Daimler aims to launch self-driving car by 2020

German car giant Daimler, which owns the Mercedes brand, plans to start selling a self-driving car by 2020 as part of its campaign to regain the top spot among premium carmakers, its development chief said.

Carmakers and suppliers across the world are working on ways to make driving safer and more comfortable through automation, and the race is on to bring the technology to the mass market.

"We want to be the first to launch autonomous functions in production vehicles. You can be sure: we will accomplish that in this decade," Daimler head of development Thomas Weber said.

Daimler, battling to regain the top stop in the luxury car market from German rival BMW, is focusing on so-called highly automated driving, in which cars master situations such as cruising the motorway or manoeuvring through traffic jams while the driver relaxes.

The car would recognise difficult situations such as dealing with traffic lights or urban driving among pedestrians and cyclists, and hand control back to the human behind the wheel.

Daimler is not alone in its ambitions. Testing is already under way in many countries.

Google has fitted out several cars with radar-like equipment that lets them navigate roads in California and Nevada. – (Reuters)