Analyzing The Autonomous Vehicle Governance Ecosystem: A Guide for Decision-Makers

An overview of the community paper proposed by the World Economic Forum

With the advent of connectivity, electrification, automated driving, and shared mobility, the automotive industry has been forced to become agile and fast-moving organizations to deliver the future’s connected, Autonomous Vehicles (AVs).

At the beginning of March 2021, The World Economic Forum has published a very interesting white paper called “The Autonomous Vehicle Governance Ecosystem: A Guide for Decision-Makers,” which is essentially a comprehensive industry guide for safety in autonomous driving.

A partnership for a framework

The whitepaper was released as a collaboration between the World Economic Forum’s Safe Drive Initiative and The Autonomous.

The World Economic Forum’s Safe Drive Initiative is a global, multistakeholder and cross-disciplinary initiative intended to help shape successful autonomous vehicle policy and improve AV pilots’ safety.

The Autonomous, is an open platform that aims to create an ecosystem in which all actors involved in developing safe autonomous mobility can collaborate and share knowledge.

The project has engaged leaders from private companies, governments, civil society organizations, and academia to understand AV policy, identify challenges and define principles to guide future policy solutions.

The 20-pages document analyses relevant alliances, collaboration platforms, and standardization institutes highlight key stakeholders’ activities and demonstrate how collaboration between companies will help overcome the challenges of developing safe autonomous vehicles.

As self-driving vehicle technology advances, so does competition among companies and manufacturers.

According to the white paper, diverse groups and initiatives are working on technological solutions in parallel and as these solutions become more complex, so does the need to coordinate the Autonomous Vehicles’ overall safety.

The study confirms the necessity of a common technical framework for self-driving vehicles. Simultaneously, an extensive network of initiatives and coalitions within the sector considers the demand for more comprehensive coordination.

The goal of this white paper is to guide industry and government decision-makers since companies are frequently focused on different aspects, leading to a lack of a common goal for the industry.

The guide explains the interrelationships and paints a bigger picture for one of the most competitive industries at this moment.

And in a highly competitive context, the key message is that collaboration is the only way to thrive in autonomous vehicles’ major challenge: ensure safety.

The Autonomous Vehicles market

According to Statista, one in 10 cars will be fully automated. Driverless taxis will contribute about $ 1.2 trillion to the global market.

In recent years, the global autonomous vehicle market has advanced and encouraged collaboration between automakers and technology companies. Although not yet ready for public deployment, a new report by Statista shows that the expectation is that one in 10 cars will be fully automated by 2030.

In the United States alone, autonomous cars’ contribution is expected to be $ 13.7 billion over the next decade. The study also states that driverless taxis will comprise a significant portion of the global market, contributing about $ 1.2 trillion. For example, General Motors (GM) plans to launch a driverless taxi service called “Cruise,” which received $ 3.4 billion in funding in 2018.

California (USA), Beijing (China), and Hamburg (Germany) are active sites for autonomous vehicle testing.

The expectation is that by this year, the city of Hamburg already has autonomous public transport.

Companies like Uber, Apple, Toyota, Waymo, and GM accumulated more than two million kilometers in tests — even so, there were more than 145,402 shutdowns — times when the autonomous systems did not know how to deal with specific situations.

Conclusion

This white paper is a very relevant initiative that presents a landscape of relevant industry alliances, consortia, and other groups while also highlighting the activities of critical standards groups to guide decision-makers from industry and other stakeholders from the public sector about these activities.

You can read the full document here:

One more thing…

If you are interested in reading about Autonomous Driving technology and opportunities, the following articles are interesting for you:

• Measuring the impacts of Shared and Electric Autonomous Vehicles (SAEV) on urban mobility.
• Autonomous Vehicles: a $50 billion opportunity for disruption
• Volvo Group and Aurora announced a partnership on Autonomous transportation.
• This is how Autonomous Trucks will reshape the Transportation industry.
• 18 companies and startups that are leading the race for the autonomous trucks
• The Autonomous Vehicles are coming! Are you ready?
• 5,000 autonomous trucks will hit the roads in China in 2021