The trend towards self-driving cars is no secret anymore. But the impact this will have on other industries is vastly underestimated by companies today!

Depending on who you’re talking to, fully autonomous (self-driving) cars will be the majority of cars on the road in 5-15 years. It is very likely, that by 2025 or 2030 at the latest, human driving will be forbidden, because it is too dangerous. But what does all that mean for the world around us? Will only the car industry change or will autonomous cars have an effect on other industries as well? Let’s look at a few candidates.

Road Construction

Some experts argue, that autonomous cars will reduce the number of cars on our roads. They argue, that self-driving cars can be shared more easily, e.g. by earning the owner some extra money while he is at the office. It’s the sharing economy coming into play, where someone can rent your Tesla for grocery shopping, while you sit in a meeting. Although this scenario will happen, others argue that this will not reduce the amount of cars on the roads. By making it so easy to rent a car on demand, there will be less push towards sharing rides and this might even lead to more traffic than we have today. But even in this scenario, autonomous cars have a big advantage: they can drive much closer together and use the existing infrastructure more efficiently. So it looks as if we might not have to build bigger roads every few years.

Although not a good trend for traditional road construction, there is still a new road construction market ahead. Our road infrastructure will certainly have to change, when we move towards autonomous cars. Traffic lights might be a thing of the past, but cars would need other systems to efficiently negotiate the right of way at intersections. Implementing these systems and the sensors needed for them will be a future market. Sensors might also be needed in every kilometer of highway. That is why some countries like Germany already build “Test Autobahns” to develop this sensor technology. Another opportunity in road construction coming up is to serve electric cars. We see a huge political pressure to abandon the combustion engine and move towards electric. Although battery technology will improve, cars will still benefit from roads that can charge them while they drive. Such roads will give electric cars essentially unlimited range. Constructing these battery charging roads is also a business opportunity in the road construction industry.

Logistics

With the advent of self-driving cars, we will also see self-driving trucks. The job of the “truck driver” is probably one of the first to be made obsolete by autonomous driving. Smaller self-driving cars will be able to deliver parcel on the last mile. And all that will bring down logistics costs. Many business models that seem to not be economically feasible today because of high transportation costs, might become a huge success story under these new circumstances. As consumers we will notice that we can order goods online and get them delivered 30 minutes later. And a dry cleaning business, for which it would have been prohibitively expensive to pick-up a single shirt from your home, clean it and deliver it back to your home, could suddenly offer that service. Just think of all the business models that become possible, once you drive logistics costs towards zero! In these business models lie some killer opportunities for future growth and revenue.

People Transportation

This is a change we see already today. Taxi and Uber drivers will rapidly become a thing of the past, once cars drive fully autonomous. There have also been experiments with self-driving busses already. But think of the further implications this has: the cost for getting from A to B will drop dramatically as the cost for human drivers is eliminated! So things that don’t make economical sense today, might be a no-brainer in the future. Just imagine, if the only cost you have to get from Oslo to Rome is the time it takes you – and that time can be spent productively working during the ride. The huge cost drivers of transport today are human drivers and gas – both will be eliminated in future transportation. This not only enables new ways of working, but also completely new business models. Take your industry and think it through under the assumption, that travel costs are essentially non-existent! What would be possible?

 

These were just three industries we looked at. But one can certainly find a lot more opportunities. Just do a scenario analysis under the assumptions, that transportation costs are neglectibly small. Specifically look at problems that involve high transportation costs today. You will see a vast array of future business opportunities opening up before you!