This position paper identifies two design automation principles and discuss their applicability to the field of autonomous vehicles. The first one concerns the levels of automation while the second one focusses on the notion of allocation of tasks and functions between operators and automation. We believe that experiences in such design aspects together with dependability aspects (including operations under automation degradations) might benefit to the workshop. Our objective in attending the workshop is to bring our knowledge from the domain of safety critical interactive systems to the workshop. Beyond that we would like to assess the potential transferability of current knowledge in autonomous ground vehicles to these systems.