It will take five to ten years before fully autonomous driving cars are on the market. At least, that’s what Herbert Diess, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, expects.
In an interview with the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche Diess says that the development of chips for cars is going so fast that autonomous driving cars are no longer a distant music: “I count on autonomous cars that are ready for the market between 2025 and 2030,” says Diess. He explained that the capacity of semiconductors for use in cars doubles approximately every eighteen months. The developments in the field of artificial intelligence are going even faster if possible. “It is therefore foreseeable that systems will soon also be able to manage complex traffic situations.”
Volkswagen recently announced that it will invest € 73 billion over the next five years in the electrification and digitization of its cars. That is almost half of the car manufacturer’s total investment budget. Among other things, a tightening of European environmental regulations is forcing the Germans to do so. In addition, Volkswagen is catching up with Tesla, the market leader in electric cars.
Diess is very impressed with Tesla, he says Wirtschaftswoche know. “A strong point of Tesla is that with their now very large fleet they are constantly collecting data and continuously improving the system with the use of artificial intelligence”, says the Volkswagen boss. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said this month that autonomous driving Teslas could become a reality on a large scale next year.