20 million driverless cars may be on the road by 2025

In less than a decade, there will be millions of driverless robot cars on the road.

At least, that is what one research firm is predicting. 

Juniper Research, a mobile and digital market research firm, predicts that 20 million fully autonomous cars will be on the road worldwide by 2025.

While that number represents a lot more driverless cars than the few test cars that are present today, it's still a relatively small number when compared to how many manual cars are currently on the road.

In the US alone last year, there were about 253 million cars and trucks on the road. 

Still though, 20 million fully autonomous cars on the road in less than a decade is a significant jump. 

The research firm made their forecast in a recent report on driverless cars. It also found that consumer adoption of self-driving cars is set to take off in 2021.

This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Many companies, from Google to Tesla, are making the bold bet that they'll have driverless cars on the road by 2020.

The forecast also comes at a time where Citymobil2 — a pilot program for automated transportation systems partially funded by the European Union — is rolling out pilot programs of electric shuttles in different parts of the world.

With so many players in the driverless car market, it makes sense we would begin seeing them on the road in the next five years.

Juniper Research listed the top five biggest players in the market after looking at factors like autonomous miles tested on public roads, time spent developing related technologies to driverless cars, and the size of autonomous fleets. The ranking is as follows:

1. Google
2. Volvo
3. Daimler (which makes the Mercedes-Benz).
4. Tesla
5. Apple

But it's probably worth keeping an eye on automakers like Ford and GM as well.

The report also predicts that the widest adoption of driverless cars will occur in North America, followed by the Far East and China region.

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