Gallery: Delphi's New Self-Driving Car Teaches Us to Give Up the Wheel
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Delphi, a major auto industry supplier, has created a new kind of interface for autonomous cars.
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It's showing off the system in Las Vegas this week, part of its CES presence.
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The car itself is a modified Audi SQ5, rigged with a gray dial you twist to make the car drive itself.
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Registered in Nevada, it gets a special license plate.
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Last year, Delphi showed off an autonomous concept car, which in April drove itself 3,000 miles across the country.
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Now, Delphi’s tackling a problem far more challenging than keeping a car in its lane or heeding traffic signals: Teaching humans how to let go of the wheel.
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It's most basic feature: telling you who's controlling the car.
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Delphi's system shows a camera feed of the route ahead, with our path indicated in bright blue.
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Like the Terminator’s point of view shots, it’s a clever way of communicating a new range of information every bit as essential as knowing how much fuel you’ve got or how fast you’re going.
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Since Delphi is a supplier, any automaker using this setup will surely tweak it to suit its own needs and branding.
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But my test drive through Las Vegas provided some hints at where the interface might go. The Apple Watch on my wrist and iPad Mini in my hand occasionally chimed in with an alert. *We’re near a Starbucks. Want a latte?*
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And it showed off a potential use of vehicle-to-vehicle communication, coming to cars in the next few years.
