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News Roundup: Singapore Signs Deal to Launch Driverless Buses, Analysts Point to 2025 as ‘Point of Disruption’ For Industry, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Driverless buses to launch in Singapore within three years

On Monday, April 10, Singapore’s Land Transit Authority (LTA) signed an agreement with the company ST Kinetics to build and test autonomous buses. ST Kinetics is expected to provide two 40-person shuttle buses to be tested in public, likely in the areas of the University of Singapore campus and Jejong Island. If testing goes well, additional vehicles will be tested in more locations, and then LTA said they hope to launch the buses to the general public by 2020. ST Kinetics said the buses navigate via GPS signal and have sensors and radar that can detect pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles up to 200 meters ahead. The company also said the buses can currently operate in rain of up to 10mm, and is working on increasing that to operate in heavier rain. Read more and see video from ChannelNews Asia.

 

Boston Consulting: One-quarter of all miles traveled will be autonomous by 2030; automakers not moving fast enough

A new study released by the Boston Consulting Group this week said they expect by 2030 that one-quarter of all miles traveled will be in autonomous vehicles, with a significant percentage in shared vehicles. The shift is expected to start in the early 2020s, they said. Particularly in cities with more than 1 million people, BCG analysts think it will soon be more economically advantageous for people to ditch their personally owned vehicles and opt for robot taxis and autonomous ride sharing. However, BCG also criticized automakers for not moving fast enough in developing and regulating autonomous vehicles. BCG warns that automakers that do not put significant effort into this now will see their biggest assets - their sellable vehicles — turn into liabilities by 2030, when 5 million personal cars will be replaced by an estimated 4.7 million autonomous vehicles, they expect. Read more from Bloomberg.

 

Is Australia the most eager nation for driverless cars?

According to a new survey by Roy Morgan Research, Australians are warming significantly to the idea of driverless cars. Forty-six percent of citizens in a recent survey said they would hop into a driverless car today. Specifically, 51 percent of men and 41 percent of women-who appeared the more cautious gender-said they look forward to driverless vehicles. A whopping 61 percent of millennials compared to 26 percent of baby-boomers said they look forward to the technology. Roy Morgan Research said they expect the main point of disruption in the auto industry to take place in 2025. Australia has been blazing down the driverless trail for a few years now, hosting trials of self-driving cars on public roads, implementing driverless technology into its public transit systems, and conducting research at the professional and university levels. Read more on Which-50.com.

Photo: ST Kinetics test vehicle in Singapore, courtesy of ChannelNews Asia.

Driverless Cabs Could Be Cheaper Than the Subway

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Burney Simpson

A driverless ‘robo-taxi’ could cost 35 percent less than a conventional taxi, and may even be cheap enough to compete with mass transit, according to the new report ‘Robo-Taxis and the New Mobility‘ by Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Commuters would probably be charged the cheapest robo-taxi rate because they would regularly schedule the vehicle in advance, travel from fixed start and end points, and share the ride with at least one other passenger, BCG reports. These taxis would offer a private compartment for each rider.

In its cost comparison, BCG uses an occupancy rate of 1.2 passengers per ride, the average rate for New York City cabs (See BCG chart above). A driverless robo-taxi carrying 1.2 passengers would cost $1.80 per passenger mile, compared with the $2.80 cost of a cab with driver, the research firm reports.

BCG found that a robo-taxi with two passengers would cost $1.10 per passenger mile, highly competitive with the $1 a mile cost for a subway ride. Theoretically, robo-taxis carrying commuters would be cheaper still if their operators received any of the local, state and federal funds that public transit receives.

Robo-taxi firms will be operated by ‘mobility providers’ – a mix of taxi companies, ride-sharing services, tech firms, and OEMs – that would rent their service either by the length of the ride or by the amount of time the vehicle is used.

BCG contends that robo-taxis would make ride-sharing services commonplace, reduce car ownership and congestion in urban areas, and even lower emissions.

For more on BCG’s research, see Driverless Transportation’s “Consumer Demand Will Bring Partial-Autonomous Driving Tech This Year: Study” on the firm’s ‘Revolution in the Drivers’ Seat: The Road to Autonomous Vehicles.’

Consumer Demand Will Bring Partial-Autonomous Driving Tech This Year: Study

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Burney Simpson

The coming of driverless vehicles is down to ‘when’ not ‘if’ as auto OEMs rollout vehicles offering a variety of autonomous features in the next 12 months, according to Revolution in the Driver’s Seat: The Road to Autonomous Vehicles, a new report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This includes such technologies as single-lane autopilot, highway autopilot with lane changing, traffic jam autopilot, autonomous valet parking, and urban autopilot, reports BCG, which has been releasing portions of its research the last few months (See “Self-Driving Features May be Worth $42 Billion by 2025“).

The implementation of this partially-autonomous technology will initially be seen in high-end vehicles due to the cost of developing, testing, building and installing the features.

Many consumers are willing to pay extra for these features that offer greater safety and convenience, according to a BCG survey last September of more than 1,500 U.S. consumers that had recently purchased or planned to soon purchase a car.

Fifty-five percent of U.S. consumers would buy a partially autonomous vehicle, and 44 percent said they would buy a fully-autonomous vehicle. The three top reasons cited for buying a partially-autonomous car are lower insurance premiums, increased safety, and that the vehicle will switch to self-driving mode on the highway, BCG found.

The cost of an autonomous vehicle to the consumer will come down as “component costs are scaled, R&D investments amortized, and assembly costs reduced due to volume increases,” BCG predicts. By 2025, the technology developed for partially-autonomous vehicles will have declined enough that it will be economically feasible to market fully-autonomous vehicles to a majority of consumers.

SENSOR TECHNOLOGY

A number of technology challenges remain before there is widespread development of fully-autonomous vehicles. The major issue now is lowering the costs of and improving the quality of sensor technology, BCG writes.

Sensors assess and react to a vehicle’s environment, receiving and interpreting information from cameras, radar, ultrasound, GPS systems, light detection equipment, and LIDAR. While much of this technology is available from auto-parts suppliers and technology firms, the auto OEMs will hesitate to install it on a mass scale until they see costs come down, especially for LIDAR and GPS, BCG contends.

After partially-autonomous vehicles become more widespread, regulators will seek to quantify their value to determine whether to require fully-autonomous technology from the auto industry, BCG predicts.

Regulators will focus on productivity gains from reduced traffic congestion and savings arising from fewer accidents. BCG believes it will take five years of proven improvements in these areas before governments decide on mandating autonomous technology in vehicles.