Driverless Cars: Can They Really Eliminate Traffic?

The following is an excerpt from the volume, Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead by robotics researcher Dr. Hod Lipson and writer Melba Kurman.

The book is available from The MIT Press.

PCMag recently welcomed Dr. Lipson as a guest on our video/podcast interview serial, The Convo (full episode embedded below). Dr. Lipson is the director of Columbia University'southward Creative Machines Lab, and he spoke at length well-nigh the new frontier of cocky-aware, self-replicating, and even creative machines. We talked almost how these newly enabled robots in full general—and driverless cars in detail—will reshape the economy and the earth in the decade to come up

1 of the great unknowns about driverless cars is whether their convenience will worsen traffic congestion and its accompanying evils. An optimistic scenario would be that driverless cars will ameliorate the efficiency of urban transportation systems, and hence reduce private vehicle buying, thereby reducing congestion and therefore reducing the size of a metropolis'south carbon footprint that'southward related to transportation. Another, less environmentally friendly scenario is that as people encompass the convenience of friction-free mobility, driverless cars will wind up actually logging more vehicle-miles per yr on average, leaving a larger carbon footprint.

Convenience can be a double-edged sword. People are fatigued to convenience similar fe to a magnet. Sometimes, nonetheless, convenience carries with it a price: Unexpected and negative consequences. The friction-free personal mobility offered by driverless cars might solve the worst excesses already inflicted on us by automotive technology. Or, the subconscious price of convenient personal mobility might be that an ever-growing number of people casually rack up their number of miles driven.

Economists phone call the unforeseen reduction of expected gains from new technologies owing to increased usage the rebound effect. It's non clear whether driverless cars volition take a rebound upshot on traffic, increasing the number of miles that people travel each year, and the number of cars on the roads. Some research paints an optimistic picture, in which city streets will exist emptier of vehicles in a few decades.

Yes, that'due south a giant "cocky-enlightened" robot spider in the heart.

In an interview with The Economist, Luis Martinez of the International Send Forum, a think tank dedicated to transportation policy, predicted that fleets of self-driving vehicles could replace all vehicular public transportation taxi and jitney trips in a city, providing as much mobility only with far fewer vehicles.

To exam this theory, Martinez created an amanuensis-based model to simulate daily travel patterns in a medium-sized European city. Using several years of actual data from previous transportation surveys, he calculated that if city inhabitants used fleets of shared democratic taxis rather than privately owned cars and public transportation, the number of vehicles on the metropolis's roads could be reduced by 90 percent.

While fleets of autonomous taxis would drastically reduce the number of cars on the streets, the simulation also predicted that the overall number of vehicle-miles traveled per automobile would increase slightly because the self-driving taxis would shuttle back and along more frequently to pick up passengers.

Driverless Book A report from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute supports these findings. The report concludes that the adoption of autonomous vehicles would reduce the number of cars owned by the boilerplate U.S. household from just over ii to one vehicle per household. According to the report, 1-vehicle households will exist made possible considering self-driving vehicles will employ a "render-to-dwelling" fashion afterwards they drop one household fellow member at work so other household members can use the family unit self-driving auto to exist shuttled to errands and activities.

At that place's a catch, however. Although a family'due south driverless car can send family unit members efficiently back and forth, the fact that one motorcar is supporting more people would result in higher per-vehicle mileage. Although the average household of the future might own fewer cars, the remaining driverless car will be used 75 percentage more frequently, accumulating an boilerplate of xx,406 annual miles per vehicle per year. The upside of this finding is that even if a single driverless vehicle were to rack up 75 percent more miles on average, the mileage for the entire household would still be lower than if two human being-driven cars were in apply.

Ane potential gamble of having a single driverless auto support an entire household is that the increase in per-vehicle mileage ends up beingness more than the predicted 75 percent. There'southward no dubiousness that summoning a driverless machine to pick you upwardly and drop you lot off would exist a great convenience. Nonetheless, an unintended negative effect of more efficient transportation could be that a driverless vehicle will drive significantly more miles than would the equivalent human-driven vehicle.

Ideally, an empty self-guided car would find a safe identify out of the way of traffic to sit and wait its next summons. If that condom place were several miles abroad, yet, the motorcar would be forced to drive itself back and forth a bang-up distance rather than just parking nearby. Its mileage would increase, and its wasteful shuttling would make traffic congestion and air pollution even worse.

If the availability of too-convenient transportation creates a rebound issue on traffic and dramatically increases the number of road miles that people travel each year, driverless cars could take a devastating environmental bear on. Today the transportation sector is already one of the largest contributors to air pollution. In the United States alone, frazzle from cars and trucks causes an estimated 29 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that human activities generate each twelvemonth. If driverless cars were to increment the number of vehicle miles traveled per capita, densely populated "megacities" in developing nations would be hitting specially difficult.

Google Car

Google may have been the kickoff to evidence a driverless car to the public, only they're far from the only one working on it.

While the Usa has a nearly 100-year-old human relationship with the automobile, other nations are enthusiastically catching upwardly. China is post-obit in the footsteps of the U.s.a., gaining its own car culture. As a growing and newly affluent Chinese middle class embraces the convenience of auto travel, cities such as Beijing and Zhengzhou are suffering from spectacular eight-lane traffic jams and worsening smog levels.

Today, the ratio of cars per person is still lower in Prc than in the The states or Europe, averaging 85 vehicles per ane,000 people (compared to 797 vehicles per 1,000 people in the United States). Withal, the rate at which the Chinese auto industry manufactures and sells new cars continues to skyrocket, increasing at an almanac charge per unit of 7 percent since 2022.

Perhaps Chinese auto civilisation will sidestep some of the worst excesses of car civilization by adopting driverless cars sooner, rather than later. To tame the traffic beast, Baidu, the Chinese search engine company some draw as the Google of China, is working together with BMW to develop autonomous vehicles that are familiar with Chinese roads.

READ: When the Internet Takes the Cycle

In both developing and developed nations, traffic jams are a major source of air pollution. In the United states lone, as commuters inch forward in traffic jams, their idling cars waste 2.ix billion gallons of gasoline each twelvemonth, enough to fill four football game stadiums. Only fourth dimension will reveal whether driverless cars will produce less pollution, or whether their use will entice people to log an e'er-growing number of miles each year, further degrading air quality and making urban traffic jams even worse.

Another environmental side of issue of driverless cars could be shorter vehicular lifespans. A car's longevity is indicated by its odometer. According to Consumer Reports magazine, today the typical life span for a personal vehicle is about 150,000 miles which means that on boilerplate, over the course of 8 years, that car will be driven about xviii,750 miles per year. In comparing, since it drives roughly 70,000 miles a year, the lifespan of the average New York taxi cab is only three.3 years.

It remains to be seen whether the introduction of driverless cars will ease the negative effects inflicted on us by the modern automobile. If the University of Michigan enquiry is correct and a driverless motorcar racks up twenty,406 miles each twelvemonth, the boilerplate family unit car would exist "used upwards" more quickly, reaching its lifetime expectancy of 150,000 miles in merely over seven years of use.

Self-driving Uber

Uber, which has yet to make a decent profit is depending on self-driving taxis to justify their business model.

1 worst-case scenario would be a future in which used-upwardly driverless cars litter the landscape, filling junkyards and backyards with decommissioned auto bodies and worn-out engines. History has taught us, however, that new technologies do non only extend a former status quo. Driverless cars take several characteristics that could alter their potentially gloomy and environmentally devastating trajectory.

If the internet of the 1990s were suddenly forced to blot today's data traffic, it would buckle nether the load. Over the years, several enhancements have enabled the mod internet to blot new users and handle an increasing amount of data, including better pinch technologies, cobweb-optic cable, and more intelligent routers. Similarly, improvements in engineering science could likewise ease the potentially negative rebound event acquired past driverless cars. Several research studies support such an optimistic view.

First, permit'south address the issue of vehicular lifespan. A report from McKinsey calculates that driverless cars volition be able to brake and advance more gradually, resulting in fuel savings of 15 to 20 percent and a reduction of CO2 emissions of 20 million to 100 million tons per year. If McKinsey's research is correct, then smoother driving would increase a driverless vehicle'southward longevity.

Non only would driverless cars last longer, they could be congenital specifically to accomplish longevity. There's nothing sacred most a lifespan of 150,000 miles. If at that place were a market place for it, auto companies could pattern driverless cars that could drive for several hundred thousand miles. City transit operators expect their buses to have a useful lifespan of at least twelve years and 250,000 miles. Semitrailers are designed to operate for 1,000,000 miles and their engines are designed to run virtually nonstop. Track cars last even longer: some of the original BART cars in San Francisco, built in 1968, are still in functioning today.

Even if their lifespan remained the aforementioned as today'southward human-driven cars, driverless cars could milk more chapters out of existing roads. To decrease their wind resistance, cyclists ride backside one some other in a closely spaced line, an energy-saving strategy known as drafting. Fleets of driverless cars and trucks could employ a similar approach and salvage energy by driving behind 1 another in tight germination, a fuel-saving strategy known as platooning.

Platooning saves fuel both by reducing wind resistance and using road "existent estate" more efficiently. Human-driven cars don't use the infinite on the route very efficiently. People have to drive several hundred feet apart for safety and we aren't very skilful at smoothly irresolute lanes. In contrast, platoons of driverless cars would apply road space more effectively, resulting in less congestion at the places where traffic jams regularly form, such every bit highway on-ramps and off-ramps, earlier lane changes, and at intersections.

A study past researchers at the University of Texas estimates that if ninety percent of the cars on the road in the United states of america were self-driving, it would exist equivalent to doubling road chapters. Texas researchers predict that tightly spaced platoons could reduce congestion-related delays by threescore percent on highways and past 15 percentage on suburban roads. Trucks, considering of current of air resistance, are specially prone to fuel inefficiency. Platoons of autonomous trucks spaced fewer than 3 feet apart while driving would reduce fuel consumption past 15 to 20 percentage per truck.

Uber's Otto autonomous truck delivers Budweiser beer

One of the biggest changes to the road volition be self-driving trucks in so-called "platoon" formations.

Another potential environmental benefit lies in rethinking car pattern. If driverless cars become substantially safer than those driven by humans, automotive designers could dramatically improve upon a mechanical torso whose shape and size is the compounded event of a century's worth of incremental improvements and creeping crash-prophylactic requirements. As accident rates driblet significantly, driverless cars could be lighter and smaller, and therefore more than fuel efficient.

Driverless taxis would not exist the simply vehicles to shrink in size. The delivery of packages and food orders could be handled by tiny, lightweight autonomous commitment drones on wheels. On higher campuses, pizza, the perennial U.S. favorite, would be delivered in plastic, wheeled autonomous "pizza drones," broiled to just the right consistency during the 10-minute journeying. Contrast that with the almost one-ton vehicle required to evangelize a 1-pound pizza today. Well-nigh of that ton of weight is for the benefit of the human being driver, not for the pizza.

One core characteristic of cars that could exist improved upon is how they're powered. Driverless cars will probable have electric engines. One of the barriers to the adoption of electric-only cars has been a lack of widely bachelor methods for charging the auto'southward battery. Tesla has overcome this limitation by building its own recharging infrastructure. Equally cars get intelligent enough to program their journeys to include pit stops at charging stations, much of the uncertainty associated with an engine that needs regular recharging will exist reduced.

A combination of energy-saving benefits, including platooning, lightweight machine bodies, efficient driving, and rechargeable batteries will minimize some of the negative furnishings of driverless cars. Another environmentally degrading activity that most of u.s.a. participate in on a daily ground is parking. Driverless cars will improve city life by reducing cruising, the tedious circumvoluted that drivers do when in search of a parking infinite, and past doing away with the need for parking lots altogether.