keeping assist, driver attention warning and adaptive cruise control, which can enhance the safety and convenience of driving.
Honda Cars India too now offers these ADAS features on the higher-spec variants of its mid-segment sedan, the City, while Tata Motors offers these in the top variants of the Harrier and the Safari. These tools have traditionally been offered with cars having a substantially higher price sticker, including Hyundai’s premium SUV Tucson and sedans and utility vehicles sold by German luxury car makers such as Mercedes-Benz and the Volkswagen Group’s Audi.
While this progressive trend of moving down the price bracket is being driven by several factors, including the increasing demand for safer vehicles among Indian consumers and the government’s push for increased road safety, the availability of more affordable ADAS technology is also accelerating this trend. With the adoption of ADAS technology, car manufacturers say they are helping to improve the overall safety of Indian roads and reduce the number of accidents and fatalities. But ADAS level 2 is where the self-driving goal of most carmakers seems to have maxed out, at least for now, despite lofty promises over the years.
There are essentially five levels in the evolution of autonomous driving: each level describing the extent to which a car takes over the responsibilities from the driver, and how the two interface. So, the levels range from 0 to 5, progressively defining their relative extent of automation. Level 0, “No Automation”, is where the driver controls the car without any support from a driver assistance system – the case for most cars on the road currently.
The driver assistance systems of level 1, like adaptive lane assist or parking assist, are already being offered in a number of top-end cars, while level 2 is a further upgrade that was available only across some models of premium car makers such as steering and lane-keeping assist and remote-controlled parking – examples include Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’ or BMW’s ‘Personal CoPilot’. This is what Hyundai is now offering with its new Verna and Honda with the new City and Mahindra with the XUV7OO.
Level 3 is where it starts to get tough for carmakers – who have to offer an even greater array of “automated driving” tools where the driver can partly take his eyes of the road, while level 4 stands for “Fully Automated Driving”, where the driver can take his hands off the steering wheel for most of the drive. Level 5 is “Full Automation”, where the car can drive without any human input whatsoever. The problems in moving up from Level 2 to Level 5 range from cars jumping red lights, not recognising pedestrians to situational problems like identifying a cyclist who briefly disappears behind a parked vehicle.
