Despite a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S being driven by its Autopilot feature, self-driving technology development won't be halt. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not the only one dreaming of a self-driving future.
With the coming autonomous cars heat, self-driving technology has become more and more ubiquitous among auto industry and tech companies.
In the crowded field, Google is the acknowledged leader with its self-driving car often making headlines. The tech giant tested its self-driving car prototype on employees a few years ago and said it hopes to put such vehicles on the market at the soonest by 2019.
When Google's project is still very much in experimental mode, Tesla is already selling its partially autonomous cars. But the company has come under fire for deploying autopilot technology that appears to have contributed to at least one fatality that killed a driver in Florida using the feature in May and possibly a couple of other crashes.
As a controversy around Tesla's Autopilot feature continues to ramp up, Musk recently announced the second phase of its master plan for the future, which includes making self-driving cars 10 times safer than those driven by humans.
Autonomous vehicles still seem to be in the early experimental stage, all contenders in the world are racing to perfect self-driving technologies and are working to develop their own versions.
In a recent study, published in April, which looks at self-driving car initiatives among 12 companies, carmakers, not technology companies, are in the driver' s seat in developing autonomous cars. In its rankings, Lux Research puts Japan' s Toyota Motor Corp in the lead, followed by Mercedes-Benz and Honda. BMW and Tesla both rated relatively highly, but were not in the lead.
While mass-market adoption is still several years away, but 2016 will be another important year dominated by autonomous car stories, involving many new players and new partnerships.
Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies, Inc. has begun testing a self-driving car in Pittsburgh. And Lyft, Uber's biggest rival in the U.S. market, has partnered up with General Motors in developing and promoting autonomous vehicles.
In China, there are also many new players of this field.
BYD is one of them. The China-based electric car manufacturer has been developing its self-driving technologies both in house as well as partner with Chinese Internet giant Baidu. It's noted that BYD's partnership with Baidu will mainly focus on the mapservice needed for self-driving vehicles.
