Ten million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2012 (Greenough, 2016). Car manufacturing companies like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Tesla already released automated cars or have planned to release automated cars (Greenough, 2016). In fact there already exist cars with self-driving features. The automated car can be defined as any car that does not need the driver to accelerate, brake and steer a car’s course.
There can be made a distinction between a fully automated car and a semi automated car (Greenough, 2016). A fully automated car will not need any driver interaction. This type of car is expected to make it’s debut in 2019.
What impact will automated cars have on the economy and what is the reason that it takes a long time before automated cars are coming to the market?
The most important benefit is that car accidents will be prevented. Driving will become safer than ever (Greenough, 2016). According to a survey of KPMG in the UK, automated cars will lead to 2500 fewer deaths between 2014 and 2030. Moreover, young people, old people and disabled people will be able to ‘drive’ a car, fuel consumption and pollution will decrease, traffic flow will become more efficient and fuel efficiency can be increased (Anderson, 2016).
Unfortunately, the production of automated cars is expensive and regulations need to be adapted (Greenough, 2016). Moreover, public transport, crash repair and automobile insurance may become obsolete (Anderson, 2016).
In the first half of 2016, a test-driver was killed while driving an automated Tesla car (Knight, 2016).
Many companies are making use of automated driving in their strategy: not only car manufacturing companies like Mercedes-Benz, yet tech companies like Apple too(CBinsights, 2016).
To read all strategies I refer to visit the following website: https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/autonomous-driverless-vehicles-corporations-list/
What is your opinion about automated vehicle technology? Do you think it will become successful? Would you ever feel comfortable in a automated car? Do u think that the economic impact will be big?
http://www.businessinsider.com/report-10-million-self-driving-cars-will-be-on-the-road-by-2020-2015-5-6
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR443-2.html
https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/autonomous-driverless-vehicles-corporations-list/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601829/tesla-crash-will-shape-the-future-of-automated-cars/
Hi Eline,
Interesting topic, and a difficult one as well. As technology evolves, self-driving cars will be the future. However, in my opinion, legislation limits the use of self-driving cars. Legislators still believe human interaction is better than technical interaction. One flaw in a system discourages usage of that system. A good example is the driver of the Tesla vehicle which was killed. This was the first death in over 130m miles driven with Tesla’s AutoPilot, while ‘human’ driving causes an accident every 94m miles. Legislators tend to ignore facts like this. Hong Kong for instance, completely banned Tesla’s AutoPilot.
In my opinion, there are two issues regarding autonomous driving: humans on the road and legislation. Humans are unpredictable, while autonomous cars will react to things in a certain way, and will react way faster. As long as there are human drivers on the road, autonomous driving will never be successful, since the cars cannot communicate with each other (autonomous cars communicating will know what actions are going to be taken by the other). Also, as long as there are legislators who do not completely trust the system, they will stop cars from reaching their full potential.
Next to that, you are asking for economic impact. Regardless of jobs and maybe industries becoming obsolete, it has a lot of advantages: no traffic, and traffic costs money. Less or no deaths or injuries, saving heath care costs. Also indirect monetary advantages like less pollution will surface: less pollution, also, will cause health care costs (related to pollution) to drop.
In my opinion, it will take at least to the next generation that has grown up with technology, to implement the system and prove that automated driving is superior to human driving.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/20/9770902/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-hong-kong-regulations
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-driver-killed-autopilot-self-driving-car-harry-potter
Hi Eline
As a car fan, I really enjoy to read this post. I once searched a lot of things related to self-drivning car, however my answer to whether it will be successful is no, at least no in 20 years. I am not saying that your opinion is wrong, it is possible to be the next generation in transportation, but people may need to spend much more time. Basically my opinion is that there are still problems need to be solved.
1. Today, driving is actually very safe, automated vehicles indeed will need to be even safer, which requires a better sofeware system. But it is pretty difficult to do so with current technology, because no software on any devices is designed to garantee the operation for a long periods without freezing, crashing or charging, similar errors would be deadly in a car.
2. Current self-driving cars for example Google, their cars seem to operate successfully in American states like California, but that’s because Google has intentionlly created a kind of street view on steroids with a virtual road map. However, their current sensors and processing system is not be able to operate as smoothly without such a detailed map of the rest of the world, that is indeed a long way to go.
3 Indeed better sensors are required, a self-driving car must be able to distinguish between dangerous and harmless situations, But in reallife, such situations in drivning are very complex when making decision. For example, a snag or nail below a tire are incredibly hard to spot, while a plastic bag or papers across the highway may be very conspicuous, but not very dangerous.
Besides those technology difficulties, Ethical issue is also one of my concerns. Sometimes, a driver must decide whether to swerve right or left, for instance either injuring a car in front with people or potentially harm a person on a motorcycle. Such ethical dilemmas would require the software in a self-driving car to weigh all the outcomes and come to a final solution on its own, such technology is never precedented.
Hi Eline,
Thank you for posting this interesting blog. I agree the innovation of intelligent transportation systems comes with many benefits. And of course, one of the major benefits is a safer way of transportation. Where human errors nowadays lead to many car accidents, this technology will become much more reliable and thus will lead to less car accidents. But I think you missed another major benefit this technology brings: reducing the infrastructure problems in urban areas due to too any cars on the road. This technology makes it possible to reduce the amount of parking lots needed in big cities. Sharing cars will become very easy by the use of this technology and thus less cars are needed to meet peoples’ transportation desires. And this could be a new form of the public transport as we know it now, so I think in general this technology will bring more major benefits than cons. But as you say, we are yet at the beginning of a new way of transportation and a lot of things, like rules and regulations, have to become clear in the next couple of years.