The State of ACES – What’s up with autonomous-connected-electric-shared?

What has been going on in ACES (autonomous – connected – electric – shared mobility) lately? Not so much? It seems things have lost steam, or at least attention has shifted. Autonomous driving used to be the hot topic, but lately EVs – cars and trucks – have been getting a lot of media interest, regulators’ attention, and certainly business activity.

In this Chart of the Month I am a bit “reading the tea leaves” as I analyze Google Trends as to how much interest there has been in those mobility topics. One actually finds that electric vehicles as a topic has been steadily increasing for the last five years, while autonomous driving has had a few peaks here and there, but has not really built up much more momentum since summer 2016.

Now, this is not a scientific analysis and not real data indicating technology progress. But taking it all together, it reflects in my mind where future mobility as a hole stands – it might be just the calm before the storm…