Leave it to the mega-rich to have the first robotic chauffeurs.
Many Rolls-Royce drivers don't drive their own cars, so why not take it a step further and just have a robot do it for them?
As a subsidiary of BMW, Rolls-Royce expects to enjoy autonomous driving technologies before the end of the decade.
The head of Rolls-Royce told Australian publication Drive that the company would only use robots if they were absolutely reliable, as Rolls-Royce customers demand perfection.
"[Autonomous driving] certainly fits well within our brand and is maybe even considered the next step towards the effortless driving experience; letting a little robot drive your car in a very smooth and efficient way," Torsten Muller-Otvos, head of the brand, told Drive. "But only when it is absolutely reliable, because our customers do not accept any compromises, no experiments, nothing ... this needs to be perfection in its purest sense."
Almost every automaker is working on some sort of autonomous driving technology, and BMW is doing so with radar guidance and stereo-camera systems.
BMW has been testing its new systems on European roads for three years, and it's planning on using data from Chinese search engine Baidu to expand testing into Shanghai and Beijing.
High-end cars like Rolls-Royce, which usually aren't driven by their owners anyway, could be a dream market for autonomous technology. While sports-car purists might be upset if the car started driving itself, those who already pay someone to do the work likely won't care, as long as they get to their destination in time.
There are still lots of obstacles facing self-driving cars, but should they come to pass, they may initially be exclusive to the 1 percent.
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