The Australian: Driverless cars are coming and could reshape everyday lives

When I asked a Silicon Valley venture capitalist last month what trends he was seeing in transport, his response was immediate and concise.

Electric motors will replace petrol, he said. Cars will become driverless. And cars and other vehicles will be “boxes” with most of their value found in the software, which will be regularly updated.

His words made sense to me. The day before I had toured the enormous Tesla factory in Fremont, an industrial suburb an hour’s drive from San Francisco. There I saw electric vehicles — the Model S luxury sedan and the Model X SUV — being assembled for sale in markets around the world, including Australia.

In the same week Tesla issued a software update that gave its vehicles in some markets a new self-driving capability. For example, on private land you can “summon” your Tesla, so it will drive from where you parked it to where you are standing.

The next day I visited the Google facility in Mountain View, California, where driverless cars are being tested, riding in a modified Lexus SUV on a 20 minute trip around leafy suburban streets.

A Google employee sat in the front seat but she did not touch the steering wheel or the pedals. Instead the vehicle navigated itself, gliding to a stop at traffic lights and — slightly disconcertingly — sometimes braking sharply when another car cut into its lane.

Even more striking is the next generation Google driverless vehicle — a custom designed little bubble car, which in its purest form contains no steering wheel or other controls. (The version presently being tested on the roads does contain them, to comply with California law.)

Of course just because companies want to introduce new technology does not mean it will be taken up. The first video phones came along in the late 1960s — and consumers resolutely refused to adopt them. But the evidence suggests that the reshaping of the car is gaining growing acceptance among consumers.

With models like the Nissan Leaf, the hybrid Toyota Prius, the General Motors Volt and the BMW i3, manufacturers are responding to the appetite for electric vehicles.

Similarly the trend to driverless vehicles is gathering pace. According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are four levels of vehicle automation, from level 1 (function specific automation, such as cruise control) to level 4 (full self-driving automation.)

Manufacturers are introducing an increasing range of self-driving features across the different levels, from sophisticated cruise control to cars which park themselves. Increasingly, parts of a typical car’s journey are likely to involve self-driving, with other parts of the journey controlled by the human driver. In Australia, as in other countries, government needs to respond to these trends.

Last year the South Australian Government introduced legislation to allow trials of driverless cars in that state, with a driverless Volvo trialled on the Southern Expressway. While states regulate the registration of vehicles and compliance with safety laws, it is the federal government which is responsible for determining which vehicles may be imported and first put on the road. While we can identify broad trends, it is far from clear how these trends will play out — and over what time period.

Consider one recent example of rapid consumer uptake of new technology: between 1991 and 2001 the number of mobile phone services in Australia rose from 300,000 to 11.1 million.

Imagine if technology reaches the point — and prices drop sufficiently — that we see a similarly rapid uptake in driverless cars over a period in the near future. It would certainly bring dramatic improvements in road safety. But it will also be likely to trigger major changes in human behaviour.

Rather than seeing a car as an asset that we own (even if many of us only use it for a couple of hours each day), instead we may see car trips as a service we order up, on our smart phone, with the car moving on to serve someone else after our trip.

It could mean fewer cars driving on the road — and fewer parked by the side of the road.

Of course another key issue for a country like Australia is how we participate in the new industries that are arising. Can Australian companies develop software for use in cars around the world? Is there Australian expertise in electrical technology that could found new business opportunities?

With the motor car such an important part of our economy and society, this transition will be very significant — and we need to develop the right public policy settings to respond.

You can find the original article here.