Audi, Mercedes, Tesla, General Motors, and others are developing cars that cruise along autonomously on the highway and during the stop-and-go grind, but require human control the rest of the time.This contrasts sharply with Google’s strip-out-the-steering-wheel moonshot to eliminate human drivers by 2020. Automakers are moving more slowly, adding limited autonomy that Delphi says could prevent 80 percent of crashes. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of which is full autonomy is exceedingly difficult (engineers must plan for almost every possible contingency) and exceedingly expensive (LIDAR, essential to fully autonomous driving, costs more than the average car).This means a new paradigm is coming: Instead of driving or being driven, you’ll move between the two as conditions warrant. That requires trust and communication—consumers will have to believe the car knows what it’s doing, and that looking away from the road won’t mean looking up from a hospital bed. But it also means remaining vigilant, and ready to take the wheel when necessary. This new relationship with the car requires a new kind of human machine interface.

Source : Delphi’s New Self-Driving Car Teaches Us to Give Up the Wheel | WIRED