March 6, 2019—A recently published white paper developed by Frost & Sullivan calls on the auto industry to clarify and standardize marketing terminology for driver assistance and self-driving technologies.

It also finds that lidar technology can “enable significant advances in driver assistance and calls lidar “the key technology to enable both full driving autonomy as well as safe driver assistance.”

While there are levels of autonomy from 0-5, the white paper calls on the industry to eliminate level 3, where drivers need to intervene and rapidly control the vehicle when automation fails. 

In its place, the recommendation is to categorize vehicles as having Level 2+ (advanced driver assistance systems – ADAS) or Level 4+ (autonomous vehicles) capabilities, creating “a clear boundary between the levels of automation that require an attentive driver (Level 2+) and those that do not (Level 4+).” This change can reduce confusion about the definition and appropriate use of “self-driving.”

The report recommends that any vehicle below Level 4 not be marketed as being “autonomous” or “self-driving.”