Why Do Autonomous Vehicles Affect The Economy?

Autonomous vehicles and other machines with autonomous technology will have a huge economic impact as the technology for these machine's advances. These machines and their impact on the economy vary from the type of machine; from autonomous cars that will potentially see everyday use to the more unique autonomous robots such as the Mars Rover which has a more specialized and non-commercial use.

Cars are a massive industry within the UK alone with 35.6 million registered vehicles with 29.6 million being cars [14] in a population of 64.1 million [17] meaning approximately slightly than half the people in the UK own a car and are used daily by people for transport. Autonomous cars are a revolutionary technology within the car industry and are

In 2014 there were almost 150,000 reported car accidents in the UK with almost 200,000 casualties of varying injuries including 1775 deaths [16]. The cost involved in damages and injuries in the year 2014 was £16,307 million [16]. This value is attributed to many factors such as Medical, Police, Insurance and Damage costs. Autonomous cars are vehicles which guide themselves without need of a person, thus eliminating human error. Therefore when autonomous cars are developed and produced, car accidents will drop dramatically as the main cause of car accidents is removed. This has a massive effect on the economy as the amount of money spend per year on damages and injuries will be dramatically reduced; and can be spent in other

Autonomous cars would make taxi drivers redundant as the need of human intervention is not necessary; therefore autonomous cars would replace taxi drivers which would result in a huge loss of jobs. In England alone in 2015 there is 242,200 licensed taxi and private hire vehicles [19] therefore when autonomous cars are introduced into the economy approximately 242,200 jobs have a high chance of being replaced. If the technology advances far enough we could see heavy goods vehicles and bus's being replaced also; similar as to trains are beginning to become autonomous even today.

While there are jobs that can be replaced by autonomous technology due to redundancy, there is also the opportunity for new jobs to be created from the technological advancement. There would be a need for jobs in the automotive industry to design and produce these vehicles and the software necessary to operate the cars. Jobs which are unrelated to the autonomous cars themselves will be created as there will be a need of new infrastructure and facilities to produce the