The commercialization of self-driving vehicles may eventually add billions in annual economic and societal benefits while contributing only marginally to jobs lost to automation, a new report argues.
The data gathered by Securing America’s Future Energy, an advocacy group working to limit U.S. dependence on overseas oil, illustrate the potential payoff from the race among U.S. businesses to deploy the country’s first fully autonomous vehicle. While a lax regulatory framework and several recent fatalities involving self-driving cars have spurred concerns over their safety and government regulations are yet to be determined, supporters also say the vehicles can greatly reduce the 37,000 deaths a year on U.S. highways.
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Self-driving cars might add $800 billion in consumer benefits by 2050, the report said, and the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles, or AVs, would increase the national unemployment rate by only .06 to .13 percent at “peak impact,” which SAFE estimates will be between 2045 and 2050. An estimated 73 million jobs could be lost to automation more broadly by 2030.
“The economic and societal benefits offered by AVs in a single year of widespread deployment will dwarf the cost to workers incurred over the entire multidecadal deployment of AVs,” according to the report, authored by former officials at the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor.
SAFE said “strong workforce development infrastructure” could serve to ease any job losses. The group estimated that the total value of benefits provided by autonomous technology, including accident reduction and reduced oil consumption, would be $3.2 to $6.3 trillion by 2050.
One of the major questions surrounding the technology is regulation. Legislation that would implement an initial oversight framework passed the House last year, but a competing bill in the Senate stalled amid opposition from several lawmakers.
SAFE estimated that Congress has until the 2030s to “research, design, and implement workforce development solutions.” The group recommended that, among other things, lawmakers enhance the services provided through job centers administered by the Department of Labor.
The group also suggested that state and federal governments use some of the economic benefits expected from self-driving vehicles to pay for efforts to ease the impact of related job losses.
