Opportunities from past mistakes: Land potential en route to an automated mobility system

Abstract

After the initial hype, recent years have seen markedly more restrained assessments of how connected and automated vehicle technology will develop. A revolutionary scenario that sees a single IT company suddenly launch a successful automated driving system capable of handling every driving task as well as a human (Beiker 2015) is now widely considered unlikely, at least in the medium term. Instead of this presumed revolution, we are currently facing the challenge of a decades-long period of transition – a “Long Level 4” – during which only certain parts of the road network will be accessible to automated vehicles (Mitteregger et al. 2022, Soteropoulos et al. 2020).