Roland Berger: Autonomous cars add $40 billion to market

Fully autonomous cars are expected to be on the road by 2030. This is a development that car manufacturers and suppliers should already be taking into account in their future business models, says consulting firm Roland Berger, as the potential market share of the autonomous cars grows to between $40 and $60 billion by 2030.

Automatic driving
Automatic driving refers to the driving process in which a self-driving/driverless or robotic car is capable of fulfilling the transportation capabilities of a traditional car without the interference of a driver. An autonomous car is able to sense its environment and navigate without any human input.

Global consulting firm Roland Berger Strategy Consultants recently released a new study focusing on autonomous driving. The firm states that this type of transportation is on the rise and has the potential to fundamentally transform the automotive industry in the coming years. The consulting firm expects that the first highly automated vehicles will be driving on the highway by 2020, and that by 2025-2030, cars will be able to drive completely autonomously. “Automatic driving will initially become established in a gradual process, but after 2030 it will bring a real revolution to the auto industry,” comment Wolfgang Bernhart and Marc Winterhoff, Senior Partners at Roland Berger.

The development will produce a huge market potential for the automotive industry, as distance sensors, parking assistance, cruise control systems, and other soft- and hardware are needed to make automatic driving possible. According to the consultants, autonomous driving will have an estimated market size of $40 to $60 billion from new hardware and software by 2030. Of which some $30 to $40 billion will be generated by the sales of autonomous driving hardware components, such as cameras, sensors and communication systems, and an additional $10 to $20 billion by the sale of advanced software and related services, such as high accuracy mapping and prediction & decision algorithms.

Roland Berger argues that car manufacturers and suppliers should already be thinking about the role they want to occupy in this market of the future, and design their business model around that. “Automobile manufacturers and suppliers should use scenarios and potential end games to consider in good time the role they want to play in this promising market – only with a suitable strategy and a well-chosen business model will they succeed in exploiting the exciting opportunities of automatic driving for their own benefit,” explain Bernhart and Winterhoff.