10 FUTURE TRENDS

STRAP IN, BECAUSE THE NEXT FEW YEARS ARE GOING TO BE A WILD RIDE. WE CONSIDER THE FUTURE OF DRIVING, FROM SMALL PRINT TO BLUE SKY

- ANDY ENRIGHT, TONY O'KANE, JESSE CROSSE, NOELLE FAULKNER

01 Have the wheels come off autonomy?
IN RECENT YEARS, SELF-DRIVING CARS SEEMED LIKE THE NEXT BIG THING BUT AUTONOMY HAS LATTERLY FALLEN FROM THE FRONT PAGES. WE LOOK AT WHY

ARGO AI LOOKED set to be the Big Auto's autonomous showcase. Ford and Volkswagen had poured $3.6 billion between them into the company founded by the former heads of Google and Uber's self-driving tech teams in 2016. In November of last year, Argo imploded. The Pittsburgh company has subsequently risen from the ashes as Latitude AI, a subsidiary of Ford employing 500 staff.

In 2022, autonomous vehicle investments crashed by nearly 60 percent year on year. Li Yunfei, a spokesperson for Chinese giant BYD told CNBC that, "We think self-driving tech that's fully separated from humans is very, very far away, and basically impossible." That's quite the statement.

On the face of it, the prognosis seems grim. Media outlets seized on an accident where GM's Cruise robotaxi operation in San Francisco crashed into a bus, ignoring the fact that the autonomous operation's accumulated mileage had already shown a significantly lower incident rate than that of equivalent human cab drivers.

Tesla's AutoPilot and Full Self-Driving systems, currently the passenger-car market's most adventurous autonomous technologies, have become mired in lawsuits, but Elon Musk remains wedded to the future revenue potential afforded by autonomy. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla's recent price cuts have represented a long game aimed at getting as many buyers into Teslas as possible, with short-term revenue loss offset against future self-driving incomes.