Level 2
(Anastasia, 2025)
What Features Are Present
At level 2, we see the combination of the steering assist and pedal assists into features such as fully self parking and highway mode(adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist). The highway assist feature will maintain your speed and your lane, but you are still required to have your hands on the wheel, and interrupt whenever the system cannot cope with the environment. Whilst the car cannot fully drive itself, it can provide significantly more assistance to the human driver. The highway mode is the most common example of this, and is the feature that most automakers have started rolling out recently.
Examples
Many new vehicles are at this level. Newer Volkswagen cars, starting in around 2023, had their highway assist, called Travel Assist (although not all models have this - it came out during the chip shortage, so many vehicles were sold without blindspot monitoring which renders the highway assist unusable). Subaru has their EyeSight system, that for the 2026 model year provides full travel assist, and will pull the car over when the driver is found to be unresponsive (distracted for too long, or asleep). In general, most new cars will have some form of travel assist available, but it is much less likely to find a used car before the start of the 2020s with travel assist or other level 2 capabilities. That being said, several automakers (Chevrolet, Tesla, Ford, Mercedes among others) have transitioned past level 2 with their new vehicles, some skipping it entirely and jumping from level 1 to 3. Tesla vehicles from around 2016 to 2018 had level 2 capabilities.
Security
At level 2, we start to see more connectivity to the internet of the vehicles, but still not being fully connected and dependent on that connection. Thus, they are more susceptible to security concerns on the network than level 1, but still have a small enough dependance on their cellular connection that (in general) there is still very little concern of a remote takeover or another potential attack.
Safety
This level gets significantly safer than level 1, as while there is a much higher chance to get distracted and stop paying attention, since you have less to do, the vehicle will be able to notice that you are not paying attention, and will try to get your attention. If it cannot get your attention, it will pull over safely and come to a stop. This makes it significantly safer in the end, and combine that with the fact that these vehicles have better emergency stopping and full lane keep control, and if you mess up, there is a much higher chance that the car will catch it and correct for you.