Perhaps I can take a stab at that.
First off, with these technologies, it won't be next year or perhaps the next. It's going to be a slow introduction. We don't need to have ZEVs as the only ones—in fact, they probably all won't be ZEVs to begin with—but we certainly see electric vehicles as being a major component of the future under autonomous vehicles.
We're moving to a shared economy. We're moving to not just shared riding, but a shared economy in which people may not necessarily buy a vehicle, but they will get all the benefits of transportation they would otherwise get with a vehicle. That will offer a whole bunch of opportunities in terms of mobility and for people who are disabled, and there will be consumer benefits in that respect.
We talk about advertising and economic opportunity in terms of sales and things like that, but that's probably the least of our objectives. What we're concerned about is building a vehicle that's safe, that will be able to anticipate all road conditions, that will be connected to the infrastructure in a way that will facilitate the movement of vehicles and reduce congestion and emissions. It's all of those things.
We have to be careful here, because this is not plug-in technology. This technology has been integrated into the design and making of the vehicle from the ground up. That's because we have to anticipate every type of road condition and weather condition and the integration with the infrastructure itself, and that is a huge task. This is why we are moving forward with research partnerships with universities and institutes here in Canada on artificial intelligence and so forth.
This is part of the other economy that we will benefit from. Consumers themselves are going to get this benefit with perhaps not all the costs associated with ownership, and that's really the key thing here.
We'll be spending probably $100 billion on zero-emission vehicles, electric vehicles, so they will be very much a part of the future, but we have to make a distinction between connected vehicles and AVs. That's not driven by electric vehicles; it's driven by simply the autonomous side of it, the benefits that accrue in terms of reducing injuries and fatalities and mobility. ZEVs will be part of that in the future, but I can tell you that it will be a combination of those things while we go through the transition period, and that transition period will take some time.
These are very complicated issues, and our industry wants to go about it in a way that is managed and deliberate. That's why it's important to be working with Transport Canada and the provinces across the country to make sure we have consistent regulations that won't inhibit or impede the introduction of these technologies.