Automotive Engineering - May 2024 - 2

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Sebastian Blanco
Editor-in-Chief
sebastian.blanco@saemediagroup.com
What we do is exciting
Walking around the SAE WCX conference
in Detroit this April and reading
through the topic listings for the hundreds
of sessions and thousands of
presentations, I remembered why I
enjoyed this conference so much. I
used to attend as a reporter for other
outlets, but I haven't been back to
WCX since before the pandemic. It was
different to walk the halls as editor of
this magazine.
What happens at WCX - and at dozens
of mobility and transportation conferences
around the world - is fascinating.
I would bet big money that our
readers agree. Still, sometimes
it's difficult to
translate the deeply technical
work that makes up
our days into something
that piques the interest of
those who don't spend
inordinate amounts of
time thinking about the
" future of mobility. "
Take, for example, a session
quietly titled " Getting
to SAE Level 3: Persistent
Challenges and Strategies
Necessary for OEMs. " That sounds ideal
for the WCX crowd, but our family and
friends won't understand the issue unless
they speak nerd. The panelists
tossed around automated driving in
technical terms like ODD, human-machine
interface and L2-perfectly acceptable
at WCX.
As cool as some of these technoloI
heard at WCX needed to be translated
into theoretical questions that engage
the average person rather than focusing
on the tech itself.
How would you feel if you got into a
car without a steering wheel? How
Educating
people about
what the automotive
future
could be is
easier when we
can explain it in
interesting ways.
should autonomous vehicles tell their
" drivers " that they can be riders for this
trip? Would you feel safe if you went to
rent a car sometime next decade and
were offered an AV? Legally, aside from
things like the trolley problem, how can
we program ethics into AV software?
That last one has at least been given
some time in the public eye after
Tesla programmed a
" rolling stop " into its
self-driving cars in 2022.
This feature was quickly
shut down when people
realized the cars were
technically breaking the
law. But was that a mistake?
AVs need to follow
traffic laws ... right?
What if your car is programmed
to follow the
speed limit, but then finds
itself surrounded by human-operated
vehicles going 80 mph
(129 km/h) in a 55-mph (89-km/h)
speed zone? Is following the law actually
dangerous in that situation?
Behaviors and ethics are different spaces,
so how do you write software so a
car can make the affirmative decision to
break the law, but in an ethical way?
WCX is an inherently technical congies
are, or will be, they are opaque
today, and tomorrow can't be depended
on. Educating people about what
the automotive future could be - the
possibilities and the challenges - is easier
when we can cleverly explain kernels
of thought in interesting ways.
After WCX, I met with some non-automotive
industry friends and told them
about the conference and that session
in particular. But they don't know the
engineering details, so I realized the
best way to explain the exciting things
2 May 2024
ference, as it should be. But when
we're not in these environments, I've
found that the bigger and more exciting
questions get a response. After
days of detailed sessions discussing
wind-tunnel aerodynamic standards
and improved casting methods for EVs
- which, let's admit, can be a bit dry -
it was worth remembering that what
we do is exciting. We can get others to
understand this when we frame things
in the right way.
Sebastian Blanco, Editor-in-Chief
Chris Clonts
Senior Editor
chris.clonts@saemediagroup.com
Ryan Gehm
Associate Editor
Ryan.Gehm@sae.org
Matthew Wolfe
Assistant Editor
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AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
Automotive Engineering - May 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive Engineering - May 2024
