Stellantis’s new self-driving 'L3' tech means city driving is now city chauffeuring

Buckle up, Stellantis is the latest carmaker ready to deploy to its own self-driving tech. Catchily called STLA AutoDrive 1.0, it has ‘hands-off-eyes-off’ capabilities up to 37mph, meaning you can doomscroll your way through the city traffic after work. Road rage, begone.

Stellantis says the system will work even in low-light/night conditions or bad weather. But at higher speeds, you'll have to put away your books and emails and daydreams because the system is currently limited to adaptive cruise control and lane-departure assist functionality once engaged.

AutoDrive works by combining the company’s in-house ‘Brain’, ‘Smart Cockpit’ and a bunch of very sophisticated sensors and software algorithms. Stellantis identifies L2, L2+ and L3 to indicate the progress in its self-driving development. Just to recap, those are the levels of autonomous driving agreed by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) in the US, though it’s worth noting that 1) they don’t apply here in the UK and 2) L2+ is the ‘hottest trend’, even though it doesn’t really exist (just take a look at any SAE table).

The firm’s next ambition is to progress hands-off-eyes-off functionality up to 59mph, but there's no indication (pun intended) when Stellantis hopes to accomplish this, what models it’ll deploy the AutoDrive suite into first, or how much it’ll all cost (though we can’t imagine it’s going to be cheap).

Earlier this month, BYD deployed its God’s-Eye autonomous-driving suite into three new models, one being the relatively cheap BYD Seagull for the reasonable-but-not-that-cheap price of £11,000 ($14,000). Tesla Autopilot initially cost $15,000 back in 2022, dropping to $8,000 more recently, yet also cops a monthly subscription. Expect more of the same.