Driverless Evangelism, Global Warming, and Uncle Sam
Federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards are a helpful step to
reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but state and federal
governments should also focus more on fostering a transportation revolution: on-demand
driverless electric pods. People talk about driverless cars, yet the
commercialization of truly driverless pods, as opposed to driver-assisting
vehicles,[1]
presents us with a ‘horseless carriage’ moment. At the turn of the 20th
century, when cars were still in early development and just coming to the
public’s attention, people referred to cars as ‘horseless carriages’.[2]
Cars even looked like horse-drawn buggies.[3]
As the name ‘horseless carriage’ suggests, people of that time had not fully
grasped the revolutionary nature of cars. Similarly, today, most people are not
well-versed in the transformational potential of on-demand driverless pods, and
how they can help reduce emissions.[4]
The naming convention, driverless car, embodies two aspects of cars that do not need to exist in a driverless world. First, the design constraints on cars change radically. Modern car design flows from the ergonomic needs of drivers, who may interface with the car’s control surface for hours at a time, from the need to create a crash-safe machine, including airbags and a resilient frame, and from the constraints of roads, such as lane-width and turn-radius limitations. The promise of driverless pods removes two of those three limitations. By definition, driver-interface surfaces can disappear. For example, all seats in a pod might be turned inward to facilitate social interaction. Additionally, crash rates, especially fatal crash rates, are expected to drop precipitously.[5] The much publicized fatal Tesla crash in June 2016 is a case-in-point. According to Tesla, that crash was the first fatal accident in “over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated,” compared to fatal crashes every 94 million miles driven by humans in the United States.[6] As the technology improves and displaces more humans, it is conceivable that fatal accidents disappear, negating safety-related design considerations.
Second, private ownership of pods is unnecessary. People own cars because unlimited access to convenient transportation allows them to participate in a society too disparate for walking or biking, and not well-connected by public transportation. Moreover, car ownership imposes significant costs. Cars are often peoples’ second-largest purchase after a home,[7] tying up precious capital. Those who cannot afford cars are stuck navigating an underdeveloped public transportation system, whose services were destined to be inadequate because of all the people who opted-out by buying cars, imposing time costs on those who must structure their commutes around buses or trains. On-demand driverless pods eliminate the need for both private ownership and intra-city public transportation. Individual ownership is unnecessary because transportation will be conveniently available at the touch of a smartphone application. The owners of the pods, whether operators like Uber or manufacturers like Ford, will make money by selling time or mileage in the pods, reaping significant benefits by increasing vehicle utilization.[8] The cost to consumers of using on-demand services will plummet because drivers, who represent a significant portion of the cost of on-demand transportation,[9] will no longer be driving. The combination of low costs and prices with convenient point-to-point service suggests that on-demand driverless pods will dominate both private ownership and traditional public transportation, driving them out of the market.
The implications of an on-demand driverless world for transportation emissions are enormous; there are more than I can address here. Since vehicle utilization rates increase, because vehicles can be on the road serving customers throughout the day, the number of vehicles in operation is expected to decrease.[10] While miles-per-gallon is still important for cars that are running throughout most of the day, the lifecycle costs of transportation reduce in correlation with the decrease in vehicles. One major vehicle lifecycle cost is the manufacturing process. As mentioned, car design limitations change radically in a driverless world, implying that pod manufacturing can be much more environmentally friendly, perhaps by taking advantage of 3-D printing, and reducing the amount of material inputs and vehicle weight. Additionally, business models built around selling miles in driverless vehicles creates major economic actors who will be focused on reducing fuel costs to drive profitability. They can do so by diversifying fuel sources[11] or installing energy-saving technologies throughout their fleets.[12] Traffic dynamics will change for the better. Stop-and-go traffic is predicted to disappear, eliminating idling emissions.[13] An important secondary impact from a drastic reduction in vehicles is an opportunity for urban planners to reduce the footprint of asphalt across the country. Roads may be narrowed and parking lots eliminated, potentially replaced by green space.[14]
Yet this future is far from guaranteed. Large economic actors and sunk infrastructure investments, which both contribute to our vibrant economy, create path-dependent development that does not necessarily support driverless on-demand electric pods. Government should take an active role to facilitate this future and revolutionize the way we live. Government must prepare to support professional drivers displaced by driverless technology with adult education and social support payments. Mitigating this major and foreseeable political roadblock, in the form of a 3.5 million member constituency, is critical to ushering in a driverless future.[15] Government should also invest in infrastructure-to-vehicle communication, accelerating driverless adoption and guiding industry standards. And finally, since driverless pods will likely rely more heavily on electricity than cars do today, reducing electricity generation emissions through investments in nuclear, solar, and wind power becomes even more important to successfully mitigating climate change.
The naming convention, driverless car, embodies two aspects of cars that do not need to exist in a driverless world. First, the design constraints on cars change radically. Modern car design flows from the ergonomic needs of drivers, who may interface with the car’s control surface for hours at a time, from the need to create a crash-safe machine, including airbags and a resilient frame, and from the constraints of roads, such as lane-width and turn-radius limitations. The promise of driverless pods removes two of those three limitations. By definition, driver-interface surfaces can disappear. For example, all seats in a pod might be turned inward to facilitate social interaction. Additionally, crash rates, especially fatal crash rates, are expected to drop precipitously.[5] The much publicized fatal Tesla crash in June 2016 is a case-in-point. According to Tesla, that crash was the first fatal accident in “over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated,” compared to fatal crashes every 94 million miles driven by humans in the United States.[6] As the technology improves and displaces more humans, it is conceivable that fatal accidents disappear, negating safety-related design considerations.
Second, private ownership of pods is unnecessary. People own cars because unlimited access to convenient transportation allows them to participate in a society too disparate for walking or biking, and not well-connected by public transportation. Moreover, car ownership imposes significant costs. Cars are often peoples’ second-largest purchase after a home,[7] tying up precious capital. Those who cannot afford cars are stuck navigating an underdeveloped public transportation system, whose services were destined to be inadequate because of all the people who opted-out by buying cars, imposing time costs on those who must structure their commutes around buses or trains. On-demand driverless pods eliminate the need for both private ownership and intra-city public transportation. Individual ownership is unnecessary because transportation will be conveniently available at the touch of a smartphone application. The owners of the pods, whether operators like Uber or manufacturers like Ford, will make money by selling time or mileage in the pods, reaping significant benefits by increasing vehicle utilization.[8] The cost to consumers of using on-demand services will plummet because drivers, who represent a significant portion of the cost of on-demand transportation,[9] will no longer be driving. The combination of low costs and prices with convenient point-to-point service suggests that on-demand driverless pods will dominate both private ownership and traditional public transportation, driving them out of the market.
The implications of an on-demand driverless world for transportation emissions are enormous; there are more than I can address here. Since vehicle utilization rates increase, because vehicles can be on the road serving customers throughout the day, the number of vehicles in operation is expected to decrease.[10] While miles-per-gallon is still important for cars that are running throughout most of the day, the lifecycle costs of transportation reduce in correlation with the decrease in vehicles. One major vehicle lifecycle cost is the manufacturing process. As mentioned, car design limitations change radically in a driverless world, implying that pod manufacturing can be much more environmentally friendly, perhaps by taking advantage of 3-D printing, and reducing the amount of material inputs and vehicle weight. Additionally, business models built around selling miles in driverless vehicles creates major economic actors who will be focused on reducing fuel costs to drive profitability. They can do so by diversifying fuel sources[11] or installing energy-saving technologies throughout their fleets.[12] Traffic dynamics will change for the better. Stop-and-go traffic is predicted to disappear, eliminating idling emissions.[13] An important secondary impact from a drastic reduction in vehicles is an opportunity for urban planners to reduce the footprint of asphalt across the country. Roads may be narrowed and parking lots eliminated, potentially replaced by green space.[14]
Yet this future is far from guaranteed. Large economic actors and sunk infrastructure investments, which both contribute to our vibrant economy, create path-dependent development that does not necessarily support driverless on-demand electric pods. Government should take an active role to facilitate this future and revolutionize the way we live. Government must prepare to support professional drivers displaced by driverless technology with adult education and social support payments. Mitigating this major and foreseeable political roadblock, in the form of a 3.5 million member constituency, is critical to ushering in a driverless future.[15] Government should also invest in infrastructure-to-vehicle communication, accelerating driverless adoption and guiding industry standards. And finally, since driverless pods will likely rely more heavily on electricity than cars do today, reducing electricity generation emissions through investments in nuclear, solar, and wind power becomes even more important to successfully mitigating climate change.
[1]
Driver assist technologies include such things as lane-keeping, blind-spot
warning lights and noises, cruise control, and crash avoidance through
automatic braking. These technologies either require human intervention or
monitoring to ensure safety.
[2]
Galen Handy, Horseless Carriage Days,
Museum of American History (Sept. 26, 2006) http://www.moah.org/horseless/horseless.html
[3]
Id.
[4] I
was prompted to post this after attending a talk titled Multimodal Driver Displays, Autonomous Car Handovers, and Inclusiveness.
At the end of the talk, a listener asked the speaker why people are so excited
about autonomous cars.
[5]
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey, Department of
Transportation, pp. 24–26 (July 2008) (Attributing the ‘Critical Pre-Crash
Event,’ the last failure in a causal chain leading to a crash, to the driver in
5,096 cases in a total sample size of 5,361.)
[6]
Jacob Bogage, Tesla driver using
autopilot killed in crash, The Washington Post (June 30, 2016) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/30/tesla-owner-killed-in-fatal-crash-while-car-was-on-autopilot/?utm_term=.4cea975dc106
[7]
Miriam Caldwell, Is Buying a Car an
Investment?, The Balance (June 5, 2016) https://www.thebalance.com/is-buying-a-car-an-investment-2386148
[8] It
is estimated that cars are unused between 90-97% of their operating lives.
[9]
Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, Treatment of Driver Labour Costs, Taxi Roundtable – Discussion
Paper 2 (February 29, 2012) (Finding that drivers account for between 40-50% of
total cost.)
[10]
Geoff Nesnow, 50 Mind-Blowing Implications
of Self-Driving Cars (and Trucks), StartupGrind (Sept. 12, 2016) https://medium.com/startup-grind/mind-blowing-driverless-future-fcc5197d509#.eb1sutju1
[11]
By, for example, building more hybrid vehicles.
[12]
Such as technologies that ensure idle engine-shutoff or slow acceleration.
[13] Mind-Blowing Implications. Supra note 6.
[14]
Blair Kamin, Driverless cars could change
urban landscape, Chicago Tribune (February 18, 2017) http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-driverless-cars-urban-design-kamin-met-0219-20170217-column.html
[15] Truck Drivers in the USA,
AllTrucking.com http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/
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