The automotive industry has accepted that full scale autonomous driving across the whole road network under all conditions in dedicated vehicles without any steering vehicles or other manual controls will not happen until 2035 and probably later. But intermediate levels of self-driving will be introduced much earlier, able to exploit some of the potential cost savings and safety benefits of conditional autonomy. Governments and regulators are welcoming some conditional autonomy under restricted conditions, which will help push improvements and provide the data necessary for subsequent expansion. Even during the ongoing Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, this is bringing back some optimism to a field that had become somewhat deflated and derailed by a spate of accidents during trials, mostly in the USA.…