The car business is in the midst of a significant evolution that, depending upon your perspective, is either happening at such a rapid clip that it’s mind boggling or so agonizingly slow that it’s infuriating.
It’s understandably difficult to process the myriad of factors the sector is working through if you’re an industry insider. For someone on the outside looking in, it’s even worse. So, I thought I would provide a high-level sample of what’s going on with some resources to help process the factors at play. These are big, meaty issues and communications professionals need to be able to navigate through these types of conversations.
Steering wheels could become a thing of the past.
The first topic I want to dive into is the concept of self-driving cars, or autonomous vehicles.
Ample media coverage has been spent on the impending arrival of autonomous vehicles, but the reality is there are vehicles on the road that drive themselves now - sort of. It’s just that there are different levels of spiciness.
Here is a link to a page on the CAA national website with more details, but there are six different levels of driving assistance that a car can provide a driver. Level 0 provides no support and the driver must do everything while a level 5 car might not need a steering wheel.
Some vehicles you would find in your local dealership offer level 2 or level 3 systems, which allow the driver to hand-over some elements of the task of driving - like cruise control that adapts to the speed of the car in front or systems that can make a lane change - but an attentive human in the driver’s seat is a necessity. A vehicle at level 4 or 5 could mean seeing vehicles driving down the road without anyone at the wheel, or even inside.
There are many possible benefits to the ultimate destination this technology could take us to; like better traffic flow, fewer collisions, and increased mobility for those that can’t/won’t/shouldn’t drive.
So what are the issues? Well, quite a few.
As I alluded to earlier, there is debate about when (sooner vs. later) these technologies will materialize, but general consensus is they’re coming. What needs to be done between now and then is addressing the impact of its arrival.
For example, if the vehicle is driving itself, who is liable in a collision? Or if, for whatever reason, it does something against the law? Volvo, for example, said it will accept liability when its vehicles are in autonomous mode, but there are still regulations that need to be sorted-out.
There’s also the technological challenge of the computer systems controlling the autonomous vehicles. Namely, they need a lot of power and could impact the fuel efficiency of a gasoline vehicle or the range of an electric one (I’ll dive in electrification in another post).
Of course, there are many more issues than what is covered here, but the one I’m still on the fence with is the ownership structure. In my personal view, it is a waste that cars spend about 95% of the time parked, so shifting society to mobility as a service could make automotive transportation more affordable while reducing the growing number of vehicles on the road. If it materializes in that way, from a traffic and environmental perspective, that could make sense.
Then again, I have children. That need car seats. I don’t think my hands - or back - would survive the constant moving of car seats in and out of a rotating cast of vehicles. I also wonder if the mobility network would be flexible enough to handle the unexpected. Like when my kids decide - 10 minutes into the trip - they need to visit a washroom. Or that they are now very, very hungry and I’ve forgotten their snack on the kitchen counter.
So, I could see myself resisting the urge to hand-over my keys and entrusting my freedom of mobility to an app on my phone. Perhaps that’s going to be an antiquated notion, but I doubt I’m alone.
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