The Most Important Car Automation Trends of 2022

2022 is shaping up to be a key year in the history of self-driving cars, not because autonomy will arrive, but because cars with important and differing levels of automation will hit showrooms like never before. Here are some big names and tech to watch in 2022. 

It's important to understand the difference between automation and autonomy: The former supports the driver, the latter takes over for the driver. The distinction is important and is reflected in the official definitions of vehicle automation as defined by SAE International, the de facto congress of the automotive engineering world.

Tesla could be considered both the best and worst thing that ever happened to vehicle autonomy, accounting for an outsized share of fascination with and hatred of the technology. The company's "Full Self Driving" technology is far from that and has been involved in the first-known charge of vehicular manslaughter against the driver of a car that was supposedly driving itself. A list of crashes due to Tesla drivers not understanding the system's limitations inspired a recent US House hearing, joining a federal investigation of why these cars seem to be unable to consistently recognize parked emergency vehicles. 

The company had to withdraw a feature that allowed drivers to play in-dash video games while underway and one that programmed their cars to roll through some stop signs. And a spike in complaints about Teslas slamming on their brakes for no reason led us to formally recommend you not buy one until the problem is fixed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shares our concern about Tesla automated braking.

Through that hot mess, Tesla CEO Elon Musk maintains the company may still crawl, scrape and beta test its way on public roads to offer something close to Level 4 self driving by the end of this year -- as much a measure of the company's cheek as of its technology. This appears to be highly unlikely, much like Musk's statements regarding fleets of Tesla robotaxis happening this year -- or the year before that. Level 4 is autonomy, not just driver assistance, meaning a car can drive itself under many conditions and on many roads while the driver disengages their hands, eyes and, most notably, their attention.

Mercedes-Benz is expected to launch the first mass-production Level 3 car in 2022 using its Drive Pilot technology. Level 3 also allows the driver to check out while the car is under automation, but the system may prompt them to take over driving if the detects that conditions are outside of its automation envelope. In the case of Drive Pilot, that means when the car is approaching a speed above 37 MPH, not on the 8,200 miles of carefully mapped German roads where it can operate, or if it detects environmental conditions that are too dicey for its sensors. The technology isn't confirmed for the US yet, although the company's CEO, Ola Kallenius, says they're pushing for certification this year. 

Successful approval is far from a guarantee, however. Just ask Audi. Benz's rival Audi first with an automatic traffic jam technology called Traffic Jam Pilot back in 2016. It would largely assume driving in low-speed congestion until traffic opened up, handing the driving back to the human at that point. But it was never successfully introduced to the US market, largely due to liability concerns caused by the uncertainty in US law when it comes to expectations of autonomous vehicles. BMW is widely expected to roll out Level 3 technology in the new 7 Series but also leaving it out of US versions, likely for some of the same reasons that kept Traffic Jam Pilot out of this market.  

In the Japanese domestic market, you can get a Honda Legend (sold here as an Acura RLX until 2020) with Honda Sensing Elite that's a lot like the erstwhile Audi traffic jam system, handling lower-speed maneuvers in congestion while the driver focuses their attention elsewhere, like watching a digital TV broadcast in the dashboard screen. (No napping, though, because this is Level 3 driver assistance and could at any time demand that the driver take over.)Honda Sensing Elite is also not to be confused with the Honda Sensing driver assistance suite that's standard in US model Honda vehicles and which only offers Level 2 functionality.

That handoff looms large over Level 3 and has inspired some carmakers to just avoid it and aim for Level 4 in their march to full autonomy. 

General Motors isfocused on doing the most it can within Level 2 assistance which can give you physical but not mental relief from the driving task. GM's current Super Cruise tech will evolve into the lidar-equipped Ultra Cruise in 2023. Ultra Cruise will be able to obey permanent traffic indicators like stop signs and signals, support automatic or driver-requested lane changes if they're safe, do left and right-hand turns, self-park in your driveway, and follow the directions of the factory nav system. GM estimates the new system will work on 2 million miles of US and Canadian paved roads under 95% of driving scenarios.

Ford is evolving its driver assistance tech as BlueCruise, the name of which raised hackles at GM until the two came to a settlement over the similarity of their respective technology names. BlueCruise will work on 130,000 miles of roads in North America, maintaining set speed, vehicle spacing, lane tracking, stop-and-go operation and posted-speed-limit recognition. Like GM's technology, it will use a driver-monitor camera in the cabin to make sure you're still watching the road and paying attention when the system is engaged. The Ford BlueCruise system is currently available on the Ford Mustang Mach-E and the F-150.

While these tangible technologies hit showrooms soon and evolve with driver feedback, the biggest question may be the intangibles of communicating their capabilities to drivers, few of whom will parse the official levels of autonomy, let alone understand which one their car maps to. So how will auto brands make it clear what their cars can and can't safely do? Industry jargon and technology trade names won't cut it.

Long ago, we were introduced to cruise control, the first real taste of vehicle automation, but it was simple and worked the same way on all cars. Today's vehicle automation tech is radically more complex and more fractured than cruise control. It will reward a breakthrough in clear communication as much as in technical development.