A driverless journey

I was reminded of this recently when new of a report, Emerging Technologies: Autonomous Cars—Not If, But When, hit my inbox. The report from IHS Automotive, a company based near the heart of the US automotive industry in Detroit, asserts that self-driving cars (SDC) that include driver control are expected to hit roads around the world before 2025, with and self-driving "only” cars anticipated around in 2030.

IHS Automotive forecasts total worldwide sales of self-driving cars will grow from nearly 230 thousand in 2025 to 11.8 million in 2035 – 7 million SDCs with both driver control and autonomous control and 4.8 million that have only autonomous control. In all, there should be nearly 54 million self-driving cars in use globally by 2035.

The study anticipates that nearly all of the vehicles in use are likely to be self-driving cars or self-driving commercial vehicles sometime after 2050.

"There are several benefits from self-driving cars to society, drivers and pedestrians,” says Egil Juliussen, principal analyst for infotainment and autonomous driver assisted systems at IHS Automotive. Juliussen co-authored the study with IHS Automotive senior ADAS analyst Jeremy Carlson.

"Accident rates will plunge to near zero for SDCs, although other cars will crash into SDCs, but as the market share of SDCs on the highway grows, overall accident rates will decline steadily,” Juliussen says. "Traffic congestion and air pollution per car should also decline because SDCs can be programmed to be more efficient in their driving patterns.”

The study also notes potential barriers to SDC deployment and two major technology risks: software reliability and that CDA favourite, cyber security. There's also the matter of whether all consumers actually want self-driving cars. Although the emergence of the technology seems inevitable, I suspect that if you canvassed a typical Top Gear audience about whether they personally would invest in such a model, the answer would be a resounding "no".