The car that parks itself

CARS that need no driver are just around the corner according to Google, which has been testing vehicles bristling with aerials and cameras on public roads in America. But Google does not make cars (yet), so it will be up to firms that do to bring the technology to market. And carmakers are a conservative bunch. Still, slowly and steadily the autonomous car will arrive, with the help of an increasing number of automated driving aids. Volvo recently demonstrated one such feature: a car that really does park itself.

Some cars already have systems that assist with parking, but these are not completely autonomous. They can identify an empty parallel-parking space and steer into it while the driver uses the brake. The Volvo system, however, lets the driver get out and use a smartphone application to instruct the vehicle to park. The car then trundles off, manoeuvres into a parking place and sends a message to the driver to inform him where it is. The driver can collect the car in person or use his phone to call it back to where he dropped it off. Autonomous parking could thus be provided at places like shopping centres and airports, which are controlled areas in which automated vehicles can be managed more easily than on open highways.

In the past, designs for doing this have relied on car parks being fitted with buried guide wires that a vehicle can follow to an empty bay. That, though, creates a chicken-and-egg problem: car-park operators will not invest in such infrastructure until there is a sufficient number of suitably equipped cars on the road. Drivers, conversely, will not want to buy self-parking cars if there is nowhere to use them.

This means, as Mikael Thor, a Volvo safety engineer working on the project, observes, that for autonomous parking to work most of the technology will have to be in the car itself. The Volvo test car, which looks like a normal car, therefore uses on-board GPS mapping, cameras with image-recognition software, and radar sensors to find its own way around a car park and avoid pedestrians and non-autonomous vehicles. Mr Thor says the system is five to ten years from commercial deployment. If it proves a success then infrastructure might adapt to it, for instance by packing cars into tighter spaces (with no one in them there is no need to make room for their doors to open), but would not need to anticipate it.

Driverless cars would also need to communicate with one another, to enhance safety. That, too, is coming. A number of carmakers are developing wireless networking systems through which vehicles can exchange data, such as their speed, their steering angle and even their real time Location system, to forewarn anti-collision systems and safety devices if an accident looks likely.

Ford, for example, recently tested a brake light that can provide an early warning to other motorists. If the brakes are applied hard in an emergency, a signal is broadcast. This illuminates a warning light in the dashboard of suitably equipped following vehicles, even if they are out of sight around a bend or not immediately behind the vehicle doing the braking.

Ford has been testing this system as part of a collaborative research project with several European carmakers. They have put a fleet of 150 experimental vehicles on the roads. When it tested a group of these, Ford found the technology let drivers brake much earlier, helping avoid collisions. A driverless car would be able to react even faster.

Another member of the research group, BMW, has been testing driverless cars on roads around Munich—including belting down some of Germany’s high-speed autobahns. The ordinary-looking BMW 5-series models use a variety of self-contained guidance systems. These include cameras mounted on the upper windscreen, which can identify road markings, signs and various obstacles likely to be encountered on roads.

The BMWs also use a radar, to gauge how far the vehicle is from other cars and potential obstacles, and a lidar, which works like a radar but at optical frequencies. The lidar employs laser beams to scan the road ahead and builds up from the reflections a three-dimensional image of what this looks like. The image is processed by a computer in the vehicle, which also collects and compares data from a high-accuracy GPS unit. A series of ultrasonic sonars similar to those used in vehicles to provide parking assistance are placed around the car to add to the virtual picture. And just to make sure, a set of accelerometers provide an inertial navigation system that double-checks the vehicle’s position on the road.

Although these cars can be switched to an autonomous driving mode, like Google’s vehicles they are still required to have someone in the driving seat who can take over in the event of any difficulty. The BMWs can steer themselves, slow down, brake and accelerate, even changing lanes to overtake slower vehicles. BMW, though, does not yet talk of when it might offer fully autonomous cars to customers; rather it says that it expects to see “highly automated” driving functions available in its models from around 2020.

The metric they are chasing is 40 HPV — hours per vehicle — by 2015. At the moment, the plant produces at 52.8 HPV, a 30% improvement on five years ago. Getting to 40 will take a massive effort.Next year, the W205 factory will move into continuous production using three eight-hour shifts. This will require an even higher level of consistency as there will be no down time which can be used to make up for slow production.

Mr van der Merwe is acutely aware that the South African operation faces growing global competition. The W205 will be produced in South Africa, the US, Germany and China.

"China is a fierce competitor. South Africa's future does not lie in competing on labour cost. It's much more important to develop the skills base."South Africa's advantage lies in the "tenacity" of its workforce and what he describes as "the general culture in the workplace".

It is a culture that must be built, and prospective employees attend intensive training sessions that plug the gaps in the education system and incubate a mindset of high productivity."You cannot just inform somebody about such a system. You have to learn it, you have to live in it, you have to believe in it," says Mr Zimmerman.

Exiting the plant onto East London's Settlers Way, you drive about 100m before turning left into an industrial area where Mercedes is preparing the new intake of workers for next year's new production line.

In a converted warehouse, human resources manager Stephen Goold presides over the training of 800 potential new recruits in the plant's Shop Floor Skills Centre. They are all school-leavers and about 600 of them will find jobs on the new production line.

Then comes a statistic that brings home the Eastern Cape's dire employment crisis: the 800 trainee workers were chosen from more than 23,000 applicants. If there is an invisible fuel powering their learning, it is hope. They may be entry-level factory workers, but in this blighted region, they are an elite, the few who have obtained a foothold in a precarious regional economy.

On the day I visit, trainees are testing their ability to follow complex sequences of mechanical instructions. In one corner, a team is taking apart and reassembling the doors of a C Class saloon, in another, they are undoing fastenings they cannot see behind a screen.

In yet another, students write notes furiously as a lecturer brings them up to speed before a whiteboard. Whittling the 23,000 down to 800 gives Mercedes the opportunity to select the very brightest.

"The assessment process means good quality in, good quality out," says Mr Goold.Further down the road is the East London Industrial Development Zone, where most of the plant's component suppliers are based.From its factories come seats, roof trim, door panels, bearings, exhaust systems, key chassis components, fuel tanks and the pressed "aluminium skin panels" that will be welded together into the body.

Between 45% and 50% of the new C Class will be local, but this includes parts supplied by local component manufacturers, who import some of their parts. The true figure is closer to 25%.Again, the competition is fierce. Mr Zimmerman points out that South African leather components used to be exported to other Mercedes plants, but more efficient Eastern European competitors have begun to take over.

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