Autonomous vehicles — The future of electric mobility?

While there is great interest in predicting market prospects for electric vehicles, most results to date have been notoriously inaccurate. A better approach, set out in the present paper, may be to look at broader social trends and consider a wider range of vehicle systems and personal mobility models. Following clear trends in military vehicle technology, this model may well show an increased shift to autonomous vehicles which offer many advantages of energy efficiency, improved driver and public safety and reduced GHG and other emissions. The rationale for this trend, along with a survey of the technology and some predictions for the future are discussed?