Aurora self-driving test car.
Source: Aurora
The team consisted of Chris Urmson, the former chief technology officer of Google’s self-driving car division, and Sterling Anderson, the former head of Tesla’s Autopilot division, who together founded Aurora, one of a growing number of startups working on self-driving cars.
Mouat currently serves as Aurora’s vice president and general counsel.
When the prospect of working on self-driving cars arose, Will Mouatt, 41, put all his effort into it. He now serves as vice president and general counsel for Aurora.
Source: Will Mauatt
New technology is often met with fear, and self-driving cars are no exception. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans are hesitant to trust self-driving cars, and two fatal accidents this year have not improved consumer opinion.
There are also concerns about the number of jobs that will be lost to new technologies.
But the industry is also creating jobs, especially as companies race to put the first self-driving cars on the road. According to online job marketplace ZipRecruiter, autonomous driving-related job listings increased 27% year over year in January 2018. Between the second quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2018, the number of job listings on the site jumped 250% as companies rushed to hire since the start of the year.
There’s anecdotal evidence that startups are growing: Aurora has expanded from a team of three in 2016 to more than 150 employees across multiple facilities, the company said. Another startup, Zoox, said it has grown from four people in 2014 to more than 520 now. Both companies say they are hiring aggressively and have no plans to slow down over the next few years.
Other big companies are getting involved: Tesla has been developing self-driving capabilities since 2014, and both Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet are developing their own self-driving car models.
Traditional car companies are also investing: Ford recently announced plans to spend $4 billion on self-driving cars by 2023. General Motors plans to pour $100 million into self-driving cars, and Toyota has launched a $2.8 billion self-driving car company in Tokyo.
According to an August 2017 report from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economics and Statistics, approximately 15.5 million workers in the U.S. were employed in driving-related jobs in 2015.
Of those, only 3.8 million drive vehicles such as trucks or taxis. Of these workers, truck drivers are more susceptible to automation because they drive primarily on highways, which are more susceptible to automation than city driving. The remaining 11.7 million drivers in professions such as mail carriers, firefighters, and paramedics are more likely to benefit from new technologies.
According to a report by the Bureau of Economics and Statistics, the average car driver is male, older, less educated and has lower wages than the general worker.
Still, it’s one of the few jobs where you can earn more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour without a college education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, large truck and tractor-trailer drivers earned an average hourly wage of $20.42 in 2017, which works out to $42,480 a year. The median household income for all U.S. households was $57,617 in 2016, according to the American Community Survey.
A May 2017 report from Goldman Sachs estimated that self-driving cars could eliminate 300,000 driving jobs per year. But that won’t happen anytime soon: The report predicted that self-driving cars will account for 20% of auto sales between 2025 and 2030.
I would gladly swim through a sea of thumbtacks to tackle this problem with this team.
Will Mauatt
Vice President and General Counsel, Aurora
Amitai Bin Nun, vice president of autonomous vehicles and mobility innovation at Securing America’s Future Energy, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for reducing the U.S.’s dependence on oil, said how quickly the new technology will disrupt the driving job is key.
Bin Nan said jobs won’t disappear overnight. There are many stages from zero to full automation. So far, the workforce has shown resilience during the gradual transition, Bin Nan said.
One example is the change in the agricultural industry: A century ago, most Americans worked on farms. Today, very few people work on farms.
“It’s not because Americans have stopped eating it,” Binh Nhan said.
Mr Bin Nun said in the short term, a lot will be done to make driving safer and less stressful.
“Self-driving cars will eliminate a lot of the jobs that job seekers aren’t interested in and create more fulfilling work opportunities for people,” said Ian Siegel, co-founder and CEO of ZipRecruiter.
Indeed, the US is already facing a shortage of truck drivers, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.9% in July and companies struggling to hire workers for the demanding jobs.
Here are the top 10 autonomous driving jobs on ZipRecruiter
RankJob RecognitionSoftware EngineerStrategic Account ManagerField Services TechnicianIndustrial EngineerCustomer Success Field RepField Autonomy EngineerFunctional Safety EngineerAutonomous Navigation Software EngineerRobotics EngineerElectrical Engineer
In the future, self-driving cars may have little impact on unemployment: According to an assessment by economist Erica Groschen in a June 2018 report by Securing America’s Future Energy, the increase in unemployment due to self-driving cars is predicted to be between 0.06 and 0.13 percentage points over the 10-year period from 2045 to 2055.
The report also noted that new technologies have historically had a positive impact on economies, increasing productivity and reducing costs — examples of this include the internet and interstate highway systems.
A 2011 study by McKinsey Global Institute found that the internet boosted corporate profitability by 10 percent in the early 2000s, and a recent report from Compass Transportation found that the Interstate Highway System achieved a return on investment of more than 30 percent between 1950 and 1990.
Companies are now hiring engineers, technicians, software developers, and designers to develop self-driving cars.
But non-engineering careers are also expanding in the industry, and one of the most popular jobs is strategic account manager, according to ZipRecruiter, which says the role is primarily sales-focused.
As autonomous vehicle manufacturers race to develop road-ready vehicles, opportunities are also growing in the areas of safety and testing.
“It’s a great opportunity to test software in a simulated environment,” said Bart Kaufman, Zoox’s head of corporate and regulatory affairs, adding that software developers from the games industry have come in to help Zoox build out its testing platform.
Auto maintenance and logistics jobs will also continue to grow, Kaufman said.
“Whether it’s maintenance technicians, fleet monitoring or remote monitoring of the fleet, there will still be a need for service technicians to maintain and service the fleet,” Kaufman said.
ZipRecruiter’s Siegel said that as self-driving cars become more common, the types of jobs available will expand.
“With any new technology that comes along, the majority of the jobs are more skilled, more technical positions,” he said. “They’re just adding layers of simplification on top of that, allowing people with less training to get into the industry.”
The world’s demand for mechanics is unlikely to decrease, he says, and the focus on skills could open up opportunities to people who don’t have a college degree.
Like the birth of the interstate highway system and the internet, new self-driving car technology could have far-reaching effects on society.
“The benefits far outweigh the costs,” Binh Nun said.
Safety is one of them: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 38,000 people died in car accidents in 2016, and most serious accidents were caused by human error.
“Self-driving cars will never be drunk, distracted or fall asleep,” Kaufman said.
Beyond safety, autonomous vehicles could also contribute to significant improvements in fuel efficiency, reduce transportation costs for consumers, and improve access to rural areas.
So far, 33 states have introduced bills related to autonomous vehicles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Self-Driving Vehicle Legislation Database.
Leaders are also pushing for legislation at the federal level: The SELF DRIVE Act passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support in September 2017 and now heads to the Senate.
“What we do know is that it’s coming sooner than anyone realizes, and it’s going to bring about major changes in society,” Siegel said.
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