Taavi Rõivas, Chairman of AuVe Tech and former Prime Minister of Estonia: “In autonomous transportation, regulations must be tough — but also enabling”
Taavi Rõivas is the former Prime Minister of Estonia (2014-2016) and currently the Chairman of the Board of AuVe Tech, an Estonian mobility startup.
In this interview, he discusses with Government Tomorrow Forum the main challenges of modern-day mobility. He argues that private-led innovation comes first and regulations must follow, and that the global shift away from privately owned cars is all but inevitable.
Q: You have transitioned from running a country to running a mobility startup. How did that happen? And why mobility?
Taavi Rõivas: The transition was driven more by the opportunity to make a significant impact rather than the mobility sector itself. It was about finding a company where I could contribute to meaningful change. Go beyond just watching the trends and focus on something that can really change the world for better, and it just appears that mobility was such a sector. And the fact that the company had all these amazing young talents played a role.
“It is really up to us, the companies that innovate in mobility, to convince the regulators that there is a safe technological solution for driverless transportation. Only then they would be daring to enable it, only then can the technology really thrive.”
Q: What aspects of AuVe made it stand out for you, prompting you to join them over other companies in the field?
Taavi Rõivas: Well, I think there are factors that make it unique. First of all, of course, it is the connection with this Estonian young and very talented team. After spending more than 20 years in politics, it's feels incredible to be a part of a very dynamic and very ambitious team — and, by the way, not necessarily with the biggest resources — aiming for building the best possible solutions in a lean, effective way. It is both challenging and exciting. And it is clearly very different choice from a classic political or even corporate role.
Q: Delving into mobility, would you say it's a challenge that should be tackled more at the government level or is it a local, municipal concern?
Taavi Rõivas: There are so many angles to mobility! The main challenge in my opinion is that we have too many personal vehicles in the world. For example, if we take the level of car usage that we have in Europe or the US and take it to the rest of the world, we will need to quadruple the number of vehicles! It is simply impossible for this to be sustainable.
So the first angle to the mobility question is this need for more use of public transport and less ownership of personal vehicles.
Think about how it evolved from the time of my grandfather's generation, where a car was basically like real estate. Then with my father's generation, a car was still something you wanted to own. And today for me it is something I rent or lease, but I still use. Hopefully, for my kids’ generation it will shift more towards simply a means of getting from point A to point B.
And it will most likely not necessarily be your own vehicle, standing somewhere in the parking lot 95% of the time. Today, many municipalities, including Paris or here in Tallinn, or are focusing on how to limit the car usage, how to make driving more difficult and less rewarding.
And the challenge for municipalities, for cities, is to provide solutions that motivate citizens to use alternative transportation modes in a positive, not restrictive way. So, I think together with municipalities, we need to aim for more mobility as a service for people, not just as a side product of having (or not having) a car.
“We are a part of a broader trend where technology redefines work, automating manual tasks and creating new, more creative opportunities. ”
Q: So, in transitioning towards new mobility solutions, do you see it as a policy-driven challenge or one that should be spearheaded by grassroots technological innovation? Who should take the first step?
Taavi Rõivas: That is actually a very interesting question! Probably there cannot be one without the other. In a way, technology providers have already come up with the innovation so the technology is there. And at the same time, there is limited availability of this technology to the end users. Partially, it comes from the regulatory side — we see, globally, more and more projects of autonomous transport emerging, and facing the regulatory framework that is still far from being fully enabling. I would even say, it is far from helping the sector scale up.
This being said, I think it makes sense that innovation comes first and the regulations follow. You know this famous quote attributed to Henry Ford who said that if he had asked people what they want as transportation, they would not have said “cars”, they would just prefer faster horses. I think the same applies to regulators. They need a nudge from the innovators to really build progress.
It is really up to us, the companies that innovate in mobility, to convince the regulators that there is a safe technological solution for driverless transportation. Only then they would be daring to enable it, only then can the technology really thrive.
Q: With AuVe, are you aiming to influence policy through innovation rather than responding to existing policy demands?
Taavi Rõivas: Precisely. We're part of a broader trend where technology redefines work, automating manual tasks and creating new, more creative opportunities.
It had happened before. Even back to the creaton of first tools and up to the industrial revolution — I am pretty sure that there are many jobs that existed, say, 200 years ago in factories or in mines that we would not want to return to today. So probably in 10 years’ time there will be much less people working as drivers just taking you from point A to point B.
Q: Considering your unique perspective of both a top-level policymaker and a top-level business manager, how do you envision the future of mobility?
Taavi Rõivas: In public transportation, what we're witnessing is a significant shift towards innovation, driven by multinational companies representing many regions, from France to Japan. These companies are not just passive players — they're at the forefront of investing in what is basically getting experience in autonomous transportation solutions. The see the demand and respond to it. This demand is particularly pronounced in cities that have committed to reducing the reliance on personal vehicles in favor of public transport and other greener alternatives, as we discussed before.
One of the critical challenges these companies — and indeed the sector at large — face is addressing the so-called “last mile” problem. Public transport systems, as comprehensive as they might be, cannot deliver passengers directly to their doorsteps. This gap between the final transport stop and one's home calls for innovative solutions. Here, options range from micromobility solutions, such as bikes and scooters, to autonomous vehicle services designed to cover this last segment of the journey, which is what we do at AuVe. But this overall push towards resolving the last mile dilemma is a sort of testament to the serious commitment by major players in the public transport sector to explore and implement driverless solutions for this final leg.
And if we are looking further, as I said before, the main trend in the transport of the future has to be less usage of private cars. The rationale is clear: despite technological advancements enabling longer commutes and increased travel, the fundamental pattern of human mobility —tending towards more movement rather than less — shows no signs of reversing. This persistent trend confirms the necessity for something like a paradigm shift in our transportation methods. We must transition towards more sustainable and organized systems, moving away from the current scenario where millions of individuals navigate in separate, heavy vehicles.
“The rationale is clear: despite technological advancements enabling longer commutes and increased travel, the fundamental pattern of human mobility —tending towards more movement rather than less — shows no signs of reversing.”
Autonomous driving technology, along with sophisticated modeling for transportation logistics and human movement patterns, will, or at least I hope it will, revolutionize our current, somewhat rudimentary approach to commuting. These innovations have the potential not just to increase efficiency, but to really, deeply, fundamentally transform the way we think about and engage with transportation systems.
By leveraging these technologies, we can imagine a future where mobility is not only more sustainable but also more attuned to the needs and patterns of human life. We are working on it at AuVe, but it is obviously a work of many other companies, and indeed policymakers globally as well.
Q: Lastly, what advice would you give to these policymakers currently focusing on mobility?
Taavi Rõivas: I think regarding autonomous transportation or use of state-of-the-art technology, regulations need to be tough but enabling.
Why tough? Because you need to really prove your worth as a technology provider or as a fleet operator, to make sure that a given task can be done safely. And only if you can prove that, you should be able to use the kind of transport, be driven by a machine-led solution.
But why enabling? Because, as I have explained before, this sort of shift is all but inevitable — and definitely necessary. Yes, we will first be at relatively slow speeds with relatively slow vehicles. I don't think that driving a big bus at 100 kilometers per hour without any human involvement is the best idea today: if something goes wrong there the risks, serious fatal risks. But driving a small shuttle at 20-25, maybe 30, kilometers per hour is very safe, especially if you can have like a double redundancy for the vehicle and all the safety conditions are meat. And we need to start at something like this to move towards what is a better mobility — and, frankly, better life in our communities.