Is it the end of the road for driving fans?

What will the future of autonomous vehicles have in stores for those who like driving? It’s a tricky question for the motor industry who hang so much of their marketing on driving pleasure, particularly at the performance end. It’s a pretty bleak outlook for petrolheads as well perhaps.

With the tyres still smoking from the positive reviews of the new series of Top Gear, journalist and TV persenter Chris Harris led a discussion of this thorny motoring issue with a pretty prestigious panel at a Ford presentation on the eve of the Geneva motor show.

Racing to the future

Those on the panel included Lord Marsh of Goodwood Festival of Speed fame, Ford Performance Director Dave Pericak, and champion touring car, GT racing driver Andy Priaulx and Steven Armstrong, Ford of Europe's chief operating officer.

It was an apt discussion for the Blue Oval brand, for as it prepares to introduce its new 200bhp high performance Fiesta ST, the firm is also holding the line that it plans to have a fully autonomous vehicle on sale to commercial entities like taxi firms by 2021.

In terms of autonomous driving, there are five stages, starting with zero where the driver does everything, rising to level 2 where many new cars are now with cruise control and lane-keeping systems. Level 3 is where the car does a lot of the driving but needs the driver ready to intervene, while level 4 is where the driver should not have to intervene in most driving scenarios. The limit here would be where the driver heads up unmapped mountain roads or seeks to take control. Level 5 will remove the driver from everything bar entering the destination.

Driving fans

So what’s that going to mean for driving fans? Well in most instances it will mean drivers become passengers. Which is not a bad thing argues even petrolheads like Chris Harris and Lord Marsh. “At 4am this morning having to drive to the airport, I would have gladly handed over control to the car,” explained Harris. Meanwhile Pericak, explained that “while I don’t think we’re going to eliminate on a Sunday going for a blast and taking control of the car, I think it’s exciting and I think the technology we are going to develop is going to improve where performance vehicles go from there.”

According to Armstrong: “If we are really honest with ourselves and think about it, we spend an awful lot of time in our cars doing really mundane things, like sitting in traffic or at lights, where the fun aspect isn’t really there. So why not let the technology do the work for us and automate that tedious bit of the process so we can be more productive and have fun in other ways. And then we can leave the fun stuff to places like the race track.”

It’s a split solution but one’s that an emotive notion to car fans. As the discussison wore on, it became increasingly clear that the vision of the future seems to be that driving could go the way of horse-riding: reserved for equestrian sports for hobbyists and racers in designated areas. There is still a massive market and following, but driving will go the way of horse riding - a hobby rather than a function of everyday life.

Last word went to Andy Priaulx. “As a racer I still fancy my chances against any robot. I can fully understand [autonomous cars] in the commute, but when you get into the racing situation, then instinct and constantly variable conditions - water, track conditions - you have to adapt to those situations, I think that drivers will be better than robots.” Even if he’s proved to be wrong one day, will people really want to stand on the banks of a racetrack cheering on a robot on four wheels?