Assessing emerging automotive technologies for the future

A scenario-based multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) methodology has been developed and applied for the selection of automotive technology. The present study discusses, what are the problems for the current automotive technologies are, what requirements are outlined in the literatures and government guidelines/publications, considering different aspects of technological needs, public needs, policy measures etc. A set of criteria are developed, which cover multiple perspectives; reflecting the diverse stakeholders in the technology assessment, acquisition and adoption, in this case the government, the general public which includes drivers and pedestrians, automobile manufacturers. Three emerging technologies (Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, Vehicle-to-Infrastructure and Full autonomous) were identified and evaluated based on the mentioned criteria using Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a multi criteria decision tool. Since the technologies are still being developed and some are barely emerging, it is considered appropriate to use speculative values from the publications from industry and other credible sources and consider multiple scenarios each of which could occur. In our case, we considered 9 main scenarios and evaluated the three technology candidates under each of them.