Editorial

Simulation plays a central role in almost every aspect of automotive product development. And as this month's cover story explains, ‘sim’ is extending its reach in automated-driving R&D, bringing efficiency to human factors and critical but tedious component-verification work. Some argue that most AV development should - and thanks to contemporary sim technology, can - be conducted in the virtual world. It's hard for me to imagine getting to consumer-ready SAE Level 4 and 5 driving automation without eventual heavy reliance on simulation-based validation.

That notion comes hard against what's played out with Tesla, however. The EV leader effectively has leveraged its customers' on-the-road experiences to incrementally “harden” its automated-driving software. It's not an entirely off-the-ranch idea; many AV developers have relied on some sort of crowdsourcing data acquisition to help their systems learn. The difference, however, is that Tesla consigned this role - and its genuine risks - to everyday drivers who mostly thought they already were using a high-level “self-driving” system.