Infiniti's Driverless Cars Might Be Ready For Hong Kong By 2020

Apparently, Infiniti has already introduced basic autonomous functions in its cars that allow its current models to stay within lanes and speed up or slow down with the car in front on motorways. Similar to what you see in Tesla cars. Commenting on the same, Dane Fisher, general manager for business transformation and brand at Infiniti Global, said, "Technically you could read your iPad now in one of our cars on a motorway within a lane. Within two years, we will have the ability to change lane, and by 2020 you will have inner-city autonomous drive capability in some of our cars." That said, Fisher did mention that there could be changes in the development of the technology based on local regulations.

In fact, Infiniti also has start-up accelerator programme, and a start-up named Pilot is working on building a technology to retrofit existing cars with autonomous driving features, such as emergency forward braking and auto steering to stay in lane. Its chief executive Rihards Gailums said, "There are lots of companies building self-driving cars but there are 2 billion cars already on the road and they're not going to disappear soon."

Another US-based start-up, Kraftwerk, from Infiniti's start-up accelerator programme, is developing fuel cells that use liquid natural gas to generate electricity. This new fuel cells to power electric cars will increase the range to 2,000 miles i.e. over 3200 km and weigh less than the existing batteries built for electric cars. As the cells rely on liquid natural gas, the car can be refuelled at existing petrol stations, Pentenrieder said.

All that said, Hong Kong is still a bit sceptical about driverless cars and autonomous technology, which is clearly indicated by the fact that even autonomous features in Tesla cars like - auto steer and auto lane change, are limited to certain areas in the city. In fact, the Hong Kong's Transport Department was considering suspending carmaker Tesla's autonomous features but reserved its decision early this year.

Source: South China Morning Post (SCMP)