ADAS – the basis of autonomy, and a source of opportunity

It is widely accepted today that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) represent the first steps along the road to high SAE levels of autonomous driving, but as Philipp Kampshoff points out, ADAS itself arrived some years before the automotive industry began to push its vision of a self-driving future in earnest.

“If we go back ten years, nobody was talking about autonomous vehicles like they do today,” he says, “but by that point, a number of what we’d call ADAS features had already arrived.” Adaptive cruise control, anti-lock braking systems and parking sensors are all good examples. Kampshoff is a partner at McKinsey, and a core member of the group’s Automotive & Assembly practice. The original appeal of ADAS was its potential safety benefits, an appeal which endures – autonomous emergency braking (AEB), for example, can react far faster than a human driver, and is always alert. Figures from Euro NCAP show that AEB can lead to a 38% reduction in rear-end crashes.