Autonomous Driving In Malaysia

We’ve all heard about the trends of autonomous driving and self-driving cars. Multiple car makers have jumped on the band-wagon with the aim of developing the best iteration of the self driving car. We’ve seen giants such as Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and even Audi building their own versions and it does look good for those giants. However, that begs the question. We haven’t seen any form of self driving cars or autonomous cars in Malaysia, let alone from our own local brands such as Proton and Perodua.

So, is Malaysia ready for the jump to driverless cars? To answer that question, we need to first look into the local infrastructure. Malaysia as we all know, is a growing and developing country. At the moment, there are some areas that are still under development, such as the use of advanced road technologies, advanced consumer technologies and even the proper mappings of our roads. We all know that the use of driverless cars or autonomous driving technology is dependant on the road conditions and the legibility of the road markers. However, our local roads are not exactly ready for the use of any form of autonomous driving.

On the flip side, if the progress of development does end up moving faster, then we could be looking at the next Silicon Valley. That is however, if our own national carmakers are able to keep up with the rate of development. So, to conclude the entire piece, our country isn’t exactly ready for autonomous driving just yet. Other than the road conditions and the technology behind it, there are other factors that further limits the possibility of autonomous driving in Malaysia such as the acceptance rate of local drivers as well as the actual driving behaviour. Hopefully all of this could change within the coming years and autonomous driving will become a thing here.