Autonomous cars will arrive within 10 years, Intel CTO says
Rattner also says buyers will soon be more interested in a car's technology than its engine
By Sharon Gaudin | Computerworld US | Published: 12:42, 23 October 2012
Self-driving cars will be available within 10 years, according to Intel CTO Justin Rattner, who predicted that by then buyers will increasingly be more interested in a vehicle's internal technology than the quality of its engine.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is looking to equip autonomous smart cars with low-wattage Intel Atom chips, as well as higher-powered Core processors.
"I think in the past the automakers expressed a lot of doubt about the long-term viability of autonomous auto technology," Rattner said.
"Some were more dismissive than others," he said. "But I would say the automobile industry is definitely warming up to the idea. The car companies are at the point of presuming that, if not in this decade then early in the next decade, we'll be able to go out and buy a car that can take you where you want to go."
Rattner, set to keynote the Intel event today, said his next car will be a BMW 7 or 5 Series with Intel chips in the in-dash entertainment centre.
"Buyer decisions are increasingly made based on a whole new set of criteria," said Rattner, who spoke to auto executives last week in Detroit. The engine and transmission are important to buyers, but a "speech driven interface or collision-avoidance technology" could soon be more important.
Work on building autonomous cars has been widely profiled in recent years.
For instance, Google's development efforts have been in the headlines for a while. The company has already road-tested a driverless car.
Google executives have been meeting with their counterparts at various automakers in an effort to find a partner to help get an autonomous car on the road within the next decade, Anthony Levandowski, head of Google's self-driving car project, said earlier this year.
Google CEO Sergey Brin showed even more optimism last month, predicting that driverless cars will be available within five years.
Rattner hopes that Brin is correct in predicting that driverless cars will be safer than those piloted by humans.
"God help us when one of them runs into somebody or runs over somebody," he added. "There would be a lot of noise about that."