Autonomous into the future

By Yannick Thoma, International Cooperation Project Manager at Agora Verkehrswende

In San Francisco, driverless electric cars are now part of everyday life. China is also pushing forward the development of vehicles that are not driven by a human (i.e. level 4 of autonomous driving) in its domestic market, with large numbers of such vehicles being driven long distances.

In Germany, however, major companies, such as Bosch, ZF Friedrichshafen and Continental, are scaling back their autonomous driving projects and are partially withdrawing from the market and the technology. Although the country is considered progressive in terms of its legislation, regular fully autonomous operation at level 4 is still not permitted. 

With its strategy for autonomous driving in road traffic published in early December 2024, the outgoing federal government wants to change this. The aim is to make Germany “one of the world's leading innovation and production locations for autonomous driving.” The strategy aims to accelerate the market ramp-up of autonomous driving and create an “innovation-friendly framework that must be filled with life by business and industry.”

The strategy is key to promoting autonomous driving in Germany. After all, autonomous vehicles are urgently needed for a stable public transport service and to protect the climate. Autonomous and individually bookable on-demand shuttle and bus services can help to improve and sustainably provide mobility, especially in rural and suburban areas. In addition, the costs of the necessary expansion of public transport by 2045 are largely driven by the sharp increase in expenditure on drivers. Self-driving vehicles are part of the solution to this problem as well.

The German government has set itself the goal of making “autonomous driving an integral part of an intermodal and networked mobility system” by 2030. The country aims to create the world's largest contiguous operating area for autonomous vehicles by 2028. These goals are ambitious. It is up to the next government to keep this ball rolling. The project must not become a never-ending story, as was the case with broadband expansion.

A new federal government can achieve a great deal if it implements the measures set out in the strategy together with the key players in autonomous driving. An “implementation alliance” of the federal states, municipalities, operators, companies, associations and scientific partners, as announced by the Federal Ministry of Transport, would be very suitable for this. To make autonomous driving an integral part of public transport, the alliance should address the following points in particular:

• Instead of exclusively promoting short-term and small-scale projects, the federal and state governments should first of all focus their funding on no more than three large-scale, longer-term model projects, particularly in suburban and rural areas. In these field trials, autonomous vehicle fleets, ideally in the hundreds, should be put on the roads as quickly as possible and the range should be continuously expanded. This will enable the sale of large numbers of vehicles, which in turn will help to reduce costs and thus introduce sustainable business models in public transport.
• A rapid ramp-up with large numbers of units requires considerable investment in research, development, testing and implementation of autonomous vehicles. Here, it is important to develop new financing models – for example, in cooperation with private investors – and to rethink existing procurement processes. Approaches such as purchasing pools or subscription models could play a role here, moving beyond the classic one-time purchase by a single public agency.
• Scientific monitoring of the large-scale projects offers the opportunity to process findings along the entire production chain – from introduction and roll-out to operation – as a blueprint for other regions. The licensing and approval processes for autonomous on-demand mobility services should be simplified and regulatory uncertainties and ambiguities should be addressed as quickly as possible.

Germany still has the chance to drive forward innovations in autonomous driving in such a way that it becomes a leading industrial location for it – with all the positive effects for value creation, employment and the mobility transition, despite a relatively small local digital economy. To ensure that the future is autonomous, now is the time to set the course for Germany to catch up with the global leaders.

This article first appeared as a guest contribution in the Frankfurter Rundschau on 23 December 2024.