Prelims

Half Title Page

AUTONOMOUS DRIVING

How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World

Title Page

AUTONOMOUS DRIVING

How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World

BY

ANDREAS HERRMANN

WALTER BRENNER

RUPERT STADLER

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78714-834-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-833-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-268-0 (Epub)

Acknowledgements

This book could never have been written without the inspiring and instructive discussions we had with some special people. They are all outstanding experts who will have a major impact on the many facets of autonomous driving in the coming years. With their experience and knowledge, they are making significant contributions to putting self-driving vehicles on our roads. They aren’t just interested in the technology, but always emphasise the social and economic aspects as well. We thank all of them for taking the time to share their knowledge and convictions with us. Excerpts from those discussions are presented throughout the book.

Preface

Writing a book about autonomous driving is quite a challenge, because new findings on the subject – often contradictory – are appearing every day. Ideas, concepts and technologies relating to self-driving vehicles are emerging all over the world and it is hardly possible to gain a detailed overview of them all. So this book cannot aim to be an entirely consistent description that is accurate in every detail, but is more like the collected journals of an expedition that is not yet completed. It was worthwhile setting out on this expedition, because there is probably no other technology that will so fundamentally transform our economic and social lives. The time has come to address the subject of autonomous mobility and to make it the subject of social discourse, thus contributing to changing our lives for the better.

Examining this subject was also quite an experience for the authors, because it’s about software, sensors and algorithms only at first glance. The underlying narratives about new opportunities (and also risks) offered by autonomous driving are far more exciting. Rupert Stadler, as CEO of Audi, is faced with the challenge of guiding a globally leading automobile company into the digital age. This requires a gigantic transformation process, which will change the company’s culture and organisation as well as its products. Andreas Herrmann, Professor of Marketing, has experienced in the slums of São Paulo how mobility is a precondition for work and prosperity. If we succeed in using autonomous driving to move people faster and further, they can find better work, escape poverty and take control of their lives. Walter Brenner, Professor of Information Management, is fascinated by the speed and intensity of automotive digitisation. In collaboration with colleagues in start-ups in Silicon Valley and at Stanford University, he has found out that information technology will no longer be added to the car, but that the car will be built around the information technology.

Many employees, colleagues, experts and outstanding personalities in the fields of politics, business and society have collaborated on this book. We thank them all for contributing their knowledge and experience. The comments from our colleague Professor Hubert Österle and the wide-ranging research on pictures and texts by Nicola Schweitzer, Cynthia Sokoll, Barbara Rohner and Manuel Holler were particularly valuable. Finally, we appreciate the enthusiastic support of Pete Baker at Emerald and especially his patience, as we repeatedly had to tell him that it would take us a bit longer because new findings had become available.

We hope our work has resulted in a book that illuminates this very important subject from various perspectives and contributes towards an open, honest and broad-based discussion about the opportunities and risks of autonomous driving. We authors are euphoric and convinced of this technology’s potential. But we have doubts and concerns as well, which are also expressed in this book.

Andreas Herrmann

Walter Brenner

Rupert Stadler