Conti expects big sales of driver assistance systems

ERJ staff report (RPN)

Detroit, US -Continental AG said it could reap as much as $1.3 billion (Euro 811 million) in sales by 2017 from driver assistance systems, which give onboard computers varying degrees of control over a vehicle's brakes, accelerator and steering.

Conti CEO Elmar Degenhart said his company expects to get a significant share of contracts to produce such systems. He gave an anticipated timeline for vehicles' use of the systems.

The first step, Degenhart said, will be around 2015 or 2016 when a partially automated vehicle allows a computer to control its progress at low speeds during stop-and-start highway driving.

"It appears to be science fiction, but it's not," he said. "We believe partially automatic driving will be a reality."

The next step will come around 2020, when highly automated vehicles will control their own progress at high speeds. Fully automated driving may come about 2025, in which the computer controls the vehicles 80 to 90 percent of the time, he said.

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