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Driverless cars will be on our streets sooner than we can imagine and it’s up to society to be ready to avoid traffic and environmental chaos, warns the founder of the world’s largest car-sharing company.
The choice, says Robin Chase, a “transportation entrepreneur” from Boston who co-founded Zipcar in 2000, is between a heaven or a hell of autonomous vehicles.
“At this moment, cities have a one-time chance where the makers of autonomous vehicles are in a supplicant position,” said Chase, who was the guest speaker this week at the National Capital Commission’s Capital Urbanism Lab. “They have a one-time power position to make some demands, so I say, let’s use it.”
Ignoring the arrival of autonomous vehicles is risky, she said.
“I can imagine some cities might say, ‘Oh no, not us.’ And they’ll be rapidly be left in the dust … I don’t think we can afford to wait.”
Related
In Chase’s “hell” scenario, driverless car owners will have their vehicles drop them off at work, then let them endlessly circle the block or drive all the way home to avoid paying steep downtown parking rates. The result is even worse congestion than before. In Chase’s nightmare, retail stores disappear because driverless cars will be so cheap to operate, companies will clog the roads with automated delivery trucks that race around offering 15-minute deliveries of the most commonly bought goods. Bus drivers, taxi drivers and workers in the traditional auto industry are all unemployed by the rise of the autonomous car.
But if well-thought-out laws and regulations are in place, along with tax incentives and disincentives, people will be encouraged to split ownership of clean, electric-powered vehicles and share rides with neighbours on their street. Traffic congestion will be reduced or disappear and electric vehicles will make for a cleaner environment.
Google and Tesla are leading the way in driverless cars. Tesla alone has driven more than 22 million miles on public roads with self-driving cars. But the big automakers are in the game too, with Ford promising it will produce an autonomous taxi by 2021. Uber has been using automated Fords (with a driver along just in case) in Pittsburgh for a month now. Even Apple is getting into the electric/self-driving car game, with some of the research being done in Kanata.
In the near future, shared ownership and shared rides in driverless cars will offer people door-to-door service “for the price of a bus ticket,” Chase said.
Chase thinks more pilot projects will begin in some fair-weather U.S. cities within a few years, although it might take a bit longer for the technology to be able to cope with a snowy city like Ottawa. But the arrival of autonomous cars will also create a huge hole in municipal revenues with the loss of fuel taxes and parking fees, and even traffic ticket revenue from non-speeding, law-abiding driverless cars. Societies will need to learn how to get along without the revenue and also manage the job losses and disruption that driverless cars will bring.
Economics will be the biggest driver toward autonomous cars, she said.
“Your car today costs you, on average, $9,000 a year. That’s 18 per cent of average household income — and it sits idle 95 per cent of the time,” she said. “People will see autonomous vehicles — faster, cheaper, safer, better — and say, ‘Why wouldn’t I want to do it?'”
But will they really? The top two selling vehicles in Canada last year were the Ford F150 and Dodge Ram pickups — about as far from a tiny, clean-fuelled autonomous vehicles as possible.
The early adopters will be seniors and the disabled, said Barrie Kirk, an engineer and executive director of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence in Kanata, followed by millennials, who studies have shown are already averse to driving and car ownership.
“It’s the middle-aged people, the people who have pickup trucks, the people for whom getting a driver’s licence (and) getting a vehicle as soon as they could was part of the culture. It’ll be a lot more difficult to get them to let go of the steering wheel,” Kirk said.
But even those people hate the drive to and from work and will eventually be won over by the advantages of autonomous vehicles, he said.
So what can regulators do to prepare? Chase said governments should insist driverless cars be electric and that the new additions to the power grid come from renewable energy sources: What benefit is there to replacing smoggy, gas-powered cars with smoggy, gas-powered driverless cars?
Chase also said no one should be allowed to own their own driverless car for at least five years after their introduction. The delay in private ownership would give time for society to get into the habit of sharing rides or sharing ownership of a vehicle.
“It seems like an incredible ask, but Google, Tesla and Ford have already said they intend to sell to small fleets. So let’s just codify that … so we have time to build in the behaviours so we can shape this potential future,” Chase said.
Finally, she would like manufacturers and fleets to share a common application to summon a ride so passengers could choose the best or most convenient vehicle, regardless of who owns it, built it or operates it. A shared information system would maximize the chance that rides would be shared, she said.
Even so, regular cars won’t disappear, at least not right away. People in rural areas won’t see the same benefits of a driverless car as city dwellers will.
“It’s not going to be illegal to drive your own car. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. You can continue to spend 18 per cent of your income … That’s your choice. You can keep doing it,” Chase said.
“The first generation of self-driving cars is already with us,” said Kirk, who sees driverless cars in cities by 2020. “They’re being used in the oil sands. There’s a fleet of six automated shuttle buses being used in France. You go to a showroom now and buy semi-autonomous cars. It’s coming a lot faster than people think.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
The choice, says Robin Chase, a “transportation entrepreneur” from Boston who co-founded Zipcar in 2000, is between a heaven or a hell of autonomous vehicles.
“At this moment, cities have a one-time chance where the makers of autonomous vehicles are in a supplicant position,” said Chase, who was the guest speaker this week at the National Capital Commission’s Capital Urbanism Lab. “They have a one-time power position to make some demands, so I say, let’s use it.”
Ignoring the arrival of autonomous vehicles is risky, she said.
“I can imagine some cities might say, ‘Oh no, not us.’ And they’ll be rapidly be left in the dust … I don’t think we can afford to wait.”
Related
In Chase’s “hell” scenario, driverless car owners will have their vehicles drop them off at work, then let them endlessly circle the block or drive all the way home to avoid paying steep downtown parking rates. The result is even worse congestion than before. In Chase’s nightmare, retail stores disappear because driverless cars will be so cheap to operate, companies will clog the roads with automated delivery trucks that race around offering 15-minute deliveries of the most commonly bought goods. Bus drivers, taxi drivers and workers in the traditional auto industry are all unemployed by the rise of the autonomous car.
But if well-thought-out laws and regulations are in place, along with tax incentives and disincentives, people will be encouraged to split ownership of clean, electric-powered vehicles and share rides with neighbours on their street. Traffic congestion will be reduced or disappear and electric vehicles will make for a cleaner environment.
Google and Tesla are leading the way in driverless cars. Tesla alone has driven more than 22 million miles on public roads with self-driving cars. But the big automakers are in the game too, with Ford promising it will produce an autonomous taxi by 2021. Uber has been using automated Fords (with a driver along just in case) in Pittsburgh for a month now. Even Apple is getting into the electric/self-driving car game, with some of the research being done in Kanata.
In the near future, shared ownership and shared rides in driverless cars will offer people door-to-door service “for the price of a bus ticket,” Chase said.
Chase thinks more pilot projects will begin in some fair-weather U.S. cities within a few years, although it might take a bit longer for the technology to be able to cope with a snowy city like Ottawa. But the arrival of autonomous cars will also create a huge hole in municipal revenues with the loss of fuel taxes and parking fees, and even traffic ticket revenue from non-speeding, law-abiding driverless cars. Societies will need to learn how to get along without the revenue and also manage the job losses and disruption that driverless cars will bring.
Economics will be the biggest driver toward autonomous cars, she said.
“Your car today costs you, on average, $9,000 a year. That’s 18 per cent of average household income — and it sits idle 95 per cent of the time,” she said. “People will see autonomous vehicles — faster, cheaper, safer, better — and say, ‘Why wouldn’t I want to do it?'”
But will they really? The top two selling vehicles in Canada last year were the Ford F150 and Dodge Ram pickups — about as far from a tiny, clean-fuelled autonomous vehicles as possible.
The early adopters will be seniors and the disabled, said Barrie Kirk, an engineer and executive director of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence in Kanata, followed by millennials, who studies have shown are already averse to driving and car ownership.
“It’s the middle-aged people, the people who have pickup trucks, the people for whom getting a driver’s licence (and) getting a vehicle as soon as they could was part of the culture. It’ll be a lot more difficult to get them to let go of the steering wheel,” Kirk said.
But even those people hate the drive to and from work and will eventually be won over by the advantages of autonomous vehicles, he said.
So what can regulators do to prepare? Chase said governments should insist driverless cars be electric and that the new additions to the power grid come from renewable energy sources: What benefit is there to replacing smoggy, gas-powered cars with smoggy, gas-powered driverless cars?
Chase also said no one should be allowed to own their own driverless car for at least five years after their introduction. The delay in private ownership would give time for society to get into the habit of sharing rides or sharing ownership of a vehicle.
“It seems like an incredible ask, but Google, Tesla and Ford have already said they intend to sell to small fleets. So let’s just codify that … so we have time to build in the behaviours so we can shape this potential future,” Chase said.
Finally, she would like manufacturers and fleets to share a common application to summon a ride so passengers could choose the best or most convenient vehicle, regardless of who owns it, built it or operates it. A shared information system would maximize the chance that rides would be shared, she said.
Even so, regular cars won’t disappear, at least not right away. People in rural areas won’t see the same benefits of a driverless car as city dwellers will.
“It’s not going to be illegal to drive your own car. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. You can continue to spend 18 per cent of your income … That’s your choice. You can keep doing it,” Chase said.
“The first generation of self-driving cars is already with us,” said Kirk, who sees driverless cars in cities by 2020. “They’re being used in the oil sands. There’s a fleet of six automated shuttle buses being used in France. You go to a showroom now and buy semi-autonomous cars. It’s coming a lot faster than people think.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
