More than 740,000 self-driving cars will be on the market by 2023

Gartner's latest report shows that by 2023, the net increase in the number of autonomous vehicles worldwide will reach 745,705, up from 332,932 in 2019 and 137,129 in 2018. These figures do not represent sales, but the net change in the number of autonomous vehicles.

According to the analyst firm, the growth of autonomous vehicles will be driven by the North American, Greater China and Western European markets. As the number of vehicles in these regions increases, these regions will be the first to introduce relevant technical regulations. Jonathan Davenport, chief research analyst at Gartner, explained exactly what autonomous vehicles are. He said that there are no advanced autonomous vehicles on roads around the world now, outside of the research and development stage. Currently, the autonomous driving capabilities of vehicles are limited, and they still rely on drivers for supervision. However, many of these vehicles have autonomous driving hardware, including cameras, radar, and in some cases, lidar sensors, which can support fully autonomous driving. Through over-the-air software updates, these vehicles can begin to operate at higher levels of autonomous driving.

Gartner said that currently no country has effective regulations in place that would allow self-driving cars to operate legally. It also said that companies would not deploy self-driving cars because they would be responsible for any mistakes and accidents that occurred. Despite the growing number of self-driving cars, the sensors required will still cost a lot of money. Gartner said that by 2026, the cost of sensors will drop by 25% compared to 2020, but they will still be too expensive, which means that their use will be limited to high-end models.