Deployment of highly automated vehicles unlikely before 2025

12 June 2020 | David Young

A new report from Guidehouse Insights projects the size of global and regional markets for light duty consumer and commercial vehicles with highly automated driving (AD) capability through 2030.

Deployment of highly automated vehicles unlikely before 2025

Although 2020 was long projected as the turning point for when automated vehicles would start being widely deployed and adopted, the reality is that AD technology has proven far more challenging to develop and validate than anticipated. In addition to significant technical challenges associated with AD, macroeconomic factors created by the coronavirus pandemic are expected to further slow progress.

According to the report from Guidehouse Insights, significant deployments for more than a few hundred thousand light duty highly automated vehicles are not expected until after 2025, with global volumes expected to reach approximately 13.1 million in 2030.

"In the near term, automated driving deployment will remain very limited to specific locales where it has been demonstrated to work safely and reliably and there is a demonstrated market willing to adopt the technology," says Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst with Guidehouse Insights. "With much of the global economy shut down through the first half of 2020, companies are also reevaluating their investment priorities and AD is likely to lose out to electrification."

According to the report, with consumers having less disposable income for the foreseeable future, vehicle sales and ride-hailing services are also likely to take a significant hit. However, even before the global health crisis, companies in the AD sector were rethinking go-to-market strategy and turning toward goods delivery rather than carrying passengers.

The report, Market Data: Automated Driving Vehicles, provides projections of the size of global and regional markets for light duty consumer and commercial vehicles with highly automated driving capability. Baseline, conservative, and aggressive scenarios for market deployment are included as well as market splits among consumer, robotaxis, and goods delivery vehicles. Forecasts for partially automated vehicles are also included.

An executive summary of the report is available for free download on the Guidehouse Insights website.