Driven to distraction: The rise of the self-driving car experience

Driverless cars will very likely save lives and reduce congestion. But for those of us enslaved to the daily commute, they might also mean the emancipation of countless minutes and hours spent stuck behind the wheel.

So what will we do with our regained time, now that we are no longer distracted with the task of actually driving?

It is a question that is increasingly in the minds of marketers and media executives, and one which led global technology maker, Intel, to author its June 2017 report, Accelerating the Future: The Economic Impact of the Emerging Passenger Economy.

By Intel’s estimate, ‘pilotless’ vehicles will free more than 250 million hours of consumers’ commuting time per year in the most congested cities in the world, to be used for everything from mobile offices and meeting rooms to car-based virtual reality (VR) entertainment facilities or even on-board beauty salons.

“We have enough experience in personal computing and data centres and embedded computing that we realised there will be a whole economy that grows up around these vehicles,” says Doug Davis, Intel’s senior vice-president and general manager of the Automated Driving Group (ADG). “As we move from spending enormous amounts of our time driving cars to spending that time doing something else as passengers, what would that translate into?

“We will also be in the realm of 5G wireless technologies, so we will have the ability to consume enormous amounts of data. And as a result of that, we can start to imagine all kinds of new services that can spring up.”

While it might seem like the distant future, trials of driverless vehicles are taking place in Australia now, with the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI) Centre of Excellence expecting they will be part of our lived experience by the start of the next decade. Should driverless vehicles prove as popular as their promoters hope, that leaves precious little time for a large swathe or service providers to get their offerings in order.

Rewriting the rules of auto engagement

But exactly how newly liberated drivers will want to spend their newfound spare time is still up for debate. Even asking consumers what services they might want elicits little viable insight, as ADVI discovered last year.

“They haven’t experienced it, so it is very hard for them to know what they are going to do,” says ADVI’s executive director, Rita Excell.

She has a few ideas of her own, however. “For people who are from a service industry, who have to get back to the office to do their reporting, suddenly some of that travel might see them following up or working,” Excell says. “The critical thing is understanding how soon people are going to be able to take up doing something else apart from driving.”

And that date seems to be getting sooner. Countless trials are happening around the world. New players such as Google (through subsidiary, Waymo), Tesla and Uber are investing millions in the technology, and practically every established carmaker has designs in development. Ford for instance, has announced it will build a vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals by 2021.

Excell says Australia is already receptive to the concept, with four driverless shuttle busses now operating in different parts of the country.

The realisation driverless cars are likely to be part of our near-term reality is being noted by a range of industries. According to the founder of research and creative agency Thinkerbell, Adam Ferrier, it’s not just those likely to be directly affected, such as car manufacturers, public transport and chauffeured vehicles.

“A number of my clients from various types of industry are looking at the impact,” Ferrier says. “It feels to me that if you believe in the wisdom of crowds, then driverless cars will be completely disruptive to people’s lifestyles, what people do, and therefor people’s relationships with brands and all manner of services.”

The key is to abandon the traditional notion of a car and think about it as a mobile platform.

“If you can design a moving platform to facilitate an hour of people’s time a day, what would that look like?” Ferrier asks. “That dead time in the car may then become useful time where you can get something done, like having breakfast or catching up with others, or become a workstation.  Very quickly, it would not look anything like a car at all.”

Ferrier believes now is the time for brands and service providers to begin planning. “People are starting to appreciate the value of being first and being early adopters and linking their brand with innovation and seeing the value in that,” he continues.

“And then there are the other ones genuinely looking at a business model and how this impacts their business.”

Up next: The impact on brand relations