When it comes to driverless cars, legendary car designer Henrik Fisker said he thinks it won't "have as dramatic a change as people might imagine."
Fisker has a keen understanding of the challenges to getting new car technology on the market. He was involved in pioneering electric car technology before EVs became part of the mainstream.
And as someone who has worked with major automakers — including BMW, Aston Martin, and Tesla — Fisker has seen a lot when it comes to car design and technology.
But when it comes to autonomous cars, Fisker isn't as optimistic.
"If you look back in history, we've had a lot of new technology entering cars — whether it was ABS brakes or other safety features," Fisker told Tech Insider. "I think that when driverless car technology enters vehicles, I don't think it will have as dramatic a change as people might imagine."
Fisker envisions driverless car technology will stay in the form we currently see in Teslas.
"I think it will in be used for certain applications — it will be an advance cruise control type of button," he said.
Fisker's main reason for believing that is very true to his love of speed. He said he thinks driverless cars' inability to break the speed limit will be a major problem going forward.
"I doubt you'd be able to program a driverless car to break the speed limit and, the fact is, most people break the speed limit simply because they are just making the traffic flow," he said.
The inability for driverless cars to break the speed limit is actually a major problem. In November, one of Google's cars was pulled over for driving too slowly. The incident highlighted why it's a problem that driverless cars follow traffic laws to the T, and programmers are currently debating teaching the cars to commit infractions.
Fisker's other concern with driverless cars is that there's no clear explanation of who is at fault if a driverless car were to get in an accident, especially one with fatalities or serious injuries.
"What about that one time it doesn't make a good decision?" he said.
Many companies are in the race to get self-driving cars on the market by 2020, including Google, Tesla, Toyota, and Nissan. But one of the biggest obstacles to getting this technology on the road is that there are no federal regulations outlining how autonomous vehicles must operate.
Currently, rules for self-driving cars are handled on a state-by-state basis.
Automakers and tech companies developing the technology have been calling on the government to help address this issue in particular.
"The leadership of the federal government is critically important given the growing patchwork of State laws and regulations on self-driving cars," Chris Urmson, the director of Google's self-driving car arm, said during a congressional hearing on Tuesday.
Roads will also have to be adjusted to accommodate self-driving cars, something that Google-turned-Alphabet is currently working on.
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
