Self-Driving Cars: The Next Revolution

Imagine. It’s 6:25 p.m. and you’ve just wrapped up a meeting. You still have several items on your “must-do” list before you can call it a night and a 25-minute commute that used to take as long as 90 minutes in the bad old days of rush-hour traffic.

But no worries today. You flick open an app on your phone and request a pick-up at the office; a text confirmation comes back and a few minutes later a car pulls up. “Home,” you say, as you launch a call to your client in Shanghai. The car slips easily into the self-drive lane, checking road conditions and flashing a message that you will arrive home in 24 minutes. In that time, you will have reviewed a report with your client, answered e-mails, and set your pick-up time for tomorrow morning. You arrive home ready to relax and focus on your family. You step out of the car and it moves off to its next pick-up.

A Self-Driving Car?
Even now that military drones have become a familiar topic, the idea of self-driving cars sounds pretty far fetched. But is it still just science fiction? Something that gets batted around in robotics labs and think tanks? Or are self-driving vehicles on the verge of becoming a viable form of personal mobility? Will the market accept them, want them, and pay for them?

We think the answer is a resounding yes: The marketplace will not merely accept self-driving vehicles; it will be the engine pulling the industry forward. Consumers are eager for new mobility alternatives that would allow them to stay connected and recapture the time and psychic energy they squander in traffic jams and defensive driving. Or as Stanford University’s Sven Beiker put it, “The paradigm shift in the consumer’s mind relative to personal mobility is a key factor for self-driving vehicles.”