Autonomous vehicles are the focus of attention from Silicon Valley to the Treasury. Once they catch on, our roads and our workplaces will be transformed

Look ma, no hands: what will it mean when all cars can drive themselves?

Look ma, no hands: what will it mean when all cars can drive themselves?

The chancellor may have been keen to talk about the autonomous future in his budget, but the money that talked loudest last week came from Uber’s billion-pound deal with Swedish carmaker Volvo.

The scale of the order suggests driverless cars could indeed be just around the corner: 24,000 Volvos are to be kitted out with the ride-hailing company’s self-driving technology between 2019 and 2021. Assuming a robot driver can do three times as many shifts as a human, those cars alone could replace, for example, every non-Uber taxi or minicab in London.

How Uber deploys its new driverless SUVs remains to be seen: but the news underlines how the technology could rapidly change the face of transport, manufacturing and work. So who will win and lose in the driverless future?

Winners

Technology companies

The race has been led by Google’s self-driving division, now spun off as Waymo, which has just started trials of a driverless taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona. Even before its first lift has been hailed by a member of the public – and without having made a car of its own, as it currently buys in Chrysler minivans – Waymo has been valued at $70bn (£52bn) by Morgan Stanley.

Mobileye, an Israeli maker of chips and cameras for self-driving vehicles with revenues of only $300m a year, was bought by Intel for $15.3bn in March. Uber is rushing to develop its own robo-taxi tech to scale up profits on its enormous global customer base.

Richard Cuerden, academy director at the British transport research centre TRL, says of the future: “It’s very unlikely that we will buy cars as we do now for personal ownership. Firms will make money through things like data sharing and advertising.”

Passengers

The utopian vision of a driverless future is that just about everyone would benefit from shorter, safer and more productive journeys. If driverlessness means shared ownership, as many hope and believe, as well as more efficient use of road space through intelligent and connected vehicles, there is the scope to massively reduce congestion. If the model also reduces the costs of door-to-door transport, cars could go a long way to ensuring more independent mobility for the elderly and disabled.

Online media and retailers

Fewer young people are buying cars, and not just because they are strapped for cash: smartphones and tablets mean journeys by bus or train are more enjoyable. Today’s stressed driver can hope for a similar future, Cuerden says: “You needn’t face forward any more, you’ll be doing a million different things. The holy grail is to free up that time.” Watching Netflix, Instagramming the motorway, internet shopping: a whole new segment of the population will be online and available.

Logistics firms

The unveiling by Elon Musk of Tesla’s Semi electric truck, with its autopilot features, will have caught the attention of haulage firms. Around one-third of costs in the $7bn US trucking industry is drivers’ wages.

In the UK, salaries have risen due to a lack of drivers: the Freight Transport Association last year said there was a shortfall of almost 35,000 drivers compared with available HGVs. Firms whose delivery routes and schedules are minutely plotted to save time, fuel and money, will probably hope that trials of “platooned” lorries – linked vehicles travelling in convoy with perhaps just one driver in the lead cab – are just the first step to a driverless future.

Lithium miners

As chancellor Philip Hammond said while announcing a £400m fund for charging networks, the road to autonomy starts with electric cars. And those batteries need minerals: the global lithium-ion battery market is expected to more than double in value in the next seven years to around $75bn, according to Transparency Market Research, as electric car sales grow. Elements such as cobalt will be in increasing demand, and mining firms such as Glencore have already struck deals with carmakers who want to lock in supplies.

Losers

Traditional car manufacturers

Many expect the number of vehicles in private household ownership to fall. Car manufacturers have been hiring directors from software and tech firms as the market has tilted – witness Tesla’s valuation surpassing Ford and GM’s this year.

Partnerships between Ford and Uber’s rival Lyft, as well as Volvo’s Uber deal, could point to how sales evolve. Philippa Oldham, head of transport at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, says: “Traditional sales have already been going down year-on-year as people go to a leasing model.

“Ford and BMW have car-share businesses, while BMW is diversifying into repurposing batteries as energy storage solutions in homes. The challenge is where they develop their business models.”

Insurance firms

The majority of car accidents involve some element of human error, and predictions in studies of the potential drop in fatalities from self-driving cars have ranged from 80 to 95%. KPMG found insurance premiums could be expected to drop by 50% in a decade.

On the other hand, some expect an increase in crashes – and more wrangles for insurers’ legal departments – during the transition period while humans and machines share the roads.

Other issues remain, as Martyn Thomas, professor of IT at Gresham College, warns: “How they will price the risk of hacking is a complete mystery: a cybersecurity vulnerability that could be exploited by criminals could affect thousands of cars in a single day and put insurers out of business.”

Budget 2017: UK to launch self-driving cars on British roads by 2021 Read more

But, says Nick Reed, head of mobility research at component maker Bosch, motor insurance has to survive, even if it is passed to manufacturers and fleets once owner-drivers become passengers: “The business model will change. But consumers always need to have the confidence that, in the event of an incident, there is compensation.”

Service stations and hotels

Goodbye, Moto? The appeal of a picnic on the M6 may diminish substantially when humans are no longer prompted by driver fatigue to pull in, and are instead engrossed in season 54 of The Simpsons. Electric charging networks may well not operate like petrol stations, where a vehicle has to pull in to refuel. However, should full autonomy allow all occupants to drink en route, more frequent stops could become a human necessity.

While few UK journeys might require an overnight commute, a vehicle comfortable enough to sleep in could make hotels a less necessary option for business travellers – while longer US trips might be continued without the need for a roadside motel.

Professional drivers

Around a million people in the UK who drive for a living could have to retrain, the chancellor said, acknowledging that “for some people, this will be very challenging”.

Cuerden is not convinced that so many jobs would be lost: “We’re leading the HGV platooning trials, which see trucks operating more effectively – but all would need drivers for now. Long term, they might have time on their hands, but perform new tasks.”

By 2030, he believes, the bulk of journeys will be covered autonomously, but a human backup could remain. Meanwhile, many taxi firms still value “the customer interface, the human touch,” Cuerden says. “So drivers might become stewards.”

Government coffers

The £46bn that the UK government claims to have forsaken by freezing fuel duty may be only a warm-up for the gaping hole that an all-electric fleet would mean. Tens of millions in revenue for traffic offences could also be jeopardised by law-abiding robots.

British councils also made a £750m profit on parking in 2016. Some have predicted that the UK parking industry, worth £1.5bn in 2015, would effectively disappear in a world of fewer cars.

However, the British Parking Association remains defiantly upbeat: “The number of cars entering, exiting and navigating a parking facility will likely be very much the same as it is now. Just without people.”

Visions of the future? Five self-driving cars

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Westfield POD autonomous vehicle in Greenwich. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Westfield POD

The most futuristic way to get around Greenwich – at least down the towpath from the O2 Arena. The electric pods, which are built in the Midlands and souped up with driverless gadgetry from Oxbotica, are currently in public trials in south London to test how the public interacts with the technology.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Navya’s Autonom Cab. Photograph: Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images

Navya Autonom Cab

The French manufacturer’s latest vehicle looks more or less like a sleek, people-carrier-style taxi. It just has no driver’s seat, steering wheel, or pedals: its six passenger seats all face inwards. The Autonom Cab should be in production next year, capable of speeds of 55mph – although, as it is designed for city centres, it probably will not be seen anywhere where it is allowed to go that fast. Starts at around £230,000.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Uber has bought 24,000 Volvo SUVs for its mooted self-driving service.

Uber’s Volvo XC90

London’s transport authorities will be praying that Uber doesn’t want to traverse its narrow streets with these chunky Volvo XC90 SUVs. The ride-hailing app ordered 24,000 of the £50,000 vehicles last week, for which Uber will provide the yet-to-be-built self-driving system. The cars are already available with semi-autonomous capabilities, including some automatic braking – but Uber’s self-driving version isn’t expected until 2021.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tesla’s cut-price Model 3. Photograph: EPA

Tesla Model 3

This is the most affordable of Elon Musk’s electric dream cars – at $35,000 in the US, it is around half the price of any other model – although pimping up its self-driving capability will cost at least $7k-$8k more, and UK buyers will have to wait at least two years if they order now. Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot can be topped up with up to eight cameras as well as sensors and an onboard computer to enable what the company claims will be full self-driving in almost all circumstances – at least, as soon as the world allows it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Audi A8: supposedly leading the pack, technology-wise.

Audi A8

According to some early reviews, worthy of its claim to be the most advanced self-driving car available for general purchase now (or early 2018, for £70k). It has so-called Level 3 Autonomy, where many driving functions can be done without human intervention – although there must still be a driver behind the wheel until the law changes. Show-offs can use their phone to make it head off and (accurately) park in the garage.