Agentic Vehicles for Human-Centered Mobility: Definition, Prospects, and Synergistic Co-Development with Vehicle Autonomy

Autonomy, from the Greek autos (self) and nomos (law), refers to the capacity to operate according to internal rules without external control. Autonomous vehicles (AuVs) are therefore understood as vehicular systems that perceive their environment and execute tasks with minimal human intervention, consistent with the direction indicated by the SAE levels of automated driving. However, recent research and deployments increasingly showcase vehicular capabilities that, while not contradicting autonomy, are not entailed by it, including ambiguous goal handling, purposeful social engagement, external tool use, proactive problem solving, continuous learning, and context-sensitive reasoning in unseen and ethically salient situations, enabled in part by multimodal language models. These developments reveal a gap between technical autonomy and the broader social cognitive functions required for human-centered mobility, which are more precisely captured by the notion of agency. Therefore, rather than adding increasingly elaborate modifiers to "autonomous," we introduce agentic vehicles (AgVs) and suggest that autonomy and agency are intertwined but conceptually distinct: if autonomy concerns what to do and how to do it (task executions under internal rules), agency pertains to why to do it and what else can be done (goal-directed, adaptive actions). We present autonomy and agency as orthogonal yet synergistic dimensions with co-development implications. Vehicle agency marks a novel dimension of mobility service intelligence, heralding vehicles as purposeful actors in society.