Dubai: The UAE is among the top 10 countries in the world prepared to accommodate driverless vehicles, according to a new report released on Tuesday.
The study, KPMG’s Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index (AVRI), which evaluates the preparedness of countries globally, places the UAE at number eight, ahead of South Korea and New Zealand.
The KPMG AVR Index highlights ways in which countries can accelerate their adoption of autonomous transport and capacity for adapting autonomous driving technology, as well as highlights the progress achieved in making driverless cars a reality. The Index places the UAE after the Netherlands, Singapore, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada.
The study evaluates every country’s ability according to four pillars: policy and legislation; technology and innovation; infrastructure; and consumer acceptance.
Each of these pillars considers a number of variables that reflect the wide range of factors that can impact a country’s autonomous driving readiness.
According to KPMG’s statement, “as the world’s most innovative countries have started the journey to make driverless cars a reality, the UAE consolidated its dominance as number one among the 20 countries for road quality — a critical factor in infrastructure readiness.”
It added: “At number six on the policy and legislation pillar, the UAE is also credited for having a dedicated and autonomous function within its transport department, for quality of regulation and for government capability in KPMG’s Change Readiness Index, which assessed countries’ ability to manage change and cultivate opportunity.”
Listing Dubai’s achievements in the autonomous space, the report said: “As part of a wider vision, some specialised projects, such as the Dubai Autonomous Transport Strategy, have been unveiled, under which one quarter of the cars on Dubai’s roads are set to become driverless by 2030. The past year has also witnessed the successful testing of the world’s first urban aerial taxi in Dubai.”
This strategy is expected to bring Dh22 billion in annual economic revenues, via a reduction of transport costs, carbon emissions and accidents, and hundreds of millions of hours wasted in conventional transportation.
“The UAE’s desire to excel in the field of technology-led innovation, which it overlays on its existing ‘hard’ infrastructure will ensure that the nation is at the vanguard of the urban autonomous mobility,” Ravi Suri, partner and global head of infrastructure finance at KPMG Lower Gulf, said in a statement.
