Summary

There’s no doubt that over the long term, autonomous vehicles (better known as self-driving cars), combined with electrification and shared mobility, will have a massive impact on society.

Many pundits debate the extent and speed of the expected effects. Will autonomy act as a “lighter fluid” for the spread of shared mobility services? How soon will urban real estate developers be freed from the need to provide space for parking? What will the impact on logistics do to retail?

We like to say that these potential long-term effects depend on how we get “from 1 to 100” — that is, from the launch of self-driving cars to a day when autonomous mobility is ubiquitous. But while prognostication is fun, the map to that destination is still far from clear.

What is becoming clearer, however, is the first leg of the journey, or how we get “from 0 to 1” — from where we are today to the successful commercialization of the first fully self-driving vehicle.

This Executive Insights examines how going from 0 to 1 requires solving three key challenges:

  1. Technological: Achieving full autonomy
  2. Regulatory: Creating the conditions for safe and effective operation
  3. Industrial: Discovering and organizing the right business model to produce a commercially viable product
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