Self driving vehicles: a disruption in the making II

A growing set of companies is getting ready to the transition towards Transportation as a Service. We are going to see an explosion in the coming to decades. Credit: CB Insights

After considering the disruption brought by the shift from horse based transportation to combustion engine based transportation let’s consider what might be in store in the coming two decades as we will shift to autonomous vehicles (mostly electrically powered).
I already addressed in general terms this looming disruption in a previous post, here I would like to go into much more detail analysing the different aspects.

The disruption will take place at different levels:

  • Value perception
  • Economics
  • Social
  • Players
  • Vehicles
  • Infrastructure
  • Jobs

All of them are somewhat related, I chose that order because it seems the most logical to me: the value perception is the leading force impacting on the market demand and hence on the economic aspects, this results in societal implication (to change society it is not enough to have something available and “desired” it needs to be affordable) and that goes hand in hand with changes in existing players and in the emergence of new players. Vehicles will change basically in synch with the infrastructure and the whole results in changes in the job scenario.

Value perception

The advent of self driving cars is basically obsoleting the figure of the “driver” and the driver, by far, is the one that today is choosing what vehicle to buy. The choice of the vehicle will no longer be based on its “drivability”, how fast it goes, how it accelerates, how it handles the road….

Most likely the perception will shift from the need to own a “car” to the need to use a service. Transportation as a service will become the main way to see cars. Ownership of a car will no longer be seen as necessary, nor useful. This shift (as noted later) will dramatically decrease the cost of transportation (from ownership to pay per use) and will rapidly convince more and more people to get rid of their car.

You will “summon” the car to your place in a seamless way and the car will be there for you.

There might be people that would like to decouple the “transportation” from the ambient they want to have when being transported. A new market for personalised pods (for well to do and rich people) might emerge. You will see the transportation platform coming to your home and loading your pod (wth you inside) and then unloading the pod (still with you inside) to the destination point. Pods storage will become ubiquitous (you will be able to store pods in a 3D space with very low space occupancy), for sure at malls, restaurants and office buildings. That, of course, will require some sort of standardisation of the transportation platform, like we have today for goods transport with the standardisation of containers.

There will also a way to add on luggage to the transportation platform and that goes hand in hand with a redefinition of “luggage and bags”. No longer owning a car you will no longer have a place to store your stuff (like the umbrella …) and there will be a new market for seamless plug in of your stuff onto the transportation platform.

I am giving these examples just to show that the shift from ownership to service is creating a host of new issues and will lead to new habits, subtly changing our lives.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.