Independent cars in demand

Independent cars in demand

Hardly any other industry is kept as busy as the automotive industry," says Antonella Mei-Pochtler. "In addition to greening and electrification, autonomization and Asianization are on the agenda," explains the senior partner at the consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, or BCG for short. In Vienna she presented the results of a new BCG study entitled “Back to the Future: The Road to Autonomous Driving”. 1,500 consumers in the USA were surveyed about their driving behavior and their wishes regarding autonomous cars. In addition, more than 100 industry experts were involved in the study.

Vision of autonomous driving 
The fact is: the first automobile manufacturers will bring partially autonomous vehicles with highway and traffic jam autopilots onto the market as early as 2017. City autopilots will be available from 2022, and fully autonomous driving technology is expected to be available from 2025. “By 2035, we expect around 25 percent of vehicles to be autonomous, which will have massive implications for cars, traffic and infrastructure,” says Nikolaus Lang, senior partner and expert in automotive technology at BCG in Germany and Austria. One in two participants in the BCG study said they were very interested in Autopilot features and would probably want to buy a car that can drive partially or fully autonomously in the next five to ten years. A fifth of consumers would also be willing to pay a premium of up to $5,000 for autopilot features.

Innovation boost for industry
The widespread introduction of autopilot technology promises great economic benefits and - as the BCG analyzes show - will lead to a boost in innovation throughout the entire automotive and supplier industry. The initial cost of sensor-based autonomous driving features will cost automakers approximately $1,500 to $7,000 per vehicle. However, in the first ten years after market launch, these costs will fall significantly by four to ten percent per year. The authors of the study expect a market volume of around 42 billion US dollars for autopilot functions by 2025, and by 2035 it will be 77 billion US dollars. “In the future, vehicles will differ greatly thanks to intelligent software and can be individually tailored to the consumer,” explains Nikolaus Lang.  In addition, autonomous driving will accelerate the growing trend towards so-called car and ride sharing and thereby significantly reduce the number of motor vehicles worldwide, especially in cities. Simulations in New York City and Shanghai show that public transportation such as buses, subways and taxis will face competition from self-driving “robo-taxis” that carry people up to