Another big challenge for autonomous car engineers: Energy efficiency
Another big challenge for autonomous car engineers: Energy efficiencyhttp://www.autonews.com/article/201...or-autonomous-car-engineers-energy-efficiency
Gabrielle Coppola and Esha Dey, Bloomberg | October 11, 2017 @ 7:15 am
Judging from General Motors' test cars and Elon Musk's predictions, the world is headed toward a future that's both driverless and all-electric. In reality, autonomy and battery power could end up being at odds.
That's because self-driving technology is a huge power drain. Some of today's prototypes for fully autonomous systems consume 2 to 4 kilowatts of electricity -- the equivalent of having 50 to 100 laptops continuously running in the trunk, according to BorgWarner Inc. The supplier of vehicle propulsion systems expects the first autonomous cars -- likely robotaxis that are constantly on the road -- will be too energy-hungry to run on battery power alone.
In an industry where the number of LEDs in a brake light are scrutinized for their impact on gas mileage, processing data from laser, radar and camera sensors will be an enormous challenge -- not just for coders working on machine learning, but for engineers trying to power vehicles efficiently. As major markets from California to China ratchet up pressure to curb pollution, automakers and their suppliers will have to find creative new ways to offset emissions produced by feeding the car's increasingly intelligent brain.
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The autonomous features on a Level 4 or 5 vehicle, which can operate without human intervention, devour so much power that it makes meeting fuel economy and carbon emissions targets 5 to 10 percent harder, according to Chris Thomas, BorgWarner's chief technology officer.
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Those are prototypes, I guess/hope the final product will use way less than that.
Also, compare this to the kW needed for the actual drive drain. 2 kW is like ~3 horse power. To keep going at a somewhat decent highway speed, you will need more than 10kW (and way more than 10kW to get up to highway speeds in a reasonable timespan). More like 20kW sustained on highways. This is probably where the "5 to 10 percent harder to meet fuel economy targets" come frome.
In winter time (at least in places where winter is actually cold), the 2-4 kW could replace parts of the heating system. The amount of heat generated from 2-4 kW in a Tesla right now (by simply forcing current through whatever resistors) is the same as the amount of heat generated by a supercomputer in the trunk using 2-4 kW. 
In the summer this might be a huge issue though. So I agree it's a challenge. You don't want the AC to use a significant additional amount of energy just to get rid of the 2-4 kW of heat generated by the self-driving system.
On the other hand, self-driving cars could optimize their driving behaviour for energy efficiency to offset this. And theoretically, it's safer for them to tailgate other self-driving cars and even self-driving semi trucks, reducing drag and lowering energy usage.