Aftermarket February 2023

FEBRUARY 2023 AFTERMARKET 23 www.aftermarketonline.net Thatcham: 50% of Brits mistakenly think full self- driving is already here Thatcham recently published the results of a new consumer survey on self-driving that involved questioning 4,000 car owners, half in the UK and half in America. The headline finding was that 52% of UK drivers mistakenly believe that fully autonomous driving is possible today. In the US, this number rises to 72%. Matthew Avery, Chief Strategic Research Officer at Thatcham Research, commented: “Realising the government’s stated safety ambition for automated vehicles is dependent on driver education. This can’t just be lip service. With more than half of the UK public believing that autonomous driving is here today, the perception is racing ahead of the reality. This demonstrates just how much work needs to be done to set realistic consumer expectations.” More encouragingly, when asked what they consider to be the key benefits, the most popular option was improved safety (21%), followed by improving mobility for the elderly and disabled (14%) and reduced pollution (8%). Funnily enough, just 3% saw freeing up time to work as an advantage. www.aftermarketonline.net Hertfordshire-based Eloy recently secured government funding, via Zenzic, to develop its connected car services. Here, co-founder Damian Horton explains how their app will make both driving and self-driving safer and more efficient: “We worked out that the best way to get into the connected car space was to provide a sat nav, before building in new experiences to make roads flow better,” he said. “On Boxing Day 2020, we got the email from Apple saying the sat nav component had been accepted for CarPlay. “We’re obsessed with the situations you get into as a driver – waiting to make a turn across a blocked carriageway, queuing at a mini- roundabout. How can we make these small things better? The missing piece over and again was multi-vehicle coordination (MVC). “In October, we demonstrated our narrow road warning solution, which reduces the need for reversing to find a passing point, at The Transport Technology Forum at UTAC. That involved just two vehicles. The next phase is to get it working with 20 vehicles in a controlled environment, and scale from there. “Early simulations indicate a 20% timesaving from MVC for country lane passing, and up to 80% for car park entry and exit. We achieve that by using similar modelling to filling an empty aeroplane. “For years, it was a free for all, so the airlines tried to get organised by filling in order from row one. Mathematically, that turned out to be the slowest way, because everyone has to wait for the person in front. “So they started filling from row 30 and working backwards. That's actually the second slowest way, because you end up with the same problem of everyone waiting. Eventually they worked out that the best method is a structured filling pattern. “You send in rows 30, 25 and 20, then rows 15, 10 and 5. They all have space to stow their luggage and you have a lot more manoeuvres per second. That gives you an 80% reduction in filling time. “We looked at high density car parking in the same way. Think Silverstone on grand prix weekend. If every car has an allotted parking bay, and follows guidance from a sat nav, you can apply those same principles of more simultaneous manoeuvres. “The challenge is coordination, between the event organisers, the local authority, the car park operator and the attendees. The rationale is economic benefit, reduced journey times for everyone, which brings you to infrastructure investment decisions – the cost per mile benefits of these intelligent systems compared to building more roads.” www.aftermarketonline.net 80% car park timesaving? That’s intelligent CAM decision making