Analysts are of the opinion that autonomous vehicles will benefit society by saving about 33,000 people each year killed in road accidents in America alone but it will eventually killed businesses.
According to Glen De Vos, vice president of global engineering for Delphi Automotive PLC, a supplier of driverless-car technology, “If the situation was reversed, and we had automated vehicles today and someone proposed to let people drive cars, what would the reaction be?”
“You would be basically asking that 33,000 deaths per year be allowed on highways as part of a policy plan. There’s no way on earth anybody would accept it.”
Take automakers. Eventually, if fully driverless cars (”L4” vehicles under the American government’s classification system) can be summoned with a smartphone just like Uber cars today, many people might forgo car ownership. Or families in developed nations might own one car instead of two.
That could be a financial boon for families. In the United States, cars are usually the second-largest item in the household budget, even though studies show they sit idle 90% of the time. But automakers would suffer.
If driverless cars catch on, US car sales could plunge 40% in the next 25 years, Barclays analyst Brian Johnson wrote in a report last year. General Motors and Ford Motor, he added, would have to cut their combined number of assembly plants in the US and Canada to 17 from the current 30. Some 25,000 auto workers would lose their jobs.
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