Automakers around the world are hard at work developing their autonomous vehicles. But one manufacturer isn’t interested. At least not for now. And it’s not because its customers like driving themselves. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Speaking with Car and Driver, Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said his company is sitting out of the semi-autonomous arms race, and will only look at implement self-driving tech when it’s capable of operating without driver intervention at all.
“It’s important to understand that not just many but all of our customers do have chauffeurs,” explained Müller-Ötvös, “if not permanently employed then somebody they can call and say, ‘Bring me to the opera tonight,’ or ‘Drive me and my friends to the restaurant.’ That is not a problem. And we will only bring autonomy into our cars if it is truly effortless.”
What would be the point, after all, in paying a chauffeur to sit there while the car does most (but not all) of the driving? “It doesn’t make sense as some in-between solution,” added the Rolls-Royce chief. “Our customers would not have patience for that.”
It’s quite a different dynamic from other upscale automakers whose customers would rather drive their own vehicles. Brands like Ferrari, McLaren, and Bugatti. Or Aston Martin – which is hedging its bets by continuing to develop high-performance sports cars for drivers, and a new line of Lagonda models as luxurious autonomous vehicles to rival Rolls-Royce’s.
Fortunately, sitting out this stage in the development process would not preclude Rolls-Royce from adopting the tech later on, once it’s more fully developed. The automaker is part of the BMW Group, which is investing as heavily as any other in the technology. So when Goodwood is ready to use it, all it’ll have to do is make that call to Munich.
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