Levels of Self Driving Car
Self driving car is an issue on stake, and there are many companies which tries to develop and sell self driving cars. For Uber and Lyft, if they master the skill of self driving car, it would save them a lot of cost to pay their drivers, which make them eager to develop self driving cars. Currently, there are 6 levels of vehicle of autonomy, which is defined by the society of automotive Engineers. The level is range from level 0 to level 5.
The level 0 is no driving automation, which applies to most current cars are the road. For the car of level 0, it requires human to control the car fully. And the next level is Level 1, which requires the assistance of the driver. In this level, car generally have cruise control, which keeps car in a safe distance with other objects. However, it still requires the assistance of the driver, such as braking.
The level 2 car are able to steer and cruise control by itself. Nevertheless, it still needs drivers to sit on the car. In the emergency, driver can responds to it. Tesla’s self driving system is consider as level 2. One Tesla self driving car crushed into an overturned car in the freeway. It showed that a level 2 still requires the assistance of driver in the case of emergency.
Level 3 requires the vehicle has the ability to detect the surrounding environment and make decision by themselves. For example, if there is a slow driving car in front of the self driving car, it will change the lane and surpass it.
For level 4, the vehicle itself has the ability to overcome some system failure or the situation if something else goes wrong. However, it does not guarantee to work every time. So it still needs human driver in the case of emergency.
For level 5, the vehicle is fully automated and does not require human intervention. It can make the correct decision based on surrounding and deal with the situation of emergency. In this level, the vehicle no longer needs a human driver for it.
Currently, the most advanced self driving car is on level 2, such as Tesla. Audi tries to gear up level 3 system on Audi A8, but they have give up on it. However, there are still many companies who are trying to develop level 3 system on their vehicles. With the development of artificial intelligence and experiments in this field, we could expect that the level 3 vehicle would be available to customers in the future.

P. Tong