Socio-economic impacts of automated vehicles deployment in European Union
Last modified on 8 October, 2025A recently published study1 of the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) analyses the socio-economic implications of high-level automated vehicles (AVs) deployment in the EU market.
The study discusses the potential impact on professional drivers’ jobs, the changes in manufacturing, maintenance and repair costs, and the effects on vehicle energy efficiency, congestion and road traffic collisions, following the deployment of the five levels of automation, according to three scenarios under different speeds of deployment (slow, medium, fast), with and without sharing of Level 4 and Level 5 cars and trucks., as well as in terms of the behavioural responses. The additional impact from different travel behavioural responses to vehicle automation is also analysed.
The study uses the macro-economic JRC-GEM-E3 model, which is a global general equilibrium model that integrates the growth in road vehicle stock as well as road activity in the EU. The model represents the main impacts of AV deployment and can simulate the consequences for different sectors and the EU economy as a whole, accounting for interactions between sectors and actors in the model.
- 1. Ana Norman-López, Matthias Weitzel, Marie Tamba, Louison Duboz, Jette Krause, Biagio Ciuffo,
Economy-wide impacts from different speeds of deployment of automated vehicles on European Union roads, Technology in Society, Volume 84, 2026, 103066, ISSN 0160-791X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.103066 ↩︎