Expect autonomous cars in 2025 to 2030, says VW CEO

BERLIN Volkswagen (VW) CEO Herbert Diess says that autonomous vehicles will be ready for sale sometime between 2025 and 2030.

The CEO of the world's largest carmaker by sales recently told a magazine that such a reality is thanks to improvements made to computer chips and artificial intelligence.

Diess moved from BMW to join VW in 2015 and has helped the German auto giant with reforms following its "diesel-gate" scandal.

The CEO was also the man who helped come up with a 73bil euro (RM360bil) electric vehicle investment plan.

In 2018, Diess cited that human error is among the top reasons for traffic accidents and in order for autonomous cars to gain acceptance, it must be 100 to 1,000 times better than humans.

“A ratio of ten-to-one is nowhere near good enough. We have approximately 3,200 traffic fatalities in Germany each year. It would be a disaster if we had even 320 deaths due to driverless cars,” said Diess.

He added that Germany currently lacks strong software companies and semi-conductor manufacturers who often work together and lags behind the likes of the US and China in this respect.

With this in mind, Diess lauded the German federal government for actively promoting the development of artificial intelligence.

Coupling autonomous driving technologies with renewable emissions-free powertrains will help to bring about a safer and cleaner environment.