Autonomous driving has passed the high point in the hype cycle, full-bodied announcements about the imminent introduction of series production have not come true. So how credible is ZF Friedrichshafen’s offer to cities in Europe to have driverless buses roll over separate lanes after just 18 months of planning? Torsten Gollewski, who was responsible for driving safety at Audi for many years, started in 2016 as Head of Pre-Development at ZF. Now he wants to radically modernize city traffic – and turn ZF from an automotive supplier into a provider of complete shuttle systems for cities.
Mr Gollewski, will fully autonomous driving remain an unattainable vision?
I am convinced that autonomous driving will soon change our entire mobility. But it would be helpful if you didn’t reflexively think of automobile manufacturers. We cannot go on like this and pump the cities full of private cars. Then we will be automatically stuck in traffic jams in the future.
Are the technical problems solvable at all?
We now have all the technical requirements to redesign urban mobility: the sensors, the computing power, the artificial intelligence. And we have new and world-leading legislation in Germany that allows autonomous shuttles (Level 4) to be used in series production in the city. That is why the interest of mobility service providers, fleet operators and delivery services in this technology has not diminished – on the contrary.
Isn’t it easier to represent automated driving on motorways?
Advanced assistance systems for cars (Level 2+) are an excellent comfort solution for longer journeys. But with a higher level of automation that can no longer fall back on the driver (level 4), we can only afford one critical error per billion kilometers. It becomes difficult when you can’t look around the corner in cities. Traffic light detection is not yet as accurate either – if we do not communicate with the infrastructure. This is exactly where we start.
How does this work?
We work closely with cities and their infrastructure. If you have a fixed route and separate lane guidance for shuttle vehicles, the complexity of autonomous driving can be significantly reduced – and we fulfill the wishes of our customers: They want to drive past traffic jams.
How does the cooperation with the cities work?
ZF builds the autonomous transport systems, a partner produces the shuttles for us, but with the integration of the complete ZF system for autonomous driving. The vehicle, however, only represents about a third of the overall system. The remaining part is made up of infrastructure, charging options, connection to the fleet management and a control center. In addition, a very high availability must be ensured by our global service network, because this is about transport performance.
How expensive is the entire transport system?
The entire driverless and not rail-bound shuttle system is many times cheaper and at the same time more flexible than trams. In addition, a significant increase in public transport services would lead to a significant shortage of drivers, which we can compensate with autonomous shuttles.