Safe Efficient Vehicle Solutions -On Driving Forces for Future Road Transportations

Other conference contribution, 2011

The primary objective of this paper is to present the most relevant factors and driving forces that influence future sustainable road transportations and exemplify how they may influence the development. The research methodology used is explorative scenarios where data collected from workshops, expert panels and surveys lay the foundations for the explanatory models [1]. Several driving forces are identified. However, two of them are found to be more important for the study as they have a strong influence on the development of the road transport system; yet it is uncertain how these driving forces will develop. The first of these driving forces is the ability of the authorities to take an active role when developing a sustainable transport system and the second how actively people will demand and support changes in the vehicles and the transport system. Four different future road transportation scenarios have been created to explore how changes in these two driving forces will influence the development of vehicles and road transport system; these scenarios are explained together with characteristics of future road transportation solutions. It is concluded that plans for technology development need to consider the uncertainties of these driving forces in order to enable creation of robust development roadmaps.