UAE stands 8th in Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index: KPMG report

UAE ranks 8th among 30 countries in the world when it comes to readiness to accommodate driverless vehicles, according to KPMG's 2020 Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index (AVRI). The third edition of the index, assessed the progress of 30 countries and jurisdictions based on 28 different measures, broadly as four pillars – policy and legislation, technology and innovation, infrastructure and consumer acceptance.

According to the report, the safety case for Autonomous Vehicles (AV) is getting stronger every year. The pandemic has affected all kinds of transport sectors however, with the right intervention of government support, both local and national, expansion of AVs in industrial fields is possible.

The report confers that cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, Helsinki, Beijing and Seoul have made a large achievement on AVs by their local and municipal governments regardless of national involvement.

Meanwhile India stood 29th in the AVRI. The UAE scored an aggregate score of 6.79, 2.86, 6.52, 6.52 while India scored 2.16, 1.02, 1.80, 1.61 in policy and legislation, technology and innovation, infrastructure and consumer acceptance respectively.

Amongst the top ten countries, UAE leads on change readiness for technology infrastructure, mobile data speeds and the readiness of individuals. The country ranked second on government's change readiness for change as well as in consumer information and communications technology adoption, and third on the efficiency of its legal system in challenging regulations.

India is amongst the bottom ten countries for road quality and last five for innovation capability and consumer acceptance,as per the report. In accordance with country's reliance in migrant labour, implementation of electric or driverless vehicles may result in a potential job loss of 2.2 million commercial drivers. However, on a commercial perspective India's IT sector is likely to be benefitted from the global introduction of AVs.

While evaluating countries based on preparedness for the AV revolution, Singapore ranked the highest, followed by the Netherlands and Norway. United States and Finland secured fourth and fifth respectively according to AVRI.