The Market Potential for Semi-Autonomous Driving

The fully autonomous, driverless car of the future will have a transformative effect on the way mobility is consumed, with Car as a Service (CaaS) business models bringing numerous societal, environmental, and safety advantages, as well as greater convenience for the end user. How the industry will transition away from its existing, century-old approach of selling vehicles to consumers is a hotly debated topic within the ecosystem, with two prevailing schools of thought:

• The Feature-Creep Approach: This approach sees a gradual development of the existing ADAS technologies into semi-autonomous and ultimately fully autonomous systems, with legislation probing the final barrier to driverless operation. The expectation here is for gradual improvements in sensing, processing, digital map coverage, and consumer to trust to enable more highly automated driving over a protracted period.  
• The Direct-to-Driverless Approach: This philosophy holds that, given the difficulties in balancing driver inputs with the functions of an autonomous system, OEMs and others will postpone the introduction of highly automated driving until autonomous technologies and legislation allow for the introduction of a fully autonomous, driverless vehicle.

This ABI Research report will examine, analyze, and explain the different levels of semi-autonomous and autonomous operation as defined by the SAE, and will expound upon the implementation issues associated with each of these levels. In the context of OEM strategies and pertinent supplier dynamics, the most likely for the development and deployment of autonomous driving will be detailed, with forecasts given in terms of the SAE definitions.