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The Economist: Autonomous Vehicles Will Change The World The Future Will Be About Selling Rides, Not CarsLONDON, March 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Autonomous vehicles are expected to develop and spread quickly in the coming years. Some are already on the road. This report considers the implications of fully self-driving cars for personal mobility, car ownership and the future of transport, on the assumption that the remaining technological hurdles will be overcome. It also looks more broadly at the wider economic, social and cultural effects of AVs. The author of "Reinventing wheels," a special report published in today's edition of The Economist, is Tom Standage, the newspaper's deputy editor and head of digital strategy. He notes that AVs are not yet ready to operate entirely without human supervision, but have made rapid progress in recent years. Tech giants (notably Google's sister company Waymo), startups, carmakers and academic researchers are all working on AVs or developing related technology, including laser scanning, computer vision and machine learning. Waymo expects to launch a driverless "robotaxi" service this year, serving a limited part of the city of Phoenix, Arizona; GM, America's biggest carmaker, hopes to follow suit next year. Because AVs sit at the intersection of the technology and automotive industries, a furious battle is under way to dominate this emerging industry. The result has been a flurry of deals and alliances between carmakers, software and hardware companies and ride-hailing firms. The report predicts tat at least initially, and possibly even in the long term, a large proportion of self-driving cars will be taxis of some sort. The future will be about selling rides, not cars. "Reinventing wheels" examines four main themes:
A century ago the advent of the car brought more personal autonomy, freedom of choice and mobility, but at the cost of pollution, congestion and road deaths. Autonomous vehicles will prove similarly revolutionary. AVs offer policymakers an extraordinarily flexible tool with which to shape urban and transport environments—but that also means that they offer authoritarian governments a powerful means of social control. Whether they are a success will depend on whether policymakers can learn the lessons of the horseless carriage and apply them to the driverless car. To read the leader, please visit: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21737501-policymakers-must-apply-lessons-horseless-carriage-driverless-car-self-driving About The Economist (www.economist.com)  View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-economist-autonomous-vehicles-will-change-the-world-the-future-will-be-about-selling-rides-not-cars-300606600.html SOURCE The Economist |