Just under two years ago Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh to begin recruiting dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The ultimate aim of his mission was to replace Uber’s one million plus human drivers with robot drivers as fast as possible.

While some experts believe fully driverless cars are many years away, they have been given food for thought by the speed at which this major story has developed. From September, Uber customers in downtown Pittsburgh were able to use their phones to call self-driving cars, just like people in the UAE order an Uber or Careem cab on a daily basis.

So where is this all heading? Is the day when our roads are full of autonomous vehicles a lot closer than we think?

For Uber — the biggest taxi company in the world without owning a single cab — the Pittsburgh experiment is about research and development. Uber’s Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver’s seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 SUVs outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers.

Unlike Google and Tesla, Uber has no intention of manufacturing its own car. It will strike deals with auto manufacturers, starting with Volvo, and develop kits for other models.

Regardless of who makes the driverless cars, people in the UAE are eagerly awaiting their arrival. A recent study placed the UAE among the top three countries globally for willingness to try out self-driving vehicles.

The findings are aligned with the vision of Dubai, which wants 25 per cent of all car trips to be driverless by 2030. Even now, a driverless EZ10 all-electric shuttle bus is providing short free trips to passengers in Downtown Dubai.

Suddenly, everyone is talking about driverless cars. Every day there’s a story on the subject, usually involving one of the world’s biggest car manufacturers or a tech giant like Google or Amazon.

Driverless cars is the manifestation of change in the business world. But the transition from the present to the future is more complex than designing a highly advanced computer on wheels to get people from A to B without causing accidents.

For driverless cars to work, the right infrastructure has to be in place to make sure we have easy access to where we want to end up, or able to seamlessly connect to all forms of public transport to complete the journey.

This is particularly relevant in any Middle East city during the hot and humid summer months when even a 100 metre walk at the end of a car or taxi journey can be little short of traumatic.

I read a report on urbanisation recently which said that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, but designers and architects will have to figure autonomous transport into their plans much sooner.

While I hear some people worrying about handing over control of the vehicle that carries them to work or the mall, to a computer, they forget that this is already part of their way of life.

The pilot in the cockpit of the aircraft taking us is the guy in charge, but we all know that, essentially, it’s a computer that flies the plane. It’s the same on many trains these days, and of course on the Dubai Metro, the driverless, fully automated rail network which carried more than 178 million passengers last year.

When the time comes and the technology is right, we’ll all make the transition from drivers to passengers very comfortably.

What I think is more interesting here is how different sectors are reacting in different ways. I was particularly struck by the way Ford has come to accept that they have to be a technology company as much as an automotive manufacturing company. They know they must think in a different way.

The automotive sector overall knows it has to change. The core components of the product haven’t changed, but the manufacturers have to change the way they do business.

Tech companies are going to have to seek out partnerships with companies like Ford, or vice versa. The big carmakers are good at getting to market fast, reacting quickly and knowing what the market wants. Google and Oracle don’t understand how to build a car nor the nuances of the automotive industry.

Between them, they’ll get it right.

The writer is Head of PA Consulting Group, Middle East and North Africa. All opinions expressed are his own.