Europe invented the car! Will it also invent its AI-driven future?
The 5th ICA Summit in Stadt Frankfurt am Main gave us a first impression.
While the Pink Cat in front of the DOME wasn’t on the agenda, it perfectly captured the spirit of the summit: bold, unexpected, and impossible to ignore.
It was an honour to co-chair the 5th ICA Summit with Florian Baumann, showing Europe’s elite AI-driven vehicle experts and leaders Dr. Juergen Dickmann, Gerrit Grotewold, Dominique Massonié and more.
DaVinci developed the first 3-wheeled self-driving vehicle, and five centuries later Waymo logs 200k paid autonomous rides/week.
China is starting to flood the roads with semi-autonomous fleets with phenomenal convenient in-car experience and voice agents like NIO‘s Nomo.
In Europe, we are still deeply debating regulations, watching the race instead of leading it, although we have THE TALENT. THE INFRASTRUCTURE. THE LEGACY.
My personal highlights from the 2-Day Conference:
1. Rethinking the Role of LiDAR with Dr. Duong-Van Nguyen (Senior IEEE) and Sabahudin Husic. While Elon Musk says LiDAR is a “crutch” for autonomous vehicle makers, LiDAR is foundational once we move to L4 autonomy!
2. The 5-point masterplan crafted in real-time on stage Daniel Barel, Dr. Jochen Kokemüller & Alexander Böhm
provides a viable framwork to lead the AI driven vehicle global debate in Europe:
- Focus on a European business case – commercial goods for higher levels of autonomy (L3/L4) and then scale it to passenger transport.
- Build on existing technology and avoid reinventing the wheel.
- Embrace algorithms that are nearly 100% accurate, reducing human error and enhancing longevity, also an algorithm likely not hit a 100% hit rate, as it is trained by humans.
- OTA does not mean „Software update over the Autohaus“: Develop scalable software for higher levels of AD, leveraging GENAI to streamline development and reduce labor costs.
- EU Policy & Regulation STRIDE FOR THE MINIMUM VIABLE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: rather than 1mn requirements for the development and implementation of a L2 vehicle!
Drop me a line, what you’d discuss during DriveAI Summit in November in Frankfurt.
Thanks to the entire team of Mykolas Mataciunas and Elvinas Mocka creating such high quality EV and AI Driven vehicle conferences in Europe!
