The new reality when it comes to automotives is autonomous driving but is it all that it really seems. While I am optimistic about driverless cars, skepticism abounds about whether driverless cars can actually work and, even if they are technically possible, whether they should be allowed.

In the interest of facilitating a robust conversation, I want to offer seven of the most pressing concerns. Effective decision making, as Peter Drucker observed, depends on the dialogue between different points of view and a choice between different judgments.

The following differing points of view and judgments cover a wide range of potential issues, including technical viability, operational resiliency, and even fears that driverless cars might work too well and thus unleash a host of unwanted secondary effects.

Please feel free to reiterate, refute or add to the items on this list.

1.  There are too many “corner cases.” While driverless cars have demonstrated remarkable proficiency in many aspects of driving, some contend that many driving scenarios will remain unsolved. MIT’s John Leonard, for example, points to left hand turns into heavy traffic, adverse weather, changes to road surfaces, and eye and hand gestures as open technical questions for which solutions “might be a very long way away.” Leonard should know, he has been a central figure in the field for years, including a stint as the leader of MIT’s autonomous car team in the famed 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. (Watch this excellent presentation for Leonard’s detailed assessment.)
2.  The technology is not robust enough. Even if theoretical solutions are found, it might be hard to reliably translate them to the real world. Robustness would depend on a myriad of electronic, mechanical and software components operating with little tolerance for error under adverse (freezing, wet, boiling) conditions, long duty cycles, less than perfect maintenance (car owners being human), fender benders, network and electrical outages, and so on.  Dr. Louise Cummings, for example, made a well-reasoned argument along these lines during a recent U.S. Senate committee hearing.
3.  They will cost too much. The cost of sophisticated electronics, including lidar, radar, sensors, cameras, computing and networking devices, on top of the cost of additional development, maintenance, and liability, will price driverless cars out of reach of most consumers.

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The history of BMW is checkered and interesting to follow, but they are still here today, and looking forward to more to come. BMW celebrated its 100th birthday in Munich this week by reveling in past achievements and suggesting some important ones to come, but investors only asked, what has the company done for us lately.

And surprisingly, given the 100 years covered some parts of history best forgotten; BMW bravely came up with a full frontal apology.

In a long statement headlined “BMW Group The Next 100 years,” the company pointed to the 1930s and 1940s, when under the National Socialist regime it operated exclusively as a supplier to the German arms industry.

“As demand for BMW aero engines increased, forced laborers, convicts and prisoners from concentration camps were recruited to assist with manufacturing them. To this day, the enormous suffering this caused and the fate of many forced laborers remains a matter of the most profound regret,” BMW said.

BMW is organizing a world tour to talk about future opportunities and change for it and the auto industry in general in the next 100 years. The BMW Vision 100 tour will end in the Los Angeles in October. The tour will discuss –

The opportunities opened up through digitalization and connectivity

The increasing role of technology in our lives

BMW Group’s vision of a sustainable future

The company’s commitment to expand its efforts as a good corporate citizen

Investors though have more pressing concerns.

Morgan Stanley analyst Harald Hendrikse worried that in the fourth quarter of 2015, BMW’s profit margin may have slipped beneath the long-term target of eight to 10 per cent.

“We forecast an Auto EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) margin of 7.7 per cent for Q4 2015, below the eight per cent lower limit of the target range,” Hendrikse said.

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The ways to get to where you are going are numerous, subways, taxis, bus, streetcar. Now you can share your ride with a friend to make it easier and quicker, but that might not be a good thing for everybody.

The city’s largest taxi company, Yellow Cab Co-Op, said that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a December letter to shareholders obtained by the San Francisco Examiner. While regular taxi operations will continue, the company needs to restructure due to “serious financial setbacks” caused by mounting debt and competition from ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft.

The major problem? People just aren’t taking as many regular cab rides any more now that Uber and company present a solution that’s often cheaper and more convenient. “On an annual basis over 5 million passengers are transported in Yellow cabs,” Yellow Cab President Pamela Martinez wrote in the letter. “We used to have more and our goal is to get them back and even more.”

As Uber and Lyft recruit drivers with significant bonuses, as well as more flexibility in hours, the old taxi companies also aren’t able to retain the best drivers. “We need to have not just more drivers but drivers who are happy to be behind the wheel of a Yellow cab because we offer the best opportunity to make a living in a taxi,” Martinez continued.

Yellow Cab might be just the first domino to fall in ride-hailing’s global assault on the taxi business. Many local taxi companies have lobbied for legislation to protect themselves against Uber, but the startup worth more than $60 billion is hard to defeat. It is striking that Uber and Lyft together raised more than $3 billion in December alone, in the same month Yellow Cab admitted it would have to file for bankruptcy.

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MIAMI BEACH — Parking lots can sometimes be more dangerous than driving on the roads, with reckless drivers trying to find a spot and hurry into the store, well we are getting closer to no longer worrying about that thanks to technology.

It seemed like the perfect nightlife accessory for the South Beach set — an automated robotic parking garage where trendy clubgoers could park their Porsches with a futuristic touch of a button.

Forget hiding your GPS and favorite Fendi sunglasses from a valet who might ding your new alloy wheels; this garage would park cars itself.

Instead, malfunctions lasted for hours. Cars were smashed, and faulty machinery fell several stories to the ground. Sometimes vehicles were stuck for so long that garage operators had to pay for customers’ taxis.

“It was clear that the garage was not ready to be open to the public,” said Russell Galbut, the managing principal at Crescent Heights, the property developer, which has sued two manufacturers over the botched garage.

While engineers aim to perfect self-driving cars, they still have a lot of work to do on another element of the idealized commute of the future: robotic parking. Designs differ, but most consist of a combination of automated ramps, slabs, lifts and shelves, using a computerized system that parks and delivers a car like a high-tech vending machine.

But the garage on Collins Avenue is one of two cutting-edge parking projects in South Florida that ended in spectacular debacles. At a luxury residential high-rise in downtown Miami, a $16 million robotic garage plagued with delays finally closed, leaving tenants paying $28 a day to park elsewhere. The police were called to keep order at the building, BrickellHouse.

And around the country, other attempts at self-parking garages have been caught in embarrassing software and hardware mishaps at a time when dozens of projects have been proposed or are underway.

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With the demand for more Tesla automotives increasing at a high rate the need for the company to grow and change becomes essential. The latest change for Tesla Motors is the Model X’s second-row seats.

In August, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk told investors it was difficult to make the seats, which he described as a “sculptural work of art, but a very tricky thing to get right.” They were so challenging that they led him to reduce the electric-car maker’s delivery forecast that month to as few as 50,000 from 55,000, which set off a wave of skepticism over his ambitious plans.

“We have substantially in-sourced the seats at this point,” Musk said Tuesday during the third-quarter earnings call with analysts. “Tesla is producing its own seats.”

Musk has long been a fan of doing things on his own as much as possible, such as building the world’s largest battery factory outside of Reno, Nevada, to streamline production and reduce costs to bring a more-affordable car — the Model 3 — to market. When an analyst asked Musk about the enormous costs of the automotive industry, Musk said that Tesla is becoming more capital-efficient.

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BMW is well known for the quality of cars they make and the technology embedded within however with this new seven series you will stand out even more so.

With the proliferation of technology across all vehicle segments, luxury automakers have to work harder to differentiate their cars. After all, when Buick and BMW both have Apple CarPlay, there isn’t much brand discrepancy via the dashboard display.

The 7 Series is BMW’s flagship and therefore the German luxury car company’s technology standard-bearer. Previous generations debuted the first in-dash navigation system, active safety features and center-console infotainment controller, iDrive, which other automakers later adopted.

BMW boasts that the all-new 2016 7 Series features 24 new innovations, and that half of those are segment exclusives. I got a chance to test drive the new 7 Series at a press event earlier this week and came away impressed with these six new tech features.

Gesture Control

Not only is the new 7 Series the first BMW with a touchscreen, but to activate certain features it doesn’t even need to be touched. The 7 Series has gesture control thanks to an infrared camera positioned in the headliner that detects the position of a hand in a small sweet spot above the shifter. Twirling a finger clockwise increases the volume of the stereo and twirling it counter-clockwise decreases it. Simply pointing at the screen can perform answering a call on a connected Bluetooth phone or swiping a finger can ignore the call. Two gestures can also be programmed to control a pair of favorite features.

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How much easier will it be as you go to work with your car driving for you? Will it be safer, can you get more done? However, you may need to wait for this automotive dream to become a reality.

As more than 800 engineers, software developers, transportation experts and other technical folks met last week in this Detroit suburb to discuss the risks and benefits of autonomous and connected vehicles, they were raising more questions than finding answers.

Here are six unsolved challenges that stand between the technologies’ potential and reality:

1. Cybersecurity and privacy protection. Maybe this can’t be solved until there are thousands of pilot vehicles on our roads, but last week Wired magazine writer Andy Greenberg wrote about two cybersecurity experts who accessed a newer Jeep Cherokee’s computer brain through its Uconnect infotainment system and rewrote the firmware to plant their malicious code. The result: hip-hop began blasting through the stereo system, the AC turned to maximum force. Then the hacker’s code killed the transmission and brakes. We know autonomous cars will have even more software coding. One major attack and consumer confidence in the technology could be severely damaged.

2. How much will these vehicles cost? Established automakers are introducing progressively more advanced autonomous features in their most expensive models. Ride-hailing or other fleet-based services such as Uber or Lyft will try to deliver their service at a lower price than competing options.

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Investments change everyday, and the trends of how people can invest change as well. From silver, to housing, to own a business they are all very different. Today there is a new type of investment, by purchasing a new car to rent out to other people.

Car manufacturers are desperately seeking new ways to increase sales, maximize financial returns and address the changing needs of new generations like the millennial, but urging people to rent our their own brand new cars stretches credulity and will fall on stony ground.

News this week that BMW’s Mini will offer buyers of its cars the chance to offset the purchase price by renting out their vehicles surely won’t find any takers. BMW itself has a similar scheme called Drive Now, which board member Peter Schwarzenbauer has said is based on the idea from accommodation sharing web site Airbnb. Ford and GM have also joined in.

Schemes that allow people who don’t own cars to rent by the hour make much sense. This allows the young, who either can’t afford to own a new car, or don’t need one very often, to get wheels for specific jobs. It also allows makers of electric cars which nobody wants to buy, to get them off dealer lots and earn some money.

If it was a scheme that allowed, say, students to rent out their old clunkers to generate enough cash to pay for running costs and then some, it might make some sense. But is there anyone in the history of the world who bought a brand new car – whether it’s a little runabout or an expensive limousine, that would ever let a stranger drive off in it? The fact that they could afford a new car in the first place means the financial incentive just isn’t there.

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We all build that connection with our car, but sometimes it causes more troubles than its uses. At that point in time you might have to get a new car.

Perhaps it’s because of the cost and the sacrifices we make to own and operate them, or because they represent independence and mobility. But regardless, all this emotion can cloud our decision-making process when it comes to parting with our beloved daily driver. Many automakers invest as much time and energy in creating and developing an emotional bond between their products and their customers as they do in designing and building the vehicles themselves. If you doubt this, consider the amount carmakers spend on advertising each year compared to what they spend on R&D. While every auto manufacturer will supply an endless list of reasons why you should buy their particular product, few will help you decide when, and if, it’s time to leave your wheels by the curb and buy or lease something new. Here, then, is some advice to help make that decision easier.

Time and distance

Of all the auto executives I’ve met over almost four decades, only one ever admitted to the lifespan for which they design and build their vehicles to survive. While no auto company will admit it, the useful life for the majority of mainstream, non-luxury vehicles is about 10 years and/or 250,000 kilometers. While many cars, light trucks and SUVs may exceed that mark without exceptional repair or maintenance, a good percentage are relegated to the boneyard much sooner. A vehicle’s reliability takes a decidedly marked downturn once these milestones are passed. Does this mean we need to rush to the nearest dealership when the odometer clicks past that fateful mark? No, but it means it’s time create a succession plan. No matter the many variables when it comes to our relationships with cars, there’s one constant you can rely on: when you are forced to make a rushed decision on purchasing or leasing a vehicle (because your present chariot is dead in the driveway) it will cost you more than if you planned ahead.

Major repair estimate

Everyone dreads this call. They’ve had the family car towed into their repair provider because it failed to start/move/stop, and they get the estimate to overhaul/repair/replace something big. A good rule of thumb in these circumstances is to review your options of repairing or replacing your vehicle if a single-repair estimate approaches or exceeds its wholesale value. A quick internet tour of just about any used vehicle sales website can pinpoint this value. Just take the average asking price for the same vehicle in your area (with identical equipment and mileage) and subtract around $1,500 from a retailer’s asking price to come up with a wholesale value. Vehicles, unless it’s a collector classic, are a depreciating asset. Spending its entire value in one repair won’t double its worth.

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