According to media reports, Bentley's CEO Adrian Hallmark believes that Level 3 autonomous driving is "very dangerous," so the company will focus on developing more advanced driver assistance systems.
Cars equipped with Level 3 autonomous driving capabilities can take over driving tasks under specific conditions. In some states in Germany and the United States, vehicles with this technology can legally operate on roads.
Hallmark believes that there is a risk of accidents when cars must return control to the driver. He stated earlier this month, "From all the testing and analysis we've done, we believe Level 3 autonomous driving is dangerous because it relies too heavily on the driver regaining attention and intervening."
Bentley will focus on providing more advanced Level 2 systems, known as Level 2 Plus Plus, in its upcoming pure electric vehicles. The launch of Bentley's pure electric car has been delayed until the end of 2026.
Level 2 Plus Plus and Level 2 Plus are not recognized by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International). The common feature of all Level 2 solutions is that the driver remains responsible for driving tasks.
Within the Volkswagen Group, Bentley is controlled by Audi, but Audi has not yet introduced cars capable of achieving Level 3 autonomous driving in the German market. In contrast, Audi's competitor BMW offers the Personal Pilot L3 technology on some models of the new 7 Series and the all-electric i7 xDrive60 sedan. This technology has an optional price of 6,000 euros in Germany.
Mercedes-Benz also started offering Level 3 autonomous driving technology on its EQS and S-Class cars in Germany in May 2022. Besides Germany, Mercedes-Benz also provides this technology in California and Nevada in the United States.
Many luxury car manufacturers see autonomous driving as a way to enhance the customer's in-car experience, allowing them to work or relax once the vehicle takes over control. However, some believe that Level 3 autonomous driving poses problems because it requires the driver to be ready to take over vehicle control at any time.
Hallmark said, "Level 3 is the riskiest stage of autonomous driving technology. Level 4 will be much safer." Cars with Level 4 autonomous driving systems can operate independently in most situations, significantly reducing the driver's demands, but this technology has not yet been approved by regulatory authorities. This has led more and more car manufacturers to consider offering Level 3 technology to stand out in the competition.
Tom Stringer, Jaguar Land Rover's product strategy director, said earlier this month at the SMMT Connected Conference in London, "For today's luxury car customers, Level 3 autonomous driving will be a very important part, first on highways, and then possibly in urban environments. I think this is a very important goal for us."
Jaguar Land Rover has not yet announced a timeline for adopting Level 3 technology, but Stringer stated that the company is "likely" to launch vehicles with Level 3 autonomous driving systems before 2030.
Bentley will offer Level 2 Plus technology in its new electric cars, and due to the delay in release, these electric vehicles will use more advanced driver assistance technology. Hallmark stated, "Some of the driver assistance features we have now are better than what we originally could have gotten."
For example, Bentley's electric cars will be the first to offer "highway assist" features, although Hallmark did not elaborate on how it works. He mentioned that Bentley's electric cars will also provide automatic low-speed parking and remote parking features.
Intel's subsidiary Mobileye announced last week that Bentley, Audi, and Porsche will also adopt its Supervision technology. The E3 1.2 software from Volkswagen Group has integrated Supervision technology, developed independently by Volkswagen Group's Cariad department for use on models using the PPE platform. Bentley had previously stated that it would use a version of PPE on its electric cars.
