Transport Of Tomorrow

THERE IS MUCH TALK about self-driving cars for a few years now.

- Amit Khanna

There is no doubt that the next big thing in our lives after mobile devices will be autonomous mobility.

Autonomous vehicles are those that can drive themselves without any human intervention, employing inbuilt software, sensors, and communication systems. The driving capability of autonomous vehicles can vary based on the design as well as the amount of automation built into them.

Different software may give different attributes to these vehicles. Digital giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, Softbank and Baidu and almost all the major automobile manufacturers such as General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, Daimler, JLR and Nissan as also companies like Activ, Delphi, and Uber are racing towards their own version of the self-driven vehicle. Expect the first commercial deployment by 2020 at least in a few urban areas. A report in Business Insider says, “PwC predicts that the total number of cars on the road in the US and EU will drop from 556 million last year to 416 million in 2030.” My personal sense is that this number will be far exceeded.

There are several reasons why this technological upheaval will change the way we travel and move goods and people. With rapid urbanisation more people are migrating to large cities. As cities grow bigger, the distance of intracity commute will only increase. Though billions are being spent to build public transport infrastructure, it will never be enough. Rising personal incomes are causing more and more people to upgrade to personal vehicles. However, traffic congestion in almost every city in the world is becoming a nightmare for commuters. Human intervention does tackle this mess. But’s let’s not forget the fact that automobiles kill over 1.5 million people in accidents annually. These are mainly owing to human error or underregulated traffic.