The future of motoring is known.
In the city, an ordered taxi turns into the yard. It runs on electricity and lacks a driver. You can tell the machine where to go and then leave.
The ride is easy and emission-free.
This vision is widely shared in the automotive industry.
Differences of opinion are mainly about which features come first and on what schedule. Estimates vary because the technology required by this vision has not yet been created – let alone commercialized.
asked two automotive industry experts what the timetable for these big changes is and what factors affect the speed of development.
Electric cars are slowly becoming common
In Norway, the majority of new cars sold are already electric today. Norway is just not the whole world, but rather an exception.
CEO of the Finnish Confederation of Automotive Industry Tero Lausala estimates that it will be closer to mid-century before the majority of all new cars sold in the world are electric.
The lack of charging infrastructure needed by electric cars is a key brake on development.
Lausala points out that even in many developed countries such as Italy, there are not enough charging stations for electric cars.
– In South America, Africa and in many places in Asia, we are still at the very beginning when it comes to infrastructure. The problem can of course be solved, but it takes time and requires billions of investments, says Lausala.
If the transition to electric cars were to be accelerated, the prices of cars should also be reduced significantly. The average price of a new electric car in Finland is 56,000 euros, which is simply too much for many consumers.
In industry, unit prices usually start to fall when production volumes are increased and the manufacturing process is made more efficient.
– I believe that there is still plenty of advantage left over from increasing the scale, and the price of vehicles can be brought down as a result, says the assistant professor of Aalto University’s mechatronics research group Risto Ojala.
He estimates that in Europe and other developed regions, electric cars will become the best-selling car models in the next decade.
– The EU’s decision to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in 2035 acts as a driver of development here, says Ojala.
The robot driver is delayed
Different types of self-driving cars have been tried since the 1990s. However, an autonomous car that works completely without a driver in all conditions is still very far from being realized.
– Autonomous cars can already work almost all the time today, but almost always is not enough. When motoring is about human lives and production volumes are large, manufacturers have to eliminate even the smallest risks, assistant professor Ojala describes.
According to him, at the end point of development, the car manufacturer takes full legal responsibility for passengers. However, reaching this level of certainty has turned out to be difficult.
In addition to technical and regulatory obstacles, one reason for the slow development of automation has been the limited number of engineers.
– In this decade, electrification has been at the center of the automotive industry. The development of self-steering has simply not been directed to the same amount of planning power, Ojala analysed.
Tighter emission restrictions have forced car manufacturers to switch to electric motors.
Electric cars have been attractive to consumers because their operating costs are lower than combustion engine cars.
Automatic driving is not forced forward with tightening regulation, and consumers hardly ask for such features.
– People don’t know how to want what they haven’t experienced yet, sums up Tero Lausala, CEO of the Finnish Federation of Automotive Industry.
Commercial demand for automated cars will probably first arise in the field of professional motoring and transport.
For a company, a person behind the wheel is an expense item.
– A tireless artificial intelligence driving a vehicle would probably make transport more efficient, Ojala estimates.
In order to achieve this, vehicles should learn to talk to other cars and road infrastructure better than at present.
Ojala believes that it is networking that will accelerate in the next few years. However, the spread of fully autonomous vehicles on the roads will clearly take longer than the electrification of cars.
– In Helsinki, ring one – under very limited conditions – you may be able to drive an automatic in the 2030s. But driving across Finland in the dark muddy weather… Yes, I would say that we are going towards the 2040s, Ojala thinks.
In the city, car ownership is decreasing
Taxis or Uber rides are cars as services. Instead of owning, the car is used when needed.
Various car sharing services are also based on the idea that owning a car is not worth it. It is enough to get it there if necessary.
According to experts, in the global urban environment, more and more car journeys will be made in the future with something other than one’s own car.
With the development of public transport, a car is generally needed less often. As city space becomes more valuable, reserving it for a car that is stationary most of the time becomes expensive.
– The electrification and self-driving of cars are technological challenges, but this development from owning to renting is more related to urban planning and economics, says assistant professor Ojala.
He thinks that the decrease in car ownership goes hand in hand with urbanization. In sparsely populated areas, the privately owned car, on the other hand, will remain the primary means of transportation long into the future.
The technology needed to share and rent cars already exists. Commercially, however, the equation is tricky, especially in a country like Finland, where even the largest cities are relatively sparsely populated.
– On paper, different car sharing systems are great. The problem is how to increase the car utilization rate, says Lausala.
According to him, cooperation between the public and private sectors can serve as a solution here.
For example, shared cars are used in Joensuu so that they are used by city employees during the day, but residents can rent them in the evenings and weekends, Lausala says.