Forecasting Near-term Uptake of Technologies to Support Transport Agency Decision-making

1. Introduction and Background

Austroads is the collective of the Australian and New Zealand transport agencies, representing all levels of government. Austroads Future Vehicles and Technologies (FVaT) program supports Austroads’ member organizations to deliver an improved road transport network that leverages the benefits of emerging technologies whilst minimizing some of the risks inevitably faced during a period of rapid change.

Australian and New Zealand vehicle fleets may be at the start of a period of significant change due to the emergence of Automated, Connected and Electric Vehicles as well as new models of vehicle ownership and use.

Austroads commissioned forecasts to explore the likely adoption of certain vehicle technologies within the vehicle fleets of 2030 in Australia and New Zealand. These forecasts seek to guide planning for the FVaT program as well as to assist planning within member agencies and the broader industry. Importantly, the output was always intended to be only the forecasts of sales and fleet penetration. While there are many questions that arise from the growth of these vehicle technologies within the vehicle fleet, the exploration of those questions was intended to occur separately to the production of the forecasts. This purity of focus also freed the forecasting effort from considering the question of desirability – i.e. to consider the range of likely adoption rates, without any bias that can be difficult to avoid when also considering whether those levels of adoption are desirable or undesirable.

As this is a fast-moving field, the initial forecast produced during 2019-20 was intended to be the start of a process in which forecasts would be regularly revised and updated. The first update process was undertaken during 2021 and revised the forecasts and extended the horizon to 2031.

2. Method and Discussion of Method

The general approach adopted for forecasting the penetration of new technologies into new vehicles and the vehicle fleet was informed by the patterns of adoption for past and current vehicle technologies such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and Auto Emergency Braking (AEB). The approach is broadly similar to that used more recently by the Australian Government Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) [1] for vehicle technology adoption.

The limited horizon adopted by this project (2030-2031) allowed the adoption of a (relatively) simple approach, informed by these prior technology adoptions. This involved five broad activities explained in more detail below:

• Identifying in specific detail, and agreeing with stakeholders, which technologies should be forecast

• Confirming an approach to modelling technology adoption in newly purchased vehicles

• Developing a fleet penetration model for the adoption of newly purchased vehicles equipped with the new technology into the fleet

• Building and analyzing the evidence bases to inform the forecast for each specific technology

• Developing descriptive commentary for uptake in other vehicle types

2.1 Identifying Technologies to be Forecast

A total of eight specific technologies were agreed to be the subject of forecasts in the original forecast set (Future Vehicles 2030). In the Future Vehicles 2031 update, some of these definitions were updated to reflect changes in market expectations, and one was discontinued.