According to a recent study by ABI Research, the expected popularity of autonomous vehicles and high levels of R&D indicates as many of 400 million people could say goodbye to their privately-owned cars by the year 2030.
It is a shocking and rather well-known statistic that our cars sit parked up, unused, for around 90 per cent of their lifetimes. When you consider how much a car is to buy, insure and run, the idea of not owning a car can leave you with a fair amount of surplus expenditure. But how will the average Joe get around?
The rise of autonomous car sharing
A spokesperson for ABI Research believes that autonomous driving technology will lead the way for subscription-based car sharing platforms. In what direction this takes off is still unclear. There is the potential however for it to work like a private taxi service like Uber, which requires customers to simply book a ride.
It could also function like a public transport service, with an autonomously-controlled car operating in designated areas and being used by multiple people at once.
Where is autonomous technology now?
It used to be that autonomous cars were a thing of the future, with Google seemingly the only brand looking into it. But now, autonomous technology is starting to become somewhat of an expectancy amongst car manufacturers.
There’s autonomous braking, parallel parking and even a feature that can steer for you and keep you within a designated lane on the motorway – the latter being featured on the popular Vauxhall Astra family hatchback.
Autonomous driving technology is set to be tested in the UK soon as well, with George Osborne’s 2016 budget announcement stating that driverless vehicles will be tested on the British road network by 2017.
