Gothenburg, Sweden -- By 2030, 90 percent of all cars sold will be capable of some degree of automated driving, a new report has found.
The Global ADAS and Autonomous Car Market – 1st Edition report, from Berg Insight, analyzed developments in the autonomous car market worldwide and used that information to develop five-year industry forecasts.
As defined in the report’s executive summary, a fully autonomous car is “a car that is able to drive from an arbitrary point A to another arbitrary point B in the same environmental conditions as manageable by a human driver.” The report notes that this is the “last step on a continuum of more or less autonomous cars,” as many vehicles today are equipped with ADAS features.
This continuum can be conceptualized using the six-level standard developed by SAE International, which describes the different levels of automated driving on a scale from zero to five. There is no autonomy at level zero, and level five is complete autonomy. ADAS features drivers may be more familiar with are found in levels one to four, such as adaptive cruise control (level one), simultaneous management of steering and speed under certain conditions (level two), handling all driving tasks by the vehicle where the driver can resume control when prompted (level three) and full vehicle autonomy on the condition that the vehicle is in the operational design domain (level four).
The Swedish IoT market research firm specializes in fleet management, car telematics, industrial M2M and more. In 2024, Berg Insight estimates that 68.6 percent of cars sold globally met SAE level one or higher and 40.5 percent of all vehicles sold were under SAE level one, whereas 28.1 percent of all vehicles were under SAE level two. Only a “very small percentage of the cars sold” were categorized as SAE level three, such as “select Mercedes-Benz in the US (Nevada and California) and select BMW models in Germany.”
In 2030, Berg Insight expects that of all the new cars sold globally, 27.7 percent will be level one, 51.2 percent will be level two, 8.6 percent will be level three and 2.9 percent will be level four. ADAS is credited as a “major differentiator for automakers,” with Drive Pilot by Mercedes-Benz in the U.S. and the BMW Personal Pilot L3 system on the new 7 Series in Germany currently complying with level three requirements.
OEMs offering sophisticated ADAS include Audi (Audi pre sense), Ford (BlueCruise), General Motors (Super Cruise) and Tesla (Autopilot and Full Self-Driving). According to the report, Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota offer comprehensive safety suites and Chinese OEMs are in the lead for introducing sophisticated ADAS, including BYD Auto, Changan and NIO. Some companies in China and the U.S. are offering robotaxi services, such as Avride, DiDi Autonomous Driving and Waymo.
Tier 1 suppliers, semiconductor solution providers, technology companies, software companies and startups are bringing technology to the market, and some of the leading global Tier 1 suppliers listed in the report include Bosch, Hitachi Astemo and Magna International. Semiconductor solution providers are developing System-on-Chips for automated driving. Mobileye, NVIDIA and Qualcomm are among those developing SoCs, and suppliers are “at the core of the progress in ADAS and autonomous driving” because they provide the AI capabilities and high-performance computing that autonomous cars need.
