According to a respected auto industry forecasting company, the world will be filled with almost 54 million self-driving cars as soon as the year 2035. However, this same company predicts that there will be a slower introduction to cars that are totally automated.
IHS Automotive has forecast that the sales of self-driving vehicles will climb from around 230,000 in 2025 to almost 11.8 million by 2035. They predict that cars without driver controls at all, meaning cars that are 100 percent autonomous, will be released around 2030. The study further predicted that by 2050 almost all vehicles on the road will be self-driving – including both commercial and personal-use vehicles.
The future is now
The public has been abuzz over the last two years, as people have gotten more and more interested in the idea of autonomous vehicles. It’s well known that Google has been testing their fleet of self-driving vehicles, and those vehicles have logged more than half a million miles. Some states have even approved laws to test these vehicles. Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder has approved legislation to test self-driving vehicles; and Florida, Nevada, and California already have similar laws. There is also testing being done in Pennsylvania, though no specific laws have been passed to cover said testing.
IHS Automotive’s report states that by 2025 self-driving cars will make up about 0.2 percent of all vehicle sales, and that by 2035 that number will rise to about 9.2 percent. They also forecast that self-driving cars will cost about $7,000 to $10,000 more to the end consumer, but that number should drop to $5,000 by 2030 and further to $3,000 by 2035, according to their article “Emerging Technologies: Autonomous Cars – Not If, But When.”
Egil Juliussen, who co-authored the study with Jeremy Carlson, believes that there are several benefits to using self-driving cars, including benefits to both drivers and pedestrians. He believes that accidents will be almost non-existent for self-driving cars, though he does acknowledge that people-driven cars will still experience crashes with self-driving cars. However, he believes that as more people-driven cars are phased out and more self-driven cars are on the roads, accident rates will decrease. He also believes that both traffic congestion and air pollution can be reduced because self-driving cars are able to be programmed to be more efficient.
Saving more than lives
There is also evidence that autonomous cars could save the United States hundreds of billions of dollars. How? By reducing the number of traffic crashes, by boosting the productivity of people who will no longer have to waste time in transit, and by reducing traffic congestion. Others worry that it will result in the loss of millions of jobs that currently exist – those involved in transporting both goods and people. When weighing these pros and cons, it’s important to consider that driver error is involved in more than 90 percent of the 32,000 crash fatalities every year, as well as more than 2 million injuries. These could be virtually eliminated by using autonomous vehicles.
There is also the argument that driverless cars would result in less spending by the states. They would no longer have to invest millions, even billions, in highway infrastructures like wide lanes, rumble strips, wide shoulders, guard rails, and even stop signs. However, there are technology risks like cyber security and software reliability. The biggest barriers blocking the quick production of these cars are a lack of legal framework for self-driving vehicles and the government not yet having specific rules and regulations in place for them.
The IHS Automotive study claims that fully autonomous cars won’t be on the roads by 2020, as some automakers are currently predicting. Instead this study predicts that the first self-driving cars will still require a driver in them to monitor the conditions and that the car will simply act in ”auto pilot” mode much of the time.
Who will own a self-driving car?
The breakdown of potential buyers is an interesting aspect of the study. It’s estimated that 29 percent of worldwide sales of autonomous cars with human controls will be by North Americans, which equates to around 3.5 million cars. China is close behind at 29 percent, or almost 3 million cars, and Western Europe is expected to account for about 20 percent, or a little shy of 2.5 million vehicles.
The automakers have weighed in, and GMC has said that self-driving cars won’t be available to the general public in the foreseeable future, while Nissan Motor’s CEO has said they’ll have self-driving cars by 2020. The jury is still out on when these vehicles will be available, what effect they will have on the economy, and how much they will impact our lives, but one thing is for sure: We live in interesting times.
About the Author:
Chris Countey is a digital marketer for the auto and tech industries, and writes about cars, the latest devices and science for companies like Cerritos Infiniti.
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