Growing Popularity of Connected Cars to Drive European Autonomous Car Market

The increasing support from the government to popularize autonomous cars, inclusion of connected car technologies, and need for increased safety on the roads are driving the European autonomous car market. Autonomous cars, also sometimes known as driverless cars, are capable of functioning without or little human intervention, by sensing the surroundings and navigating safely. Among the two types of such cars — semi and fully — fully autonomous cars are expected to register a sale of 4 million units by 2030, at a CAGR of 37.4% during 2023–2030.

The inclusion of artificial intelligence (AI) in autonomous cars is trending in the European autonomous car market. Autonomous cars development has only been possible due to this technology. Features such as driver monitoring, speech recognition, gesture recognition, eye movement tracking, natural language interfaces, and virtual assistance are essential for a car to become autonomous. Further, AI was also instrumental in the development of the advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS), which has driver condition evaluation systems, camera-based machine vision systems, and sensor fusion engine control units.

The categories of the country segment of the European autonomous car market are the U.K., Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and Rest of Europe. Among these, more than 20.0% of volume share was held by Germany due to the presence of large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), such as BMW and Volkswagen AG. Throughout the forecast period, Germany is expected to account for the highest sales and revenue in the market. OEMs are planning to equipping autonomous cars with superior features such as smart park assist, blind spot detection, and anti-lock braking system.

The European autonomous car market players can use the deployment of such vehicles for mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) to increase their revenue. Considering that the chances of accidents are high in traditional car sharing, service providers would ultimately adopt autonomous cars for better passenger safety. As these cars are quite expensive for privately ownership, mobility services would witness an increase in their adoption. Many players have already entered the market, for instance, Navya, a French startup, which launched its first autonomous taxi in 2018.

Therefore, the market for autonomous cars in Europe is expected to grow at a steady rate due to the rising demand for such cars in the region for sharing purposes.

european investment in autonomous vehicles