Self-driving vehicles

• Self-driving cars that include driver control are expected to hit highways around the globe before 2025 and self-driving "only" cars (only the car drives) are anticipated around 2030.
  
• Fewer people will own their own cars.
  
• By 2022 there will be 1.8 billion automotive M2M connections.
  
• Driverless cars will make intersections much more efficient. Traffic is expected to flow 20% faster in today’s congested cities.
  
• Use of telematics is forecast to grow to up to 20 percent within the next five years.
  
• People will use their mobile phones to summon a robot taxi. A driver will be able to download approved apps from a car manufacturer store onto their smartphone that can then communicate with a car's computer system.

Charging networks

• Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will become a standard option offered by car companies.
  
• National electric car charging networks around countries will use direct current to charge cars in less than 30 minutes
  
• Some aspects of insurance will be impacted as autonomous cars become the norm.

Technology called CAN bus (controller area network) provides access to the "brain" of cars and will allow anyone to check the health of a vehicle and control it.

Land and the environment

• Car parks and gardens used to park personal vehicles will be returned to their original use or used for other purpose.
  
• Traffic management paraphernalia cold be dramatically reduced.
  
• Driverless cars will allow people to live farther from their offices and that the car could become an extension of home.

Ownership

• Some people wonder whether when all vehicles are self-driving anyone will actually own a car.

Sales

• Global electric car sales will remain shy of 1 million in 2020.
  
• EVs will account for more than 5-10% of new car sales by 2025.
  
• Battery-powered electric vehicles could be offered by car companies for larger portions of the market.
  
• Additional premium car navigation service using cellular networks will be offered.
  
• Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will become a standard option offered by car companies.
  
• Tesla will eventually bust the dealer franchise laws on the books and allow for all car makers to sell directly to consumers.

Safety

• Driverless cars could make automobile travel safer. Google is claiming its cars could save almost 30,000 lives each year on U.S. highways and prevent nearly 2 million additional injuries.
  
• Safer cars and fewer accidents could mean cheaper insurance.
  
• Connected cars will become ubiquitous regardless of whether the barriers to embedded telematics are overcome.
  
• 600 million cars on the road will be fitted with an embedded telematics system by 2025.
  
• Demand for the driverless vehicles will prompt governments to adapt.
  
• There is a high probability that each government will adopt a similar approach to low-cost receivers for geopolitical reasons.
  
• Every car will need to be connected to the outside world through a cellular network.
  
• A mobile owner's manual coupled with the car's sensors could detect and interpret early stage problems before they evolve into a more expensive and daunting repair.

Performance

• Apps could let drivers tweak their car's performance.
  
• Road safety and the ability to check the performance and health of vehicles in real-time will be the biggest benefits of connected cars.
  
• Embedded mobile technology will have a disruptive impact on the automobile industry.
  
• Telecom operators could extend their Device Management Interfaces to also support connected car services.
  
• Smartphone integration and tethering will lead to greater data consumption in the car.

Explore Shaping Tomorrow to find the sources and more resources on the future of cars, some of which were used in this Trend Alert.

Shaping Tomorrow can help your organization rapidly assess and respond to these and other key issues affecting your business, please contact us to find out how.