When is an autonomous vehicle autonomous?

An interesting dispute is simmering between the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Uber after the company announced its Volvo XC90 autonomous taxi service in San Francisco: within hours, the DMV issued a statement requiring Uber to take the vehicles off the road and apply for the necessary permits to operate autonomous vehicles in the state.

For the moment, the company is ignoring the DMV, arguing that its vehicles circulate with a driver at the wheel at all times and so no permits are required. The permit costs just $150 and is relatively easy to apply for, and the DMV itself says it expects Uber to obtain it without problems, but that if the company does not follow its requirements it can expect legal action. Uber insists no such permit is necessary.

It is worth pointing out that none of this has anything to do with the recent red light incident in San Francisco, and instead is about how Uber and the DMV respectively define an autonomous vehicle and thus the license necessary to use one on the roads. Every other company involved in autonomous driving tests in the state of California, from Google to Tesla, along with about twenty other companies, have all applied for such a license. But because Tesla owners are not required to apply for a license, Uber says its Volvos shouldn’t have to either, because, like Teslas their vehicles have a driver at the wheel and that like Tesla, for the moment, they do not intend them to function fully autonomously.

Uber’s Volvo XC90s being used in San Francisco are not much different to Teslas, but everybody knows that this exercise is about building on the self-driving experiences of its fleet, but the fact is that for the moment Uber could, at least theoretically, operate their vehicles as if they were being driven traditionally. The Volvo XC90s operated by Uber are the first model designed entirely by the company under a comprehensive agreement with the Swedish vehicle maker, which is associated with safety and whose vehicles are much more technologically advanced than the Ford Fusions being tested in Pittsburgh. Although the LiDAR’s sensor continues to spin eye-catchingly above the roof of the vehicle, the Ford Fusion has 22 cameras, while the Volvo XC90 has just seven and its radar sensors are integrated into the bumpers instead of clumsily protruding out of the side.

So why is the DMV insisting on a special license for autonomous vehicles? It’s clearly not about raising money, but it could be making a mistake given the campaign launched by the company emphasizing that its vehicles are actually autonomous. That said, apparently there is no means by which drivers can be obliged to pay attention to the road or take control of the steering wheel, which may violate some recent regulations: as a result of the accident earlier this year involving a Tesla vehicle, the company’s Autopilot function warns the driver if he or she needs to take control of the steering wheel, and sounds an alarm if the driver fails to do so, stopping the car and putting on the hazard lights if the driver still fails to respond. Uber on the other hand, has taken no such precautions, which could be a problem in some states.

It’s also possible that the DMV simply wants to know what Uber’s vehicles are doing when in autonomous or semi-autonomous mode so it can create a database with detailed information about the kinds of accidents that have taken place and that it could use when creating new laws. In other words, to prevent Uber from reporting all or any accidents as having taken place in driver mode and hiding any potential problems with its autonomous driving algorithms.

Uber’s refusal to obtain the corresponding license, one that is relatively simple and cheap, and instead deciding to stand up to the DMV and the risk of sanctions, may be about keeping its tests private, or might just be about generating controversy and publicity. This is after all, a company not precisely averse to taking on authority.

Is a vehicle autonomous in the eyes of the law simply because of its potential to operate autonomously? Only when it can operate fully without human intervention? Only when the regulator says so? We’ll know the answer in the coming days.

(En espa?ol, aquí)