Many companies are developing driverless cars. However, the idea of driverless vehicles is not new, driverless planes (drones) are developed ahead of driverless cars. This is because driverless cars have more concerns about more complicated traffic conditions, and passengers’ safety, moreover, the development of driverless cars has some moral issues. Anyway, I always believe that driverless cars will become the mainstream transport in our society. Our society and economy could be significantly affected by the use of driverless cars.
Firstly, many sectors would be deeply affected. The taxi and public transport industry would be most affected that the majority of drivers of buses and taxis would be very highly likely to lose their jobs as drivers. However, there would be other businesses in this sector. People may start to buy driverless cars to start their taxi businesses or even bus businesses; there would no more need to hire drivers for taxi and bus companies. This could push taxi and public transport industries further into privatising transformation. Moreover, as driverless cars can be supplied at a very high amount to the market, the cost of establishing businesses in the taxi and bus industries would become relatively low. In addition, although a large taxi company or a large bus company can lower its average cost when it buys a large number of vehicles, the services provided by large companies are not necessarily better than those provided by small companies, the only advantage that large companies is their low average costs, so the prices in the markets would be set very low.
Secondly, I start to think about the idea of subscription in the car industry. Because people do not need to drive their cars, they do not have to be familiar with their cars in order to drive cars more safely. Individuals can subscribe cars just like subscribing newspaper. Such subscription can have many advantages. It can be safer, as cars can be frequently updated and the conditions would always be new. In addition, individuals may spend more on subscription than buying cars; however, a one-time consumption becomes monthly or annual payments, it reduces difficulties for many people’s using their own cars. This would also benefit the car industry, as many car companies would be able to have more loyal consumers and clients, have more secure continuous incomes,. and provide more after-sales services for their clients and increase their revenues.
Thirdly, driverless cars may reduce the cost of traffic regulations and save time for transportation. If driverless cars can cooperate and interact with each other, they can work out a way for the best use of roads to reduce the social costs of transportation and reduce the risk of traffic accidents. Moreover, as the programmes are always pre-planted into cars’ systems, passengers are not able to break the traffic laws and regulations, this saves the costs of traffic controlling and regulation.
Of course, driverless cars have some weakness. Driverless cars may not be able to cope accidents that are not foreseen by designers, or accidents that create complicated consequences. Such accidents include natural disasters (earthquake, flood), or human errors (for example, accidents caused by manually driving vehicles and bicycles). In addition, if we require cooperation between driverless cars, an Internet communication has to be established between cars, this increases the potential damage to our society by cyberattacks. However, this could create more opportunities for the cybersecurity industry.
Overall, I am a huge fan of driverless cars and think it has a very bright future.
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