Press Releases

The Forum and Exhibition “Transport of Russia” is in progress at Gostiny Dvor. The second day started with the International Foresight Discussion “Driverless Transport:  the future has come, but are we ready?”

The participants discussed traffic safety through driverless logistics corridors on public roads, commercialization of digital infrastructure, synchronization of the time frames for launch and the standards for driverless logistics corridors with EAEU countries, EU countries and China and protection of personal and sensitive data.

When delivering his welcoming speech to the Forum participants, Budi Karya Sumadi, Minister of Transport of the Republic of Indonesia, said: “When we speak about driverless cargo transportation, we need to improve economics and reduce the time of cargo transportation”.

Below are the comments made by Kirill Bogdanov, Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation, Chairperson of the Supervisory Board of the “Digital Transport and Logistics” Association with regard to the future of driverless transport: “Regardless of whether we want it or not, we will have driverless vehicles on our roads. I’m sure that pretty soon, in 2030, 2035, 2040, you’ll have to go to a special restricted area or range to drive your own car”.

Vladislav Fedulov, Deputy Minister for Economic Development of the Russian Federation, declared that the Ministry sees driverless vehicles as a huge market and a challenge at the same time: “We believe that driverless vehicles represent a huge market.... and these are not just cars, but anything associated with them as well: operation, logistics, new logistics corridors, warehouses, additional services that we are not even aware of yet... On the other side, that’s a challenge that first of all concerns labor relationship – some professions are going to disappear”.

Viktoria Erkenova, Deputy Chairperson for Intellectual Transportation Systems and Digitalization of “Russian Highways” State Company, member of the Supervisory Board of the “Digital Transport and Logistics” Association, told about investments and commercialization of digital infrastructure and services for driverless logistics corridors: “Any new technology needs investments first and such investments have a certain return period. According to the data that we have, “Russian Highways” State Company may expect profit from driverless vehicles infrastructure after at least a 10 year period”.

During the discussion, Vladislav Onishchenko, President of the “Center for Strategic Research” Fund, shared the data taken from KPMG rating with regard to the readiness of countries for a shift to autonomous driving. In the next presentation Sergey Nazarenko, Chief Designer of innovative vehicles at the Scientific and Technical Centre of KAMAZ PJSC, noted that there are 6 directions of development of driverless vehicles that the company is currently working on.

The presentation of Ilya Sattarov, Director General of Globaltruck Management PJSC, was focused on building sustainable business models of driverless vehicles operation. The last to perform at the discussion was Mats Rosenquist from VOLVO Group – a company that is actively developing driverless trucks. 

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