Autonomous vehicles, at long last, seem to be winning the hearts and minds of their curious (or brave) passengers. “SF's hottest club is a Waymo,” posted one digital artist on X, summing up the mostly warm reviews the self-driving car company has received after it rolled out its commercial taxi service in August 2023. Despite ongoing concerns over safety and job losses, AVs have arrived as a part of everyday life for some Americans: The San Francisco Chronicle reported 191,000 driverless rides between September and November of last year, and Waymo vehicles have driven more than 5 million miles in Arizona. What does that mean for the United States, arguably the most auto-centric nation in the world? A new report commissioned by the tech industry trade group Chamber of Progress, and shared exclusively with Digital Future Daily, attempts to answer that question as AV companies push to roll out their vehicles across the country. “Once this technology actually becomes available to the public, it’s popular,” Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, told me. Kovacevich argued that the spread of AVs is inevitable, and that by restricting their use due to safety or labor concerns the U.S. risks lagging China, which has enthusiastically adopted the technology. Critics of the technology say it will violently disrupt the economy for gains that will accrete largely to the tech industry, with one Teamster in Indiana protesting in a legislative hearing that it “wouldn’t just be bad for professional drivers,” but it would also create “a ripple effect throughout the economy, negatively affecting the finances of both private and public sector entities” in his state. Researchers commissioned by the Chamber of Progress project three potential scenarios for U.S. adoption of AVs: a cautious and conservative approach to the technology; a “moderate” approach; and full speed ahead (no pun intended). In the moderate scenario, they expect nearly 9 million AVs on the roads over the next 15 years; the creation of 114,000 jobs in the design, maintenance, and logistics sectors; and that those jobs will largely pay more than the U.S. median wage of $44,520, with states that have strong STEM and auto industries reaping most of the benefits. One major obstacle to AV development is regulation. The auto industry is one of America’s most heavily regulated, and organized labor has applied considerable pressure to restrict or slow down driverless cars. In its report, the Chamber of Progress urges “a supportive federal regulatory environment” that might organize the current “patchwork approach” the group says is hampering the technology’s growth. That’s easier said than done, as state governments largely handle cars: you register your vehicle at your state’s DMV, after all, not a federal one. Kovacevich acknowledged that states will ultimately have to be the main actors, but said that the federal government can shape the standards for autonomous vehicles as driverless cars unlock a revolution in design. “When you really think about it, there's no reason an autonomous vehicle has to have a brake pedal and a steering wheel and a side view mirrors; that’s a relic,” Kovacevich said, lamenting that driverless car companies face a federal cap on how many such non-traditional vehicles they can produce. A major sticking point for critics of an AV-dominated future is the potential economic turmoil, especially for the more than 2.7 million people employed full-time as drivers in the United States. And it’s not just drivers who will be affected, as a 2017 report from the University of Michigan predicted AVs could impact one in nine workers due to their wide-ranging impact across the economy (take, for example, truck stops that require fewer employees). A report from the University of Texas called driverless vehicles a “revolution,” with cascading effects for the auto repair, insurance, and medical industries. I asked Kovacevich how he and other AV boosters think the economic disruption of driverless cars might be mitigated, carrying as it does the echo of America’s 1990s and 2000s-era de-industrialization and the troubled “reskilling” programs that followed. He challenged states to address this risk with more aggressive job training programs, saying “If states spent half as much energy overhauling their training programs to prepare for these jobs as they have on bills to thwart autonomous vehicles, they'd be in a much better position to take advantage of this.” California, for now, remains the premiere battleground for this attempted revolution. The state’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has been largely supportive of the AV industry and the broader tech sector, while activists and local politicians voice concern. As long as other states remain resistant to the technology, AVs remain one of the emerging technologies that America watches struggle to be born in Silicon Valley.
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