Economy-wide impacts from different speeds of deployment of automated vehicles on European Union roads

Abstract

This study analyses the socio-economic effects (gross domestic product, employment, and output) of automated cars and trucks deployment scenarios in the EU using the macro-economic general equilibrium model JRC-GEM-E3. Our analysis focuses on the major potential impacts referred to in the literature, namely, the expected cost of deployment at scale of all levels of automation for cars and trucks, the potential impact on professional drivers' jobs, the additional maintenance and repair cost of high-level (Level 4 and 5) automated vehicles, and the effects on vehicle energy efficiency, congestion and road traffic collisions. Since the last three impacts can vary depending on travel behaviour, six stylised responses are considered, ranging from a reduction in demand for road transport to a rebound effect, with and without sharing of high-level AVs. Overall, our results highlight, when sharing high-level AVs, that a fast and medium deployment are beneficial for the EU economy, independently of the behavioural response. When high-level AVs are deployed without ride sharing, non-environmentally friendly responses (i.e. those promoting an increase in energy consumption, congestion costs and road traffic collisions) can turn GDP effects negative. Sectorally, automation can change demand for workers in the economy, with the electronic and services sectors requiring more workers to build the additional components needed by autonomous vehicles, and the land transport sector suffering the biggest loss in employment due to fewer professional drivers needed at higher levels of automation.