Artificial Intelligence and the Global Automotive Industry

The future sustainability of the global automotive industry will be greatly affected by the fourth industrial revolution and the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI). The “new normal” is projected to be driven by new industry standards including an increasingly autonomous self-driving technology, amended safety standards, more complex insurance regulations, adaptive social resistance to technological change, city infrastructure requirements with a digital divide, and disruptive business innovation based on strategic input supply partnerships with open-source AI. In this chapter, the key factors of the autonomous vehicles (AVs) are analyzed using AI developments in radar and laser technology, commercial risk factors, self-driving consumer behavior, city infrastructure constraints, and social adaptations to new technology. The future trajectory of the AV industry is expected to be an interplay between commercial, social, risk, infrastructure, and regulatory mechanisms with various impacts on the industry’s stakeholders. This study predicts that the most likely sustainable scenario for the AV industry is that it will be driven by: (1) AI’s pulsed laser LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) with a sufficient loop frequency and GPS bi-directional cloud technology requirement, (2) pooled insurance in contrast to individual liability, (3) smart city infrastructure with expected sharp digital divide across transport regions leading to more regional inequality, and (4) customers who strongly prefer a human controlled semi-autonomous vehicle rather than complete machine autonomy.