How Autonomous Vehicles will redefine the concept of mobility.
By: Jair Ribeiro
Tags: Transportation, Autonomous Vehicles, Future, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Driving

How Autonomous Vehicles will redefine the concept of mobility

The technology behind Autonomous vehicles can surprise you. These vehicles are characterized by not having to deal with human limitations, such as tiredness and inattention.

To the delight of many, these machines can park alone, and they do not drive drunk or speak on the phone while driving, like many humans that we know.

It is known that human failures cause 94% of traffic accidents, and this innovation is mainly developed to save lives, reducing consistently the fatalities.

According to a study from 2015 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), traffic accidents are the most significant cause of death of young people between 15 and 29 years globally, overcoming the victims of AIDS, flu, and dengue together, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Also, we always complain that we have little time. The days are busy, and we have several obligations to fulfill. And we spend, on average, 40 days a year stuck in traffic in the cities.

Have you ever thought how much we would earn if we didn’t have to worry about driving, with the vehicle working for us during that time? You can have an idea about it here.

It is estimated that autonomous cars can create a 7 trillion dollar market! It is called the “passenger economy” since everyone will do several other activities without paying attention.

Beauty salons, dinners, and health clinics are services that can be performed inside the vehicles.

Autonomy in vehicles will transform the entire automotive sector, from the way traffic is organized through vehicle engineering and the parts and components industry, to the mechanics.

A disruptive wave: Transportation as a Service.

Some of us still remember when digital photography began to emerge as an option to analog. Kodak carried out studies that proved accurate, indicating that the new technique would dominate the market in 20 years. Despite having time for this, the company wrinkled its nose and did not modernize. Currently, the giant has shrunk and survives only as a patent laboratory.

To avoid the same mistake, almost all automakers are running after losing the future market, planning to deliver vehicles capable of automation.

The development of entirely autonomous vehicles by technology companies has already spurred new hires at major brands.

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The article “How Uber’s autonomous car will destroy 10 million jobs and redefine the economy in 2025,” Zack Kander argues that the entire industry will be reinvented in the next decade. How can we not agree on that?

When the autonomous vehicles technology will be already well developed and a majority in the streets, the tendency is that the market changes will start to consolidate. The entire transportation industry business model is going to change. Vehicles will stop being a consumer product to become a service.

Today, for the majority of the time, a car, for example, is used only for a short time, but the cost to maintain it is not so low. According to a report of GlobalFleet, a car cost varies up to €344 per month across Europe.

Self-driving vehicles will drastically reduce the transportation costs offered by companies when human drivers will not be required. The cheaper service could make the maxim of having the ownership of a vehicle no longer attractive.

We can consider that vehicles in the future will be standardized, electric, and autonomous and will be mainly owned by fleet companies. It means that it will be difficult for the current production logic — with millions of cars manufactured every day — to survive this disruption.

According to Statista, the global auto industry expects to sell 59.6 million automobiles in 2020. Well, at least it was like that before COVID-19.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the sector is projected to experience a downward trend in a slowing global economy. Before the pandemic hit, it has been estimated that international car sales were on track to reach 80 million in 2019; Anyway, the global automotive industry is estimated to reach 1,14,250 thousand units by 2024.

The importance of this revolution for the global economy is evident: Workshops, tire shops, insurance companies, dealerships, professionals (such as drivers, taxi drivers, services such as garages, rent, etc.) will be heavily disrupted. Also, of course, to the assembly lines themselves.

With more significant autonomy comes more significant challenges.

One of the most significant difference between autonomous cars is their level of connectivity. They will be connected to the internet all the time. Because of this, much of what we do today by cell phones or computers will be done during a journey, using the vehicle itself.

In the other hands, Autonomous Vehicles may become a preferred target of virtual attacks, aiming to steal data or compromise systems. Thus, problems with viruses and other malicious programs will be more constant. Are we ready for this?

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Autonomous vehicles and the new customer experience.

As the plan’s progress in launching commercial autonomous vehicle services by most automakers proceeds, designers and product owners recognize that more than the development of the technology itself, focusing on the customer experience will be essential for future business success.

There are no easy shortcuts when it comes to launching such complex technology as autonomous vehicle services are. It may be the most challenging thing the auto industry has faced since people switched from horses to cars.

The AV adoption heavily depends on people to trust the technology enough to get into the vehicle and then love enough the user experience to come back.

In the coming years, autonomous vehicles have enormous potential to expand access to transportation, goods, and jobs in several cities. The best way to do this is to create transportation services that offer customer-centric experiences at every step of the journey.

The challenges of launching a new mobility service with large-scale operations will involve fundamental consumer behavior changes: the exchange of vehicle ownership for vehicle sharing.

This cultural change will require transportation companies to manage their autonomous fleets based on intelligent technology and a high utilization rate. Another critical aspect will be the capacity to create reliable and efficient autonomous vehicle services that meet customer expectations regarding vehicle cleaning, maintenance, recovery, and durability to earn their loyalty.

It will also be necessary to know how to program the service’s expansion, defining where and how it will be launched to improve the customer experience before gaining a local, national, and global scale.

Our daily relationship with automobiles is about to change. With it, our user experience will probably be based on more efficiency and safety because these autonomous systems will replace much of the interactions between humans and vehicles. Thus, with fewer human errors and more accumulated knowledge and experience, wear, breaks and failures tend to be less recurrent, impacting the entire automotive sector.

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The impact of Autonomous vehicles on automakers

Since cars were invented more than 100 years ago, the automakers’ business model has hardly changed.

In the last years, engines have become more powerful and efficient. The design has become more attractive, new safety and convenience items were added, but, in essence, cars are still quite similar to those cars sold in the early 20th century.

Now, with the autonomous vehicles, will this change? It is going to change a lot!

For example, in general, a factory produces a car, and most of the vehicles, as we know today, then pass it on to a final consumer, most of the time, with a dealership’s intermediation. Then, the following year, the automaker launches a more modern model and resumes its sales cycle. This process is about to change heavily with autonomous cars.

And the way they generate money for automakers, too.

The automobile industry is also known as the industry of industries, “not only for its size and economic importance but also for all the impact and influence on numerous areas of the economy such as commodities, energy, credit, technology, etc. This industry will changes a lot in the next 10 or 20 years with autonomous car technology development.

The idea of ​​having a car that drives itself and that can receive updates during its life cycle turns everything we know about the automotive industry upside down.

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About maintenance of Autonomous vehicles

With full autonomy, driving will be more efficient, reducing the need for maintenance per kilometer traveled.

There will be less sudden braking, sprinting, unnecessary accelerations, and impacts with holes and obstacles and fewer accidents. After all, sensors and actuators are faster and more accurate than humans.

However, the wear and tear of parts such as shock absorbers, brake pads and discs, tires, cushions and stops, and the end of the useful life of items such as filters and fluids, will practically not change — they will only reach their most efficient stage.

If, or should I say when, autonomous vehicles also adopt electric motorization, electrical and electronic systems will replace all parts of fuel injection, combustion, cooling, and exhausting of gases.

Electric vehicles need different maintenance, as they do not deal with explosions and high temperatures.

But does this mean that the car services and part suppliers will end? Probably not.

Someone will still need to manufacture all of these parts and get them to work together. Autonomous Vehicles will always ask for maintenance services, replaced components, and technical and mechanical improvements will still be in development. Activities such as design will also continue to advance. But will all this continue to generate money as before, in a future of autonomous and shared cars?

We can observe this phenomenon observing millennials; many of them no longer buy cars, especially big cities. If you live in a city like New York, you probably don’t want to pay to park your car or deal with other problems when you have a car. I live in Wroclaw, in Poland… and guess… I do not have a car… funny enough for one who works on disruptive technology in a worldwide leader in the transportation industry.

The automakers’ business model (making, selling, starting over) may lose some sense when people stop buying their vehicles so often. Still, no one is better positioned than automakers today to lead the (r)evolution of the future vehicles’ manufacture.

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What changes with the arrival of autonomous vehicles on the transport industry chain?

The popularization of autonomous vehicles will revolutionize the transportation industry in practically all areas.

Here you have some activities that may be affected:

Spare parts market

Even with fewer accidents and more efficient driving, the spare parts market will always be growing. New vehicles will continue to arrive from the factories, adding to an existing fleet.

What will change, without a doubt, is the complexity of the types of parts and their applications, as the diversity of vehicle models tends to increase, requiring the use of tools that are also more complex, in addition to other technology items, so that the mechanic will be able to carry out repairs.

Also, electrical and electronic items like cameras, Lidars, and other sensors will indeed become more relevant in this market.

Service stations

In addition to servicing vehicles with combustion engines (which will continue to run for a long time), the service stations will need to adapt to supply electric recharging services. They will also need to adjust to receiving autonomous vehicles, with new forms of service and payment.

Thus, the diversity of services and products sold will increase, despite the decrease in demand for minor repairs and overhauls, such as changing oil or filters, at gas stations.

Mechanical workshops

Workshops will change to carry out the maintenance required by new technologies, with appropriate tools and trained professionals, if they want to catch the opportunity of expanding their market.

After all, besides repairs on traditional vehicles, other services will become more requested, such as the review of embedded electronics sensors and electrical components.

Vehicle trades

There is a strong tendency for autonomous vehicles to be shared, accelerating the process of transforming vehicles into services instead of being consumer goods, as they are today. Thus, the number of owners will decrease, especially in large cities, concentrating on fleets.

In this scenario, small and medium auto sales stores will suffer, since acquisitions will take place on a larger scale, probably in direct negotiations with dealerships or automakers.

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Conclusion

With these simple imagination exercises, we can see that the industry will be touched as a whole. Some actions are already taken regarding auto repair shops that can facilitate this transition to the market dominated by independent automobiles. Some others will take time and depend on how fast the market will react to autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are already a reality at its most basic levels of automation.

Automakers and technology companies have invested a lot to get their fully autonomous vehicle designs off the ground. Therefore, it is the best moment to follow this technology’s evolution and to be prepared for the changes it will bring to our society.

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