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Self-driving cars to reach 14.5 million by 2025, says new study

05 December 2016

by Nick Michell

New findings have revealed that the annual production of self-driving cars will reach 14.5 million in 2025, up significantly from only a few thousand in 2020, to give a global installed base of more than 22 million consumer vehicles by 2025.

The research from Juniper Research, Autonomous Vehicles & ADAS: Adoption, Regulation & Business Models 2016-2025, found that the market adoption of AV (Autonomous Vehicle) technology is set to accelerate over the next few years, driven by: increasingly stringent vehicle safety specifications; environmental pressures; and rapid technological developments.

“ADAS and AV technologies have advanced significantly over the past three to five years,” Gareth Owen, research author, told Cities Today. “There are an increasing number of semi-autonomous cars [cars that drive themselves under certain conditions] becoming available now. The technology for totally driverless cars exists today, although these need Vehicle-To-Everything infrastructure. Any commercial cars will obviously need to have sensor redundancy built-in to ensure safety and extensive testing is required to make sure that the car can deal with live road conditions.”

The research also found that driverless vehicles will have a disruptive impact on transport around the world and will ultimately lead to millions of professional drivers being made redundant. It predicts that city-based taxi services will be one of the key early adopters of driverless vehicles.

However, the study warned that following the first-ever fatality in an AV vehicle, with the Tesla S accident in Florida this year, the industry must convince the public that their vehicles are completely safe.

“Public perception of safety will obviously be paramount,” added Owen. “My understanding of the Tesla accident is that this car was a Level 2 car, which means that the driver should always be vigilant to road conditions. That said it demonstrated a problem with the sensors failing to detect the lorry. This is why it is essential to have redundant systems using different types of sensors so that if, for example, a camera cannot see properly because it is too dark or is snowing, other sensors that are not affected this way, could take over.”

The research found that a number of major original equipment manufacturers, including BMW, Toyota and General Motors, are accelerating their AV development and testing programmes and now have firm plans to launch production vehicles. As a result, driverless vehicles are expected to become widespread in the 2020-2025 timeframe, although they will initially be confined to city centres or key routes due to the need for extensive Vehicle-To-Everything infrastructure.

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