Socio-Economic Impacts of Future Mobility Disruption Scenarios

A transition towards Autonomous, Connected and Electric (ACE) Vehicles on the road is likely to have significant socio-economic implications beyond the impacts foreseen in the passenger and freight transport sectors. This paper explores how the deployment of these technologies may impact the European Union's economy, employment and emissions. A number of impacts are in focus for this analysis. First, as new technologies for cars and trucks develop, the manufacturing of vehicles will change, with ramifications throughout the entire supply chain. Second, as these new vehicles penetrate the passenger and freight transport markets and the vehicle stock is renewed, further socio-economic shifts will result from their use on the road: the fuel mix and fuel efficiency will gradually evolve, together with emission intensity, triggering changes across energy extraction, production and distribution sectors. Their deployment will also affect demand for other goods and services, such as repair and maintenance, spare components, costs of freight and passenger transport services. These issues are analysed through scenario analysis using a multi-sectoral computable general equilibrium model: the JRC-GEM-E3. As a global economy-energy-environment CGE model, the JRC-GEM-E3 is extended to identify key sectors (e.g. vehicle manufacturing) and relationships of interest between road transport activity, fuel consumption, emissions and the rest of the economy. Three key scenarios – varying in terms of technology deployment and vehicle use – are modelled against a baseline scenario, to identify and disentangle the potential impacts of ACE trends on the EU economy, employment and the environment.