Yahoo Autos How Would Fully Autonomous Cars Change Our Lives?
The steering wheel is simply collateral damage in the driverless car’s crusade. To maximize the big business of automation, the companies behind it will need to own the streets.
We use the word “own” both figuratively and literally, because in an age of debt-laden cities and crumbling infrastructure, there exists a real possibility that cash-rich tech companies could eventually dole out the investments that pave the way for their products. It’s just one of the endless possibilities in a driverless future that would repurpose our streets, alter our cities, and change how we live.
Exactly what that world might look like is anybody’s guess. The computer-driven car could make America’s most congested roads flow freely for the first time in decades, or it could stress our infrastructure to collapse. It might replace existing transit options in our largest cities while simultaneously killing off the regional transit that largely serves the least mobile populations. It could put millions of Americans out of work or spark the kind of economic boom we haven’t seen in decades. The uncertainty stems not from the technology itself, but from the many ways it could be implemented.
“The future won’t be determined by what the technology does for us or by pure economics,” says transportation historian Peter Norton. “These things are always competitions between groups that have a stake in this future. They’re trying to get the future they want.”
It’s hard to imagine the tech companies not getting what they want, considering the sway a $90.3 billion corporation such as Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., holds in American politics. In 2016, the company strengthened that clout by pouring $15.4 million into its lobbying efforts, landing 11th on the list of top spenders.
It also holds all the cards to insert computer-controlled cars into our lives with ruthless efficiency. After all, it has a file on all of us. “Google has a far better idea of where people are and where they want to go than any government entity,” says Anthony Townsend, urbanization expert and author of Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia.
In 2014, Townsend authored “Re-Programming Mobility,” a report that dreamed up four possible futures set in major U.S. metropolitan areas based on emerging trends such as computer-driven vehicles, cheap solar energy, and the growth of telecommuting. The outcomes range from bleak to hopeful, with the most relatable scenarios built around evolutions of current habits and trends, rather than transformative change. In one of Townsend’s possibilities, robocars of differing autonomy levels and from multiple manufacturers struggle to understand one anothers’ behaviors and magnify current congestion woes. (At least Angelenos could go back to sleep once they start their commutes at 4:00 a.m.)
The economic, geographic, and social changes explored here wouldn’t materialize overnight. To witness the full effect, you’d need to scan a 15-to-20-year window starting when full automation is broadly commercialized. The car rewired American society twice before in similar time spans—in the early 20th century during the automobile’s rise and beginning in the mid-’50s when Eisenhower’s interstate system opened the suburbs. Here, we imagine some of the possibilities of how the car’s third major act could change our lives:
Magic 8 Ball Says . . .
Predicting the future is a fool’s game we’re happy to play. Presented here are just a few of the ways robocars could alter American society. The more efficient and less expensive driverless travel becomes, the more sweeping the implications for our way of life.
_ Zero or More Persons per Vehicle
Robocars won’t transform traffic patterns as long as they have to interact with human-driven vehicles, an inevitability even if they are confined to geo-fenced habitats. When the early versions secure access to carpool lanes, they’ll plant the seed for those lanes to eventually be converted to dedicated lanes for computer-driven vehicles.
_ Yeah, Because the French Really Have It Figured Out
Taking a cue from European movements to ban internal-combustion vehicles or all privately owned cars from certain city centers, urban planners might redesign core neighborhoods around limited vehicle traffic, giving a preference to shared, driverless mobility services.
_ High Energy
Driverless cars promise greater energy efficiency as powertrains are electrified and control systems accelerate and brake with computer-optimized precision. However, those efficiency gains are likely to be wiped out by increased travel. Economists know this phenomenon as the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate, which theorizes that an improvement in energy efficiency ultimately leads to an increase in total energy consumption. Applied to cars, it stands to reason that as the cost, in both time and money, of using energy declines, our use for trips both short and long will increase.
_ Empty Cars Everywhere
A driverless fleet built around the demands of the corporate world’s nine-to-five schedule would have hordes of robocars idly circling our streets or, more likely, retreating to storage yards at the edges of our cities during off-peak hours. While most experts predict car utilization will go up with the advent of full computer control, the persistence of private ownership could unravel that notion. A 2015 report from consulting firm KPMG imagines that the average occupancy rate could drop below one passenger per trip, meaning cars are more often empty than not.
_ Public Roads Go Private
Constrained by funding shortfalls and an aversion to new taxes, cities and states may rejuvenate their roads for robocars by turning to private-public partnerships. That could simply mean more toll roads, or it could mean tech companies taking an active role in networking connected traffic signals and managing the markings and signage critical for Level 5 operation.
_ Bigger Spare Tires
Door-to-door driverless Ubers would undermine America’s preferred form of exercise, walking the parking lots of big-box stores and fast-food joints. If they are as cheap and abundant as promised, robocars are also likely to reduce cycling and walking in urban areas and lull suburbanites into more time sitting in a car when they’re not sitting at a desk or on a couch.
_ The Driverless Car Is Not Alone
The fantasy that computer-driven cars will swiftly supplant all other forms of transportation is fiction. From bike-sharing to steering-wheel-less pods to a 30-year-old Ford Econoline driven by a chain-smoking guy named Slim, our transportation options are likely to become more diverse, not less.
_ Hypersprawl
Driverless cars are likely to expand our tolerance for commuting as we trade driving for the productive work of trying out new Snapchat filters and sharing our political views on Facebook. Cheap, rural land helps fuel the rise of the exurbs.
_ Never Search for Parking Again
In 2010, Los Angeles County’s 18.6 million parking spots covered roughly 200 square miles, and yet you were still more likely to find Sasquatch riding a unicorn than an empty spot in Hollywood. Urban planners get giddy at the thought of reclaiming lots and structures for new commercial and residential development if private car ownership dwindles.
_ Look, Another Starbucks!
Today, tech companies deliver ads to their users. In the future, when a computer-driven car chooses the route and exact drop-off location, tech companies can deliver users to their advertisers.
_ Jaywalking’s Big Comeback
Why would a pedestrian ever yield to a car that always yields to people? That was a contentious issue in the early 1900s, too. Newspapers and government officials tapped into the human psyche with a public-shaming campaign that minted the term “jaywalker” (a “jay” was a rube). Our historian, Norton, imagines that driverless cars could shame jaywalkers out of the way by using a distinct audible alert to call attention to any pedestrian obstructing its travel.
_ Will Drive for Food
The roughly 4 million Americans who work as drivers currently have less job security than a print-magazine journalist. (Though possibly more than any automotive journalist has.)
_ Grounded
Regional air travel could collapse as driverless cars reprogram the time/cost optimization of travel with more speed and greater productivity options.
_ Ride the Short Bus
In the quest to make all transportation more space efficient, today’s 40-foot buses could be traded for smaller 10-to-20-passenger automated shuttles.
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