After passing a law regulating driver assistance systems recently (which unfortunately falls short of allowing fully self-driving cars) and receiving the report (PDF) from the German ethics panel on self-driving cars, the German cabinet seems to warm to a future with self-driving cars.

In June, German Chancellor Angela Merkel provided the following forecast as part of her answer to a question about what the world would look like 20 years from with the the statement that “In 20 years, we will need a special permit if we want to drive a car manually.”…”We are the biggest risk.” (Source: Die Welt, Auto Motor Sport, 2017-06-09). Also in early June, Germany’s minister for transport and infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt, said that he wants Germany to have the world’s most modern public transport by 2025, a vision which builds on self-driving electric buses (Source: Bayernkurier, 2017-06-09).

In a country, where many jobs directly or indirectly depend on the auto industry, these statements may be an indication that Germany is taking a future with autonomous vehicles more seriously and begins to give some thoughts to the near- and long term implications of self-driving car technology. There are few indications, however, that the transport ministry has begun to consider the effects of self-driving cars, trucks and buses on the national road infrastructure (the recently released national traffic infrastructure plan 2030 does not take self-driving vehicles into account). Plans to reduce the current and projected shortage of truck overnight parking spaces along German highways don’t take into account that demand for such spaces may peak in the early twenties. As with many other countries (including the EU, that is currently considering a costly infrastructure requirement for EV charging stations that completely disregards the likely changes for parking, EV charging and mobility caused by autonomous vehicles) , the enabling relationship between self-driving car technology and the adoption of electric vehicles is  still not recognized. Neither are the impact on rail-based transport, which will likely see a decline on many routes and which will also loose much of its environmental advantage (so popular with many environmental thinkers and infrastructure planners) with the rise of self-driving scheduled and on-demand electric buses.

Today billions of Euros are mis-allocated in city-planning, construction, traffic infrastructure development because planners assume that mobility and transport patterns of the future will be similar today. It is time for German, European and the world’s leaders to seriously consider the changes that result from self-driving vehicles. Hopefully the recent statements from the Germany cabinet are an indication that politicians are beginning to slowly move into this direction…