Hype Is Hurting Consumer Interest in Self-Driving Vehicles, Executive Says

What’s new: Carmakers’ overpromising and underdelivering on autonomous driving is a major reason behind consumers’ lack of interest in the feature, a top drone industry executive said, despite the auto industry’s embrace of the technology.

Luo Zhenhua, president of SZ DJI Technology Co. Ltd., which began testing intelligent driving systems on public roads in 2018, said many automakers have failed to put out vehicles with intelligent driving capabilities as powerful as executives liked to tout.

Because there is no unified standard for the technology, consumers always have a different smart driving experience with each smart vehicle they drive, even if the vehicles all purport to have the same level of autonomous driving capability, Luo said Friday at an auto industry event in Hefei, East China’s Auhui province.

At the event, Chu Ruisong, general manager of Baidu Inc.’s smart car unit, said many carmakers have been installing as much autonomous driving hardware as possible in their vehicles, without giving much thought to whether it actually improves the car’s smarting driving capabilities.

What’s the background: Currently, intelligent driving technology is mainly adopted for parking, highway navigation assistance and urban navigation assistance, with city road-focused smart driving the hardest to achieve due to the complex traffic conditions.

So far, about 10 automakers and technology suppliers in the world have the ability to develop smart driving technology for navigation assistance on highways, a Chinese smart driving solutions supplier told Caixin.

DJI launched its automotive business in 2016.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)

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