Henrik Fisker uploaded an image of a swing-uppy doored car last week, followed by another image of the car: a swollen-cheeked mystery vehicle with an allegedly front-facing radar and camera. What for, pray tell? Autonomy, of course.
Not just any old autonomy, mind you, but fully fledged level 5 humans-are-just-sacks-of-meat autonomy. In a call with Carbuzz, Fisker told the site:
Also pertinent for any Tesla owners on the fence is the fact that the Fisker car will come with optional level 5 autonomous capabilities. Earlier this week, we saw the car’s front end with a trapezoidal hole in the front for a radar sensor. Fisker says that there will be more of these kinds of sensors strewn around the car once autonomy becomes an option. Unlike Tesla, which is working alone to develop full autonomy, Fisker is banking on suppliers like Mobileye and Bosch coming out with usable and competitive systems that can be placed in its car.
It’s easy to call your car autonomous when it doesn’t exist yet and nobody has driven it. It’s easy to call it autonomous when you’re waiting on other companies to develop the technology for it before you’ve stuck it in your car. The gilded desire for autonomy—which, at this point, is what this is—is a far cry to actual, road-going autonomy.
It’s basically Fisker saying, “We’ll be pioneering this tech once it’s easy enough for us to buy it.”
When carmakers stop talking about autonomy in the future tense, I’ll be less skeptical. Until then, it’s all just talk.