Level 4
(Anastasia, 2025)
What Features Are Present
Level 4 marks the shift from human focused control to machine control. Level 4 vehicles can fully drive themselves without any human supervision, albeit in a specific range. These vehicles are perfect for in-city taxi services, where there is a set radius in which they are able to fully control themselves. Generally, these vehicles do not include any form of control for the passengers - they simply are expected to sit back and let the vehicle operate. There is no requirement for the human to be paying attention.
Examples
There are no real level 4 capable vehicles for sale today. However, if you would like to experience a fully autonomous vehicle, several companies have taxi services that use level 4 autonomous vehicles. These companies include Waymo in Atlanta, Austin, LA, Phoenix, and San Francisco, Tesla in a limited area in Austin (and is invite only as of writing), Zoox (owned by amazon) in Las Vegas and San Francisco, and several other companies with very limited service range and availability.
Security
Since this level removes the reliance on a human, there is less of a ‘kill-switch’ to mitigate problems if someone gains access to the vehicle. They generally are significantly more connected to the network, which opens up a myriad of different attack vectors against the vehicle, and if one is successful, there is no human to act as a backup. Attacks include creating hallucinations, changing the route or destination, or simply controlling the vehicle. These attacks are significantly more dangerous at this level, so more effort is required of the manufacturers to ensure the security and privacy of their systems. There hasn’t been an attack yet, and they require substantial effort to be able to implement, but they are theoretically possible.
Safety
At this level, there is rarely a steering wheel or control system to take over for the vehicle. If the autonomous system works well, it will be able to handle any obstacle thrown at it, and there should be no reason for the passenger to ever need control. That being said, ensuring autonomous vehicles have enough testing is vital to ensure this performance, which requires significantly more legislation than we have currently. For more information, see the Legislation page.