Automated vehicles: Navigating towards a smarter future in a network of expectations

Abstract

The automated vehicle has increasingly gained traction in academia, business, and government as a technological innovation that promises significant impacts on sustainable mobility, including safety improvements, congestion reduction, environmental efficiency, and various other social domains. These optimistic understandings of technology as an enabler of greener, safer and more efficient transportation tend to dominate present-day debates on automated vehicles. Understanding the interplay between different actors’ expectations helps the government and businesses in prioritizing future technological developments and effective policy and decision making. For this purpose, this research draws on recent literature in sociotechnical system transitions and social expectations dynamics, and addresses the question: How do expectations shape innovation processes in the automated vehicle industry, and which implications can be derived for government and business? An explorative and qualitative research was performed in which expectations held by different actors involved in vehicle automation were collected and analyzed. Thereafter, these expectations were used as input to construct different socio-technical scenarios. This resulted in three scenarios for future innovation processes differentiating in expectations about changes in niches, regimes, and the landscape. In two scenarios automated vehicles have the potential to overthrow the existing regime when environmental pressure from the landscape causes business or government to invest in automated vehicles. In one scenario, the actual benefits of automated vehicles remain unclear, preventing a socio-technical transition towards fully automated vehicles. Depending on the preferred outcome regarding the realization of collective and individual interests, government and businesses may influence the direction of the innovation process with respect to vehicle automation. The government can adopt the roles of actively coordinating the innovation process, leaving the innovation process to the market while ensuring basic mobility needs, or convincing and stimulating business and users to invest in vehicle automation. In addition, businesses can adapt the roles of responding to governmental demands, optimizing individual business models, or creating competition in a cooperative society. To conclude, there is an interaction between these different roles for government and businesses. Actor groups can try to form coalitions to create uniformity in expectations. As such, the proposed scenarios and roles can be used as a tool for a better identification of potential cooperative strategies between businesses and government. Furthermore, they can structure future debates about social and political priorities with respect to innovation processes involved with vehicle automation.