Currently, there is no quantitative measure for assessing the gap between the current state of technology and the standard established for vehicles equipped with SAE Level 5 driving automation. This paper develops a multidimensional index for assessing the technological maturity of SAE Level 5 autonomous vehicles, conceived as a normalized composite criterion obtained by integrating a set of elementary indicators describing the core technological functions of such a vehicle.

Seven fundamental dimensions are considered: environmental perception, localization, behavior prediction, planning and decision-making, vehicle control, robustness and fault tolerance, and comprehensive and continuous safety validation.

The resulting index may serve as the central variable of a dynamic model for forecasting the technological maturity of highly automated vehicles.