Latest / Autonomy Insiders / Public Trust in Autonomous Vehicles: What Europeans Actually Fear
Transcript
- Daniel Abreu Marques: Welcome to Autonomy Insiders, the show where global industry leaders in autonomous driving unpack their real-world insights. Guido Di Pasquale: The objective of PAVE Europe is to provide clear and transparent and factual information we are not biased or representing the voice of a specific category, but really acting as a neutral voice for the potential of this technology, our success will be measured if we at some point shut down as Pave Europe, because it means that we are not needed anymore because this is adopted, it's everywhere. Daniel Abreu Marques: Welcome to Autonomy Insiders. I'm your host Daniel and today we look at the part of autonomous vehicle story that gets not enough airtime, like public trust, education, and whether the public is ready for the technology at all. And my guest today is Guido Di Pasquale, Managing Director of PAVE Europe, and PAVE stands for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education. So Guido, welcome to Autonomy Insiders, and I'm so happy to have you on the show today. Guido Di Pasquale: Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be with you. Daniel Abreu Marques: So to start, maybe let's get the listeners a clean version of what is PAVE and just as important also what is Pave not. Guido Di Pasquale: That's a good question. What is FAVE? I hope it is clear after three years. It's not a long time, but it's still a little baby. After three years, it's clear that we are a nonprofit coalition. So it's a nonprofit association with stakeholders working in the AV sector, collaborating towards a single mission which is educating two main target groups. From one side, the general public, and from the other side, the policymakers, decision makers, institutions, so all those who needs to be informed about what is coming and what is not coming to prepare the market basically for autonomous vehicles. The objective of PAVE Europe is to provide clear and transparent and factual information to these target groups so that we are not biased or representing the voice of a specific category, but really acting as a neutral voice for the potential of this technology, the autonomous mobility technology. they can take informed decisions. So now what is not a Europe, and this is very clear since day one, it's not a lobby organization or a trade association. So we are not representing a specific category and we are not pushing or trying to influence regulators or anyone on a specific technology or solution, but really, being the voice of all stakeholders working in this field. Daniel Abreu Marques: and PAVE Europe is also funded by its members and those members include also A V developers, insurers, certification bodies. And how do you stay then this credible, neutral educator when the people paying the bills have a clear commercial interest in the adoption? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, that's a fair question we survive thanks to our members. So it's important to have their contributions. But as we used to say, it's an army of volunteers. So all these members working together, not only contributing financially, but also with their resources, staff and knowledge and expertise. So I would say the real value here is diversity. As I said before, we are not representing one single category, but we have the whole value chain. So the AV developers, the insurers, the testing validators, and we have public transport operators, ride daily operators, even authorities and some consultancy firms. So this diversity ensure that we stay educational and not promotional. And at the end, this trust or this balance and credible voice comes from this diversity and from this balance dialogue. Because at the end, you cannot have someone prevailing the others because there are so many voices that members needs to find consensus. on the messages that they want to convey. it's, they pay the bill, but they know that they have to work together with all the other members. Daniel Abreu Marques: And education can also sometimes sound a bit vague. So on a normal month, so what does PAVE Europe actually do? Can you walk us through some real activities? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, it's not easy from the, as you may know, from the citizens point of view, to also engage with the citizens. As I said, one of the target groups that we have. But we try to organize campaigns so that we can convey the messages and start to inform them that autonomous vehicles are coming. That's not only something far away in the future or maybe in China or something that they can see in US but it's also coming in Europe so we start to have campaigns with citizens where the technology is already deployed. There are not so many unfortunately at the moment in Europe but still we use the possibility to have some of our members deploying AVs in some cities in Europe so that we can organize a day. where citizens can see and talk with us and experience the vehicle and tell us what they perceived before trying the vehicle and what they really experienced after. But we also do many activities, let's say more B2B or more industry oriented, organizing conferences, public events, where we have websites where we to publish all the relevant papers and publications and promote them. We organize something similar to what you do brilliantly in the virtual panels with our members. We participate in several research projects funded by the European Commission that gives us the possibility to research and to be in touch with the various stakeholders. We have organized ourselves in working groups. the way we create the content and generate the knowledge is done through the members and through our working groups working on public transport and shared mobility, on goods transportation, on insurance, or in general on public understanding. So it's a way to bring the members together to work on key messages. And we also organize courses, trainings, capacity building. We recently organized a very successful one in Hamburg, where in this case authorities could really get the knowledge from experts, but also try or experience some study visits in Hamburg, as you know. A lot is happening there. So there are many, many of these activities that we try to... to do to engage with the various stakeholders, as I said, decision makers and authorities and citizens. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, super interesting and super important work that you do there. And what I also found really striking is also that the founding mix you have. In the US, there's also PAVE and it leans more towards car makers and tech. In Europe you have, for example, Tiff Rheinland and three insurers in the founding group. So what does that tell us about how Europe wants to approach autonomy? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, the idea of the PAVE Europe founding members was to focus on level four, basically. So there's a bit of difference between PAVE Europe and PAVE in US, where they focus also their educational activities on others. And if you see the founding members, have testing and validation organization like to frame that we have insurance companies from one side, but we also have level four AV companies from the other side. think this says a lot about the nature of Europe where Let's say given the structure of our cities and also the culture that we have with public transport and shared mobility and also the nature of our cities, we look more at autonomous mobility as a service rather than privately owned cars. So if the focus is more level 4, then we look less, at least at the moment at OEMs and the classical or the traditional automotive sector that funded pay us. Daniel Abreu Marques: Make sense and as you already described before, you educate to very different audiences, so the general public, but also policymakers and in Europe. So is there one where you need to spend more energy towards at the moment? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, given the fact that we don't have so many vehicles in Europe, autonomous vehicles in Europe, now the energy or the focus that we have is mainly on policymakers. So I would say in short term, our energy goes to educating policymakers and long term citizens. It's quite important as we see because there is little knowledge and especially it's not very well balanced or distributed. There are some countries or some few cities with some experience because they started years ago with shuttles and they had some experience, they failed and then they changed type of... solutions but also we have a few countries quite advanced like Germany for example, France, UK and others that are waiting for the others to lead. So we decided to focus mainly on policymakers let's say because they will be the ones that will enable them education towards the citizens because they are the ones working on regulation for example and working on the deployment and operational side. There is another category that maybe can fall under policy makers, but it's more local, the cities and public transport authorities or mobility agencies. So now we see more and more that this is the target group at the moment to educate or to inform. So it's important that we engage with them. that we have a dialogue with them so that they are prepared for what is happening and they don't realize at the last moment that maybe robotaxi are invading their cities and they are not prepared. Daniel Abreu Marques: super important and this also as part of your activities. Pave shows up at events, for example, like the European A V Summit. I think there we also met the first time in in person. So what does a room full of people give you that maybe a report or something like this will never give you? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, it's quite interesting to see the return of our activity. what we do, it's not easy to measure actually because it's... What we said at the beginning when Pave Europe was funded, well, our success will be measured if we at some point shut down as Pave Europe, because it means that we are not needed anymore because this is adopted, it's everywhere. But I think it's very rewarding to, for example, when we organize study visits. In some cases, it changed the opinion of the real decision makers. So they had an opinion that this technology could not serve their policy goals or their needs. We organized delegations to visit autonomous vehicles in US. They could sit, try to listen to to tech providers and also to their peers that they had the same problems. And when they came back, actually, this influenced the national regulation and also the speed for the nation. So this is something, it's not quantitative, but it's qualitative. And it says that some of the activities can change. the path towards autonomous vehicle deployment and regulation. Daniel Abreu Marques: Also really interesting to hear your view on that when you're shutting down, then you you have done everything right because you're not needed anymore. So Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah. Daniel Abreu Marques: super interesting. And I think trust is also a word that PAVE keeps coming back to. Maybe let's get a bit specific about the European public. So when you look at the data, what do Europeans actually fear or also misunderstand about abise and is it different from what worries Americans, for example? Guido Di Pasquale: I think the fears and worries are more or less the same everywhere. We have some studies that I usually refer to, not so many recently, honestly. So we are talking about studies that are four or five years old. But all these studies highlights that there is some sort of misunderstanding. So before we talk about trust, we should talk about understanding or misunderstanding. For example, there was a study from the Yoyt Register Foundation. It was global. And the result was that around 65 % of the people interviewed would not trust or would not be confident. in autonomous vehicles. On the other side, there was another research from Tatcham in UK, where the result was that above 50%, like 52 % of the British population believes that they can buy today, well, it was three years ago, but it's the same basically, they could buy a fully autonomous vehicle, what we call level five. So as you can see, the perception is quite wrong in this case, but this is what it is. In US, the focus is more on ADAS, and there it's more about trust in the functionalities. So if they can trust the features of ADAS, or if they don't trust them, then they switch off. functionality and they never use it anymore. So the education and trust and acceptance is more into this direction. And when they try these features and they really try it, mean, they learn how to use them, then they like it. But the problem is, let them try these features and get confidence with them. So these are the studies. So I would say that at the moment in Europe, because we don't have these vehicles around, we stay at the level of perception and what people hear from US or from China or what they can see from Instagram or social media or what they can hear from some press or media. So that's the situation. But I would say that what would distinguish us is more governance and societal aspects concerns. So safety is important, but it's more important for European what happens when these vehicles will be in our cities. Will there be thousands, millions of robotaxi around the cities? Will I lose my job because of this? Will my personal data will be shared with someone in China or in US? So there are still this more than safety, I would say. Daniel Abreu Marques: And you also touched on this chicken and egg problem. So people trust what they have tried, but Europe has few deployments to try. So how do you build trust then when most people have never seen AVs in their cities? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, it's not easy. And in fact, we are now waiting or we have started to do some campaigns with pilots for the demonstrations that are available with some of our members. But it's important that we do it. I even if we don't have these vehicles, it's important that we prepare, as we said before, the policymakers, the local politicians so that they If they cannot try the vehicles here in Europe, let's bring them to US or China and see the vehicles. There are still some cases and some deployment in Europe that they can see, for example, in Belgium and Leuven or in Hamburg or in UK soon. And I hope that 26 and 27 will be the pivotal years where we will have beyond announcements, we will have real deployment so that people can really start seeing that without forgetting that we will have to engage with the press and the media, maybe before the common people or before all of us. But I'm sure if you speak with your friend, maybe you speak a lot about autonomous vehicles with your friends, but if you speak with you know, normal or relatives or whoever, they have not heard about autonomous vehicles at all. It's very difficult that they have heard about autonomous vehicles. Daniel Abreu Marques: Most of them only heard from Tesla or something like this and Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah. Daniel Abreu Marques: say they are the the leaders and so on. So it's not something they really have in mind or something that is really close. So it's more like a far distant future or something that maybe happens in the US or something, but not here in Europe. So totally agree with that. And Guido Di Pasquale: That's it. Daniel Abreu Marques: Pave puts also real weight on accessibility and also inclusive design. So how central is that? to acceptance and also is an A V that does not work for older or disabled riders, is it actually then a failure even if it's safe? Guido Di Pasquale: think this is a key point that you touch here. It's spave Europe. have the mission to engage with those who have not access to mobility today, or at least not how they should. Elderly, disabled, blind, even young or children. or people living in rural area or not having driving license. So there are so many that cannot access mobility or not independent. Nobody wants to depend to others. That's terrible. So here we have the possibility with autonomous vehicles to repair or to address mistakes that were done in the past. with the mobility system, with the transport system, where the solutions were designed, let's be honest, by average white, Western European men, not even women. So the system is designed by them, for them, or for us, and many others have no access to mobility. So autonomous vehicles now, before they are deployed, should be designed to give access to everyone. And if they give access to everyone, or they give access to this special, let me allow me to call this, special categories, then it will be accessible to everyone. Because all of us will have mobility issues in our day, not in a period, even during the day. So it's very important that It is co-designed. So all the mobility systems with autonomous vehicles are co-designed thinking about or designed thinking about accessibility and co-designed with those who know this problem. So we had a Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah. Guido Di Pasquale: very interesting conference last year where we really discussed this and we had testimonials. So how blind, for example, leave mobility. It's not easy. There are many aspects that you would not consider. You wouldn't ever think about it. So it's important to listen to them. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, sure. Sometimes you you cannot imagine what feelings they have when they try to be mobile during the day. So it's important to talk to them to have like the first hand experience, as you mentioned. staying with acceptance. I think we can also ask the question is European acceptance uniform, or are some countries maybe far ahead, or where do you see the the public most open and where most resistant maybe? Guido Di Pasquale: Europe is not uniform by default. It's wide and what happens in transport and mobility in Scandinavia is different from Greece and south of Europe or Italy and Spain. Also the culture of mobility and transport is difficult. So was thinking that... I'm not sure if Italians would accept an autonomous vehicle 100 % respecting the rules. Because you know, sometimes you are in a hurry, you want to catch the train and you see this vehicle is respecting the rule and not driving as you would drive. So there are differences in cultures. But at the moment, if you look at, I don't know if it is acceptance, it's more exposure probably in countries like UK. They are more and more getting exposed to this because there are several announcements. They can already see Waymo and Wave and they can hear that Uber is coming and others and they hear that from the media and the press, so it's exposure. Maybe this debate is not happening in, I don't know, in Slovenia, for example. So it's more exposure and with this openness. The more they are exposed and they hear about it and they talk about it, and then at some point they will try it. So, and for sure there will be trust. earlier than other counts. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah, That's again the the chicken and egg problem we talked earlier before. Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah. Daniel Abreu Marques: So maybe let us widen the lens to the whole European A V picture. So I would be interested in your opinion. What is Europe's edge that is real and also defensible? Something that Europe genuinely does better than others Guido Di Pasquale: Well, in this years, now it's more than 10 years that I'm involved in this European debates around autonomous mobility. It's true that we lack of something. Maybe we can talk about this later. But I think that our strength in Europe is this collaboration framework, which is not... only talking. This can be confused with just, okay, Europe, you just talk and the others do. But it's really trying to make it right and to make it in a way that all the systems are integrated. Having a system of systems and making sure that autonomous vehicles, when they are deployed, they are deployed thinking about how this they will be integrated into public transport and not simply, you know, doing their job independently. And for this, you need a lot of alignment. You need a lot of dialogue between the tech companies and the public transport authorities and the cities and the public transport operators and the users and the passengers and road users, cyclists and pedestrians and road infrastructure authorities. So it's really a consultation and building an ecosystem and I think that in Europe we are quite good at that and we don't see it in other regions of the world. Daniel Abreu Marques: Makes sense and maybe you also try to touch a bit on the flip side. So what is the single biggest thing Europe is missing? So is it capital deployments, a a European champion? So what's your opinion on that? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah, there was quite a long discussion, quite an exciting discussion a couple of weeks ago in Brussels about this, because you know, now we have competitiveness at the center of all discussions. So we moved from the Green Deal to competitiveness and how to make Europe a champion again. It's evident that we miss a champion in the ADS stack for this. quite obvious and it will take some years probably to recover this gap. But in order to have that, probably you mentioned is the capital, the money. So at the end, the discussion goes towards the lack of capitals because in Europe, we always talk about millions, but here we need billions. And that's the scale. Then of course we have this fragmentation in the regulation. It's true that we have the type of approval, but still we have 27 member states with different local regulation for deployment for operation. And if this fragmentation remains, it will be difficult for companies to scale. So that's... That's what is missing for sure. We are not missing talents. We are not missing engineers and we are not missing very good universities, but probably we miss an ecosystem or something that makes these talents and research and universities linked to the industry. They are not working in an isolated way. So sometimes also the university and the research should be closer to the reality. Maybe this is something that we should talk about. Daniel Abreu Marques: Yeah. I think it's also kind of a a problem or something that you can also observe is that you have very good talent here in Europe. So you they get educated here and in the universities and so on, and then they work for a Waymour or a Zoo's or someone Guido Di Pasquale: Amen. Daniel Abreu Marques: else in the US and not here and don't build up something here. Guido Di Pasquale: Yes, yes, I think so. I also think that Europe is a beautiful place to be. Daniel Abreu Marques: Absolutely, yeah. So you also touched on one sentence that I heard often when I listened to analysts Guido Di Pasquale: Mm-hmm. Daniel Abreu Marques: or something like that. This is Europe is regulating first and deploying later, and US and China is deploy first and write rules later. So what do you think? Is this maybe also an advantage for Europe, or is it a polite way of saying we are slow? Guido Di Pasquale: It's both a strength and a risk at the same time. Regulating first means that, as I said before, we tend to make it right. So it's safety first and we want to be sure that everything is done as it should be. And as we know, on the other side, the... the development of the technology is faster because they can validate and they can test on the road so they can get data and be faster in the development and this is what we cannot do in Europe. But on other side, if you have clear rules, also the industry appreciate that because then they know that these rules are definitive and they can then deploy. In the other case, you may have uncertainty because it's true that you can deploy, but then if something happens, rules can change and this would be an issue for the industries. So at the end, the challenge is balance between them. In Europe, we should be faster, for sure, but still keeping our values in this sense. Otherwise, we should not sacrifice competitiveness and try to accelerate the possibility for industry to deploy and test and learn from operation, because this is what they need. But still with clear rules. think at the end, this would be an advantage for, like you say, if you make it here, you make it everywhere. Daniel Abreu Marques: Makes sense and and then if we if we take a look at China, they're they run level four robotaxis in more than forty cities with players like Baidu, Ponyai, We Ride. They are operating at scale over there. So what can Europe actually learn from that maybe? And what is also simply not transferable to Europe? Guido Di Pasquale: they have speed, for sure. They have a speed that in Europe we don't have. I don't know how to learn that. I mean, we should learn to be faster, for sure. How, I don't know. It's probably the governments, as we said, and the regulations should help. to be faster, but also capital can help to be faster. So we can learn from China for sure how to scale because they have massive deployment if I compare it with Europe. And this deployment then enable learnings and accelerate also these aspects of how to learn and how to adjust. So for operators it's crucial if they don't scale, they cannot learn and then they cannot move faster. Maybe some concerns are about the privacy and the transparency of the data. I think this should be maintained in Europe, even if the technology is coming from China or as well. So try to keep this value. always in Europe. Daniel Abreu Marques: the US has also moved to restrict Chinese connected and autonomous vehicles. And as of now there's no equivalent EU wide ban. So in your view, should Europe restrict Chinese A V players the way Washington is doing? Guido Di Pasquale: Well, short answer is no. I don't think that we should ban anyone. First, because we need to learn from... Because as we said, we don't have this ADS stack in Europe, although there are a few companies that are starting, but they still need some time. So we need Chinese technology, but also US technology to start deploying. And also for us, for our education mission, it would be positive because then we will have vehicles in Europe so that we could actually have educational campaigns that are close to the reality. but also give the possibility to, for example, I mentioned before Levin with the lane, they have a Chinese provider. It's for them is key because they couldn't find alternatives. They have a Chinese provider, but thanks to that, they can learn how the behavior of the vehicles, how to put the vehicles in their streets, how the the other road users react how to train their staff in supervising the vehicles and starting with this addressing the driver shortage, which is a real issue. It's not like something that will happen in the far future. So there is a lot to gain and at the same time we wait for the European technology to to raise. And then if we set, let's say, our standards, for example, for data sovereignty or considering these vehicles as critical infrastructures, we set our standards. So you say, these are our rules. If you want to deploy in Europe, you have to comply with this rule. Daniel Abreu Marques: a real trade-off that is that's happening there. So blocking Chinese A V technology protects maybe the European industry, but the same technology could also speed up deployment here, give European riders access much sooner, and also we can learn a much faster. So it's a real kind of a trade-off and hard to hard to balance and hard to weigh, in my opinion. So let's picture twenty thirty. So what does a realistic European autonomous mobility reality look like for you? And what is the one factor that decides whether Europe is a real player or just a market for other players technology like the Chinese ones, for example? Guido Di Pasquale: Yeah. So 2030 is not that far away. It's tomorrow. Basically, if you look at this, what we have waited in the past years, we all thought that Avis would have been on our roads in 2020. This is not the case. So 2030, but we also see this year and next year as key. years for the deployment. Many companies are announcing deployment, so big companies. So I could see that in 2030 we would have, we'll have meaningful deployment. So not, I don't know, robot taxi or shuttles or vehicles everywhere just to be there and to show that there is a deployment. but really having a commercial deployment with real needs of the city or for the users and real needs of the city that where this technology is satisfying their policy goals. So I could expect more robotaxi in some European cities, more... shuttles or ride pulling integrated with public transport. And some, we already have deployment in gated areas. So I think this is already a reality. So I expect that this will be strengthened and we will have this more and more. And also some cases in logistics as freight. Because we don't talk about this enough. But there you really have the business case. I hope that we will see more long distance trucks that are autonomous also in Europe. Because we can see them only in US now, but how we can see that in where it can work. What remains critical, I think we still don't see, at least for level four, we don't see OEMs and tier one. Where are they? If we want to stay competitive in Europe, it's true that we need an ADS stack provider, but we also need OEMs to be on board and to move from level 2, plus plus, level 3 to more fully autonomous vehicles. Daniel Abreu Marques: Absolutely agree especially because this is somehow our heritage. So we have a lot of big OAMC in Europe, we have a lot of big T one suppliers here in Europe, so we should make use of this heritage that we have here in Europe and our strength. Guido Di Pasquale: Exactly. Daniel Abreu Marques: Guido, it was a really insightful conversation. And I thank you really much for the time today, for sharing all your views with us, and also thank you for all the work you do for the education of autonomous vehicles here in Europe. I think this is really, really important work that you do, and I'm happy to support that. so thanks again, Guido, and it was great to have you on the show today. Guido Di Pasquale: Thank you, Dan. It was a real pleasure. Thanks a lot.