Busy week for the futurists

Forget the ides of March, the first week of the month has seen a veritable car crash of predictions and forecasts from manufacturers, a safety authority, an IT expert and an industry statistician.

Volvo started the ball rolling at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona with a call for vehicles to share 'anonymised' data to improve safety in the upcoming autonomous driving environment planned in the next couple of decades. It's an idea that makes sense, but its backers will have to push it past privacy lobbyists and legislators first – which is why Klas Bendrik, Volvo Cars Group VP and CIO specifically described the shared data as 'anonymised', when quoted in a press release earlier in the week.

"Imagine a world where road status data collected by cars is shared with other road users and with local authorities through a connected car cloud such as the Volvo Cloud: A world where the benefits of anonymised data-sharing support convenience and life-saving services while helping to contribute to a better society. Volvo Cars is working on realising such a scenario," he said.

By networking this anonymised data (data that can't be traced back to an individual or organisation), car companies, municipal bodies and other interested parties could improve traffic flow in urban areas, as well as enhance safety by warning motorists (and their autonomous cars) of environmental hazards such as ice on the road or flooding, to name two. One highly imaginative suggestion is different coloured illumination for street lighting to alert drivers where a dangerous section of road is detected.

"Car makers have the potential to deliver real benefits to society by democratising anonymised car data. This is something that Volvo Cars feels very strongly about," Bendrik concluded.

In addition to its pilot fleet of 100 cars running in an autonomous driving trial in Gothenburg, Volvo will also test 1000 connected cars for the data collection trial throughout Norway and Sweden over the course of this year.

Next up was Renault Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who has gone on record in the past supporting autonomous cars in principle. Now he has gone a step further, describing the global interest in autonomous motoring as a 'megatrend' in his keynote address to the same audience at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

Ghosn expects his company to offer products with the equivalent of Benz's Stop&Go Pilot from next year. Two years later we'll see high-end Renaults and Nissans able to negotiate lane-changing on freeways, with full-on autonomous motoring in complex urban environments at some indeterminate date after that. For that, Ghosn says, we're looking at least 10 years into the future, due to the complexity of grappling with legislation to cover the new technology – rather than any inherent hardship in developing the technology itself.

Ghosn revealed that electric vehicles are an increasingly important element in any car company's product portfolio. Renault Nissan has sold 222,000 EVs globally, since 2010, when the Nissan LEAF was introduced. Apple throwing its hat into the ring, with plans to build its own electric vehicle, is "refreshing", Ghosn says; it is another sign that EVs are going mainstream.  Furthermore, Ghosn claims to welcome any company entering the global EV market.

"We don't consider that other people making electric cars are competitors; we consider them allies," he was quoted saying in a press release. "Because today, the battle is not who is going to have the biggest share of the electric car business. It's about how many companies are going to join in promoting zero-emission transportation."

It's important more car companies begin to get the message, Ghosn also observed.

"You are not going to be able to meet emissions regulations in most countries without zero-emissions technologies. It's impossible."

Over on the other side of the Atlantic, American industry analyst IHS Automotive published a study that indicates there will be a massive reduction in car use by 2035. The IHS Automotive/Groupe Futuribles study has determined that global vehicle production will drop by 30 million units a year by 2035. Furthermore, the global parc (the number of vehicles registered around the world) could decline by as much as 250 million by the same year.

The reduced demand for cars will be a result of increased urban living (and traffic congestion). It is a trend already apparent in Asian cities, but it is also happening in Europe, North America and other parts of the world, including Australia. According to the study, over half the world's population already lives in cities – and that will increase to 60 per cent by 2035.

The diminished demand for personal transport will arise out of legislated pollution reduction measures, and as likely as not, the perception that the car is not worth the cost and inconvenience if and where public transport is more efficient. Beijing – the Chinese capital – is one example cited. The municipality has capped the maximum number of vehicles that may be registered within its jurisdiction at six million, but 5.4 million are already registered there. Even with 10 per cent added, the number of cars in Beijing (currently 130 cars per thousand people) would still fall well short of the 400 or 500 cars per thousand people registered in Europe and the USA.

"It's all about the cities," said IHS Automotive researcher Philip Gott, Project Manager for the study, titled 'The Impact of New Urban Mobility on Automotive Markets and Industry'.

"Tomorrow's cities just cannot fit the same number of cars per person as do the mature-market cities of today."

The study recommends and encourages relocation of factories closer to developing markets (which are markets that can sustain increased vehicle usage into the future) and a commitment to build market-appropriate vehicles – typically "urban-specific" passenger cars and light trucks.

Autonomous cars and car sharing will change the automotive landscape in more sophisticated markets, the study claims, and there will be some impact on lifestyles too. With fewer crashes and improved traffic flow, fuel consumption will reduce and time spent commuting will pared back also.

Philip Gott will be participating in the "Cars of Tomorrow" conference in Melbourne on Wednesday, March 12.

Finally, ANCAP has come out in support of a report from the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), promoting new safety assist technology – such as lane keep assist, for instance – as the best means available to reduce road trauma in the short term.

"This report highlights the importance of bringing vital safety assist technologies into our cars as early as possible in order to drive down road trauma," said ANCAP CEO, Nicholas Clarke.

Somewhat controversially, the ETSC has also called for speed limits on currently unrestricted German autobahns, citing a growing number of fatalities on these roads in recent years.

Clearly the thrust of that initiative conflicts with the broader outlook for autonomous cars and a smaller urban vehicle parc. If cars of the future will talk to each other (and the traffic lights), and can maintain a steady speed to optimise fuel economy and traffic flow, they should be able to avoid high-speed accidents on well maintained autobahns.