We were skeptical when Honda announced at CES that its upcoming EVs would have Level 3 self-driving. It doesn’t even offer a Level 2 system in the US today, and I wouldn’t recommend its popular Honda Prologue EV to drivers who want the latest in autonomous driving technology.
Only Mercedes has legal permission to operate a Level 3 system in the US, and only in Nevada and California. So what gives Honda the confidence to show up at this giant international conference with promises of Level 3 self-driving?
In fairness, we expect brands to make grandiose promises at CES without clear timelines. And in 2021, Honda was the first car manufacturer to release a vehicle with a Level 3 self-driving system – in Japan. While we don’t know when self-driving Hondas will appear in US dealerships, it’s important that the automaker is taking concrete steps to get there, primarily through a new list of partners.
Helm.AI gives a tech talk at its CES booth (Credit: Emily Forlini)
The main one is Helm.AI, a California-based company that tells PCMag it has been working with Honda since 2018. Helm.AI is also working with Volkswagen and “many other OEMs” that CEO and co-founder Vlad Voroninski did not mundi’ T name publicly in our interview.
Voroninski’s company’s secret sauce is combining a proprietary mathematical model with new advances in generative AI. The latter makes the creation of training model data faster. While Tesla can train its autonomous driving model all day long on real-world data collected from human drivers, companies like Honda or VW don’t have that luxury.
Helm.AI booth at CES (Credit: Emily Forlini)
Training with a “virtual fleet” is “much more efficient and safer because you don’t have to put someone in a car to collect the data,” says Voroninski. “And you can just focus on generating interesting cases. When you’re out there in real life, 99% of it is boring. But with AI simulation, you can zero in on whatever hard case you want to tackle.”
Honda’s goal is to create a system where drivers can take their hands off the wheel and their eyes off-road, a key differentiator from Level 2 systems that require constant attention. This frees them up to “second-task,” like texting a friend or replying to a work email. The car will be able to “respond appropriately to irregular situations,” allowing passengers to have a comfortable conversation “even at complex intersections,” Steve Frey, Honda’s vice president of research and development, explained at CES. Americas.
Steve Frey, VP of R&D at Honda Americas (Credit: Emily Forlini)
Although self-driving Teslas have been involved in many crashes, there is some comfort in knowing that its system is being trained on real-world data and human drivers rather than an AI simulation. It’s also hard to imagine that Tesla’s approach wouldn’t have a significant advantage over players like Helm.AI. It owns its self-driving system from top to bottom: the vehicle, the software and the chip it runs on. This closed, Apple-style ecosystem certainly gave Tesla an advantage when it came to its Supercharging network (which now supports other brands).
But Tesla is also exploring licensing its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software to other automakers, Electrek reports. In an April 2024 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk claimed the company was in talks with an unnamed OEM, though it would take at least three years to integrate its software into another vehicle. Perhaps this puts a timeline on Honda’s Tier 3 promises.
Honda is also developing a more powerful AI chip with Renesas Electronics Corporation. It aims to deliver “state-of-the-art AI performance of 2,000 TOPS combined with a world-class power efficiency of 20 TOPS/W,” according to Renesas. Taiwan-based semiconductor powerhouse TSMC will manufacture it.
The energy efficiency bit is important. Honda told reporters at a roundtable that it had concerns about the AI system drawing so much power from the battery that it reduced range. It’s not just self-driving software – Honda also dreams of an AI that its drivers can interact with and maybe even fall in love with. A high-performance, high-efficiency chip is required to make all this a reality.
Helm.AI booth at CES (Credit: Emily Forlini)
Federal regulations are another hurdle. President-elect Trump’s team plans to lift restrictions on self-driving cars despite campaign promises to “stop [autonomous cars] from operating on American roads”.
“It’s very clear that a federally mandated framework will be an accelerator for the space,” says Voroninski. He points to state-level requirements as an example of something that slows down development.
“If you want to make an autonomous car across the country, [each state] there are differences, different communication you have to go through with the agencies,” Voroninski says. That can “create a certain amount of load on a system to meet certain criteria at once, which can create something that’s not optimal in any of cases”.
It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration’s new framework will address state-level differences. So far, we’ve only heard of a few requests that could be released. The first aims to speed up the collection of training data by expanding the number of test vehicles that automakers can deploy, from 2,500 per year today to 100,000. This has been discussed by lawmakers in the past, but has not gained any traction.
The second is a little more terrifying. Trump may repeal the requirement that car companies report autonomous vehicle crashes. Musk backs this up, as his company’s vehicles have been involved in 40 of the 45 fatal incidents reported to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration through October 15, 2024. Clearly, a balance of promoting innovation while protecting safety is needed. public and it remains to be seen how it looks.
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About Emily Forlin
Senior reporter
