[msb-alumni] Hail that Pod! How Google, Car Makers See the Future
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2015 14:31:45 -0500
BlankReal consequences for Michigan, in particular. Not only more
independence for the older population; higher traffic safety; but it will
mean I think a lot fewer automobile sales.
Steve
Hail that pod! How Google, car makers see the future
SAN FRANCISCO On any given day, traffic snarls here on Market Street as
commuters fight their way out of the city.
But fast forward 30 years and two divergent realities present themselves. In
2045, the Bay Area one of 11 national mega-regions that will dominate
commerce, according to the new Department of Transportation study, "Beyond
Traffic" could be either a hellish automotive zoo or a Valhalla of space and
efficiency.
So imagine this. Privately owned gas-powered cars are banned downtown,
replaced by fleets of electric, app-summoned self-driving taxis. These
autonomous-and-shared pods are in constant circulation, allowing most of the
city's parking lots to be reclaimed for real estate or parks. Air quality
improves, greenhouse gases decrease.
That seems to be a vision of the future a number of car manufacturers and
tech companies are angling toward, judging from a flurry of recent auto-tech
news. Ford recently announced a huge expansion of its Silicon Valley
offices, which are focused on mobility issues in growing mega-cities. Google
made headlines this week with news that it is reportedly working on a
ride-hailing app, which could be paired with its fleet of self-driving pods
that could be ready in five years.
Meanwhile, ride-hailing powerhouse Uber, which Google has invested in, just
announced it will be opening the Uber Advanced Technologies Center on the
Pittsburgh campus of robotics leaders Carnegie Mellon University. This
partnership seems inevitable. Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, said at a tech
conference last spring that his goal was to eliminate the driver, noting
that "when there's no dude (driving) the car, the cost of taking an Uber
anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle and car ownership goes away.
In fact, tech-native Millennials who have embraced ride-sharing and hailing
and seem to shrug at car ownership represent a bright spot in an otherwise
dour DOT survey. Released this week, the report points out we spend 40 hours
a week on average stuck in traffic at an annual fiscal cost of $121 billion.
According to "Beyond Traffic," which tellingly was unveiled at Google's
headquarters, about 73 million U.S. Millennials age 18 to 34 are driving
less than previous generations, logging 20% fewer driven miles in 2010 than
at the start of the decade. And a longer-living American population also
will embrace alternative mobility options that include self-driving cars,
the report says.
The University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute unveils its
new Mobility Transformation Facility - a 32-acre self-driving car mini-city
dubbed M City - this spring. (Photo: Courtesy of UMTRI) But Millennials in
particular "are key to improving transportation in our urban centers," says
Neill Coleman, spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation, which since 2007
has given a range of grants to organizations working on future transport
issues. "Millennials are going to be important for our megacities' economic
health, and the ability to attract talent will be linked to making cities
equitable in terms of access to mobility," says Coleman, noting that in a
2014 study 54% of Millennials said they would move to a different city if it
offered better transportation options, and 66% said access to transportation
was a top-three priority when considering a move.
"All the trends point to the end of (privately owned) cars," says Eric
Jaffe, editor of the 2014 e-book The Future of Transportation , part of The
Atlantic magazine's CityLab offshoot. "The natural pairing we're heading
toward is e-hailing and a driverless taxi network. Jaffe say one autonomous
taxi can replace the need for at least a dozen privately owned cars, while
eliminating the need for parking spaces, which often take up as much as a
third of the land area in a given city.
"Americans still drive a huge amount, but we'll need to create other
choices," he says.
The first city to make the revolutionary switch to autonomous taxis isn't
likely to be in this country. Experts routinely single out congested
non-U.S. capitals as prime candidates for transportation makeovers. Studies
show that "the mobility demand of a city like Singapore could be met with
30% of its existing vehicles," says Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable
City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "And our Lab research
suggests that number could be cut by 40% more if passengers were willing to
share a vehicle. Ratti says that it's little surprise companies ranging from
Ford to BMW are envisioning a future where they are less retailers of a
private purchase and more "mobility providers" that sell fleets of shared,
autonomous vehicles.
"Such reductions in car numbers would dramatically lower the cost of our
mobility infrastructure and its associated energy cost," he says.
So what are we waiting for?
To begin with, while automated car technology is advancing rapidly, it still
isn't fully baked. But more significantly, regulatory issues abound as
states individually grapple with safety issues associated with autonomous
vehicles.
"Trust will be very key to the acceptance of self-driving cars," says
Richard Vaughn, manager of design experience at Visteon Corp., which
develops in-car tech for a range of automakers. "We'll need to redefine
terms like 'car,' and retrain the way we think.
Autos in the past had a front and back, but in the future they may not be
directional. Among the various research projects at MIT's Senseable City Lab
is one that tracks layers of digital mobility in major global cities, such
as this one slide focusing on Singapore. (Photo: Courtesy of MIT Senseable
City Lav)
Whatever they look like, they better not put us in danger. To help ensure
that, a 32-acre spread in Ann Arbor, Mich., is being dedicated to thoroughly
testing self-driving cars. Dubbed M City and due to open this spring, the
facility will repeatedly run autonomous vehicles through scenarios they're
likely to encounter in the real world people darting out from between parked
cars - until their software and sensors are unimpeachable.
"We're on the cusp of a revolution," says Peter Sweatman, director of the
University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, which oversees M
City's research and has the assistance of five top automakers. "We need a
new transportation ecosystem to make the 21 st century a livable reality.
And no one company will come up with it, we need to work together.
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