Fully autonomous Volkswagen vehicles due on roads from 2021

“The cost per vehicle is likely to be around $10k-$15k (about £7-£11k) extra in the early stages. That can be justified only for business users,” said Jungwirth.

Adding self-driving technology to Level 4/5 on a fleet vehicle can be offset by the money saved by not having to employ drivers.

Volkswagen has demonstrated its Sedric pod, which is slated for launch after 2023, together with several aspects of its Level 4/5 technology. Two project milestones are due this September for the Sedric project: proof of concept and a user study into the interior and exterior, including the human-machine interface (HMI).

The fundamental engineering work is being carried out on a fleet of Volkswagen e-Golfs modified with five roof-mounted lidar sensors, four bumper-mounted lidar sensors, a forward-facing video camera and four short-range radar sensors converted from use for adaptive cruise control.

In-car control is by a neural network computer, which, despite being compact, is powerful enough to process up to 20TB of data per day.

Significant work is going into calibrating the forward-facing camera as the ‘eyes’ of the self-driving technology to recognise pedestrians and be capable of stopping on zebra crossings, for example, or predicting if a pedestrian will suddenly step into the road.

Riding in the car of the future:

Drama-free, smooth riding and a new concept in travel are three descriptions of Autocar’s very brief ride, four-up, in a Sedric self-driving pod.

Based on the chassis of an e-Golf, this prototype Sedric smoothly negotiated a very short, flat course on a perfectly smooth track, taking a series of wide S-bends at no more than 30kmh (18.6mph). It generally steered with a line closer to the left lane of cones but in some corners took an unnaturally wide line, unnecessarily steering towards the middle of the lane before tightening again.

Compared with the Gateway Pod that Autocar recently rode in, the Sedric is more convincing as a consumer product, with good rolling and powertrain refinement.

However, the Gateway pod was demonstrated in much tougher, real-traffic conditions that put its sensing system under much more duress.

Our ride in the Sedric told us nothing about how the vehicle will deal with conflicts with pedestrians, for example, or manoeuvre in confined spaces - the real test of a self-driving system.

Although the Sedric is driverless, its occupants start it, by pressing a button mounted on a control panel, and enter the route on a tablet fitted between the two rear seats. The Sedric will not move off if occupants aren't wearing a seatbelt.