What’s driving driverless cars? Since a Tesla car in self-driving mode killed its driver in a May crash, debate on the safety of autonomous vehicles has intensified.
Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie has been following the technology as director of Wharton’s Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation(PVMI) at the School’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management. MacDuffie recently discussed the regulatory and safety scenarios for driverless cars on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111.
“Would one or more fatal accidents be … a Hindenburg Moment?” he wondered in the Knowledge@Wharton interview, referring to the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg airship in Manchester, N.J., which ended the prospects of the Zeppelin type of aircraft.
MacDuffie, a core team member at Mack, currently divides his time between Wharton in Philadelphia and San Francisco, where he teaches in the MBA Program for Executives and gains a West Coast base for his research into automobile technologies, including those offered by Tesla Motors, which is based in Palo Alto.
“The research I’m doing out there involves the auto industry and the ability to handle these changes – how digital technologies are becoming more important and advances like self-driving cars are progressing,” says MacDuffie.
MacDuffie offered five key takeaways for the industry to react to the accident. Visit Knowledge@Wharton to read them and listen to a podcast of the show.
Posted: July 19, 2016
