The evolution of autonomous vehicles

摘要

Charlie Henderson is an expert in transport, travel and logistics at PA Consulting Group. Here he examines the future of autonomous vehicles. Autonomous capability is increasingly built into vehicles in the form of self-parking, adaptive cruise control and assisted-braking. Recent demonstrations have shown that fully autonomous vehicles are not only technically feasible but that they can operate successfully on 'live' roads. What is less clear is how quickly different groups will adopt autonomous technologies and how the range of social, regulatory and other obstacles to the roll-out of driverless vehicles will be overcome. The interesting challenge of autonomous vehicles is "you haven't solved anything until you have solved everything" - while the technology may work, many other issues need to be sorted before there is widespread adoption. Some technologists have sought to map out what the future will look like in in order to understand how these wider issues could be solved. This is an important first step. However, in our experience of helping with technology adoption in other sectors, we find it more useful to look at a range of options, or Futureworlds, based on a number of varying dimensions. This avoids a specific prediction of the future (which will inevitably be wrong) and provides a more effective way to consider the potentially multiple courses of technology adoption.