Causal Analysis of the Delayed Rollout of fully Autonomous Vehicles

Purpose and goal:

This report aims to, with a special emphasis on purpose-built AVs, analyze and explain technical, commercial, and regulatory challenges around automated driving and provides suggestions on how to overcome those. Since many challenges are interdisciplinary in their nature and advancements in one discipline are often hindered by obstacles in other disciplines, this report is intended to give a broad overview and general understanding of as many AV related aspects as possible and to make interdependencies between different areas visible.

Expected results and effects:

Based on the authors’ experience of developing autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the surrounding on-demand mobility service at NEVS and numerous discussions with industry experts, the main reasons for the delayed roll-out are:

Firstly, the overall complexity of the problem and the many interdependencies between different and often otherwise unrelated disciplines.

Secondly, the fact that there’s no purpose-built AV available today that has both a design optimized for ridesharing and the technical maturity for AD technology to unfold its full potential. Approach and implementation:

The report starts with an AD market overview (Chapter 3) that explains the underlying market dynamics and explores the diverse use cases and roles played by different actors along the value chain.

Chapter 4 gives an overview of the different parts of the AD ecosystem. For those parts of the ecosystem as well as additional stakeholders, chapter 5 addresses critical challenges contributing to the delayed roll-out of AVs. Potential solutions are outlined alongside an effect analysis. Chapter 6 concludes with tailored recommendations.