Self-driving
cars abstract
For the past hundred years, innovation within the
automotive sector has brought major technological advances, leading to safer,
cleaner, and more affordable vehicles. But for the most part, since Henry Ford
introduced the moving assembly line, the changes have been incremental,
evolutionary. Now, in the early decades of the 21st century, the industry
appears to be on the cusp of
revolutionary change—with potential to dramatically reshape not just the
competitive landscape but also the way we interact with vehicles and, indeed,
the future design of our roads and cities. The revolution, when it comes, will
be engendered by the advent of autonomous or “self-driving” vehicles.
Market
dynamics
Imagine.
It’s 6:25 p.m. and you’ve just wrapped up a meeting. You still have several
items on your “must-do” list before you can call it a night and a 25-minute
commute that used to take as long as 90 minutes in the bad old days of
rush-hour traffic.
But
no worries today. You flick open an app on your phone and request a pick-up at
the office; a text confirmation comes back and a few minutes later a car pulls
up. “Home,” you say, as you launch a call to your client in Shanghai. The car
slips easily into the self-drive lane, checking road conditions and flashing a
message that you will arrive home in 24 minutes. In that time, you will have
reviewed a report with your client, answered e-mails, and set your pick-up time
for tomorrow morning. You arrive home ready to relax and focus on your family.
You step out of the car and it moves off to its next pick-up.
A
Self-Driving Car?
Even
now that military drones have become a familiar topic, the idea of self-driving
cars sounds pretty far-fetched. But is it still just science fiction? Something
that gets batted around in robotics labs? Or are self-driving vehicles on the
verge of becoming a viable form of personal mobility? Will the market accept
them, want them, and pay for them?
We
think the answer is a resounding yes: The marketplace will not merely accept
self-driving vehicles; it will be the engine pulling the industry forward.
Consumers are eager for new mobility alternatives that would allow them to stay
connected and recapture the time and psychic energy they squander in traffic
jams and defensive driving.
The
Status Quo: The High Cost of Mobility
The
desire to go where we want whenever we want has been a powerful market force
for centuries. And the automotive industry has been—and continues to be—a
critical component of the U.S. economy, employing 1.7 million people (across
manufacturers, suppliers, and dealers) and providing $500 billion in annual
compensation, as well as accounting for approximately 3 percent of GDP.2 But
mobility is increasingly expensive and inefficient.
First,
of course, is the total cost of vehicle ownership, which can bring the price of
a $21,000 car driven an average of 15,000 miles per year to more than $40,000
over five years—for a machine that sits unused on average, almost 22 hours out
of every day.
We
also pay heavily to build and maintain our roads. The U.S. Department of
Transportation (USDOT) estimates that new construction of four-lane highways in
an urban area costs between $8 million and $12 million per mile. Even
resurfacing that road, at an estimated $1.25 million per mile, can be daunting
for cash-strapped governments.
The
average American commuter now spends 250 hours a year behind the wheel of a
vehicle; whether the value of that time is measured in lost productivity, lost
time pursuing other interests, or lost serenity, the cost is high. Today, those
commuters inch along during rush hour traffic; they drive in circles around
city streets looking for parking spaces; and, according to a report published
by the MIT Media Lab, “In congested urban areas, about 40 percent of total gasoline
use is in cars looking for parking.”
Safety
and the Human Toll
We
pay in other important ways. In 2010, there were approximately six million
vehicle crashes leading to 32,788 traffic deaths, or approximately 15 deaths
per 100,000 people. Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for
Americans aged 4–34. And of the 6
million crashes, 93 percent are attributable to human error. The economic
impact of crashes is also significant. More than 2.3 million adult drivers and
passengers were treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 2009. According to research
from the American Automobile Association (AAA), traffic crashes cost Americans
$299.5billion annually.
The
pursuit of improved vehicle safety has spurred the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA) to focus attention on self-driving vehicles. As
NHTSA’s Associate Administrator for Vehicle Safety, John Maddox, explained in
early 2012, the goal is not merely to make self-driving vehicles as “safe” as
human drivers, who, as the evidence shows, are not very safe at all. The goal
is to develop “crash-less” cars.
Driving
Demographics
Will
people willingly cede control to a machine and give up driving their own car?
For baby boomers, especially, turning 16 and getting a driver’s license was a rite of passage. But demographics are changing, as are attitudes towards driving. Younger generations, the ones who grew up with game consoles and smart phones, are not so in love with cars. They live perpetually connected lives, and while they may have the same desire for mobility on demand, some see the act of driving as a distraction from texting, not the other way around. Their antipathy towards driving may be a good thing, given these statistics: Distractions account for 18 percent of crashes with injuries, and 11 percent of drivers under age 20 involved in crashes with fatalities were reported to have been distracted.
This
group—members of the “Gen Now” generation are not rushing to get driver’s
licenses the way baby boomers did. In 1978, nearly half of all 16-year-olds and
75 percent of all 17-year-olds had licenses; by 2008, those numbers had dropped
to 31 percent and 49 percent, respectively.
Together,
the “Gen Now” generation and ”Digital Natives” comprise 133 million current and
future drivers, or more than 43 percent of the U.S. population. Older adults,
the 47 million Americans aged 66 and over, face different mobility challenges.
While they still cherish their autonomy, they are prone to develop age-related
impairments to their driving ability.
Even
aging boomers are increasingly distracted by cell phones and other gadgets;
they, too, will soon move beyond safe driving age. Among the boomers we
interviewed, even those who owned premium cars said they would willingly give
up driving to work in exchange for an easier commute.
Self-driving
cars open up new possibilities and new markets, and not just for those who are
legally eligible to drive, but also for younger people, older people, and those
with disabilities. For them self-driving promises greater freedom and mobility and greater
control over their lives.
Running
Out of Space
In
the early days of the automobile, America was expanding, conquering the vast
open spaces with a network of highways. It was the work of the 20th century,
planning and building the 3.9 million miles of paved public roads that now
connect Seattle to Miami, Bangor to Baton Rouge, and Detroit to Mountain View.
Americans mythologized their cars and the freedom of the open road. We shaped
our towns and villages around the highways, building vast suburbs miles beyond
our gritty urban centers, adding “big-box stores” and mega-malls surrounded by
acres and acres of parking lots.
But
now population density is increasing and the trend in the U.S. and worldwide is
one of rapid urbanization. The United Nations reports that 82.1 percent of
Americans lived in urban areas in 2010, up from 79.1 percent in 2000, meaning
that 14.1 percent more Americans lived in urban areas in 2010 compared to 2000.
By 2020, the UN estimates that 84.4 percent of Americans will live in urban
areas, with more than 28 percent living in urban areas of more than five
million people.
Over
the past 50 years, increased population density in the United States coincided
with an increase in household wealth and growth in the number of multi-car
families. From 1960 to 2010, the number of registered vehicles in the United
States tripled, from 74.4 million in 1960 (one car for every 2.4 people) to
250.2 million registered vehicles in 2010 (one for every 1.2 people).
Parking
lots and garages form urban dead zones, draining the vitality from city
streets. In his book Re-Thinking a Lot (2012), Eran Ben-Joseph notes, “In some
U.S. cities, parking lots cover more than a third of the land area, becoming
the single most salient landscape feature of our built environment.”
In
summary, current trends are unsustainable over the long-term, and new
alternatives are emerging—not just from within the automotive sector, but from
a host of new players and unlikely suspects. From universities, such as MIT,
Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and Columbia, to leading high-tech companies, such
as Google and Intel, to start-ups, the shape of personal mobility is
changing—and could ultimately transform every aspect of how we use, purchase
(or not), insure, and even finance our vehicles. This transformation will have
profound implications for any company within the automotive ecosystem.
Where we heading?
Autonomous cars: The next revolution looms
In the following, we examine how automated vehicles
will fundamentally change our transportation infrastructure and provide the
opportunity to make our societies better – less dependent on oil, less-resource
consuming, with less carnage on the roads and with more freedom for the old,
young and underprivileged.
Key benefits of autonomous cars
·
Greatly reduced mobility
costs through car sharing
·
Simplify introduction of alternative
fuels
·
Greatly reduced traffic
fatalities
·
Better road utilization,
fewer roads needed
·
Combat climate change
(higher passenger-mile per-gallon)
·
Elderly can live on their own
much longer
·
Revolutionize product distribution
·
Improved disaster response (hurricane,
epidemics etc)
·
Optimal integration of
private and public transport
Towards car-sharing
From
an economic perspective, privately owned cars are extremely underutilized
assets: They sit idle almost all of the time, aging and wasting space on a
parking lot or in a garage. This will change: A car that can drive a passenger
into town on its own does not need to wait there until
the
passenger needs it again. It can drive others in the meantime. Car-sharing
organizations and rental car companies are best positioned to take advantage of
this new capability: They will develop novel mobility services based on
autonomous cars. Once their fleets reach a certain size, they will be able to offer
almost instant transportation services to anyone: Whenever you need a car, it
will arrive at your doorstep in just a few minutes. Initially, such services
will be most viable in high-density urban areas where space is at premium and many
residents don't own a car. As such services grow, as mobility providers optimize
their business models and as network effects kick in, the costs of renting will
fall dramatically. It will not take long until the costs will fall below the
costs of owning. This will entice more and more consumers to stop buying their
own cars but rather rely on shared car ownership. This effect is
self-reinforcing and will lead to huge economic, life-style and
resource-conservation benefits for society.
The
following factors drive down the costs. Combined, they should easily be able to
halve the average mobility cost per household.
Increased utilization
rate
When
vehicles are shared, their utilization rate (the average number of hours it
carries passengers) increases which in turn decreases the capital costs per
kilometer. Shared vehicles should be able to achieve an increase in utilization
per vehicle by a factor of at least 5, maybe even 10. But the capital costs per
kilometer will be reduced by an even larger factor because rental vehicles will
differ from privately owned vehicles and are – on average – much less costly (see
next section). The ability to manage fleets of cars instead of an individual
car will also reduce maintenance costs and increase the life-span of a vehicle.
Vehicle
differentiation
Today's
privately owned cars are general-purpose tools. All of our car models are
designed to accommodate many different usage scenarios:
Commuting
alone, short distance, shopping trips, taking the whole family on vacation,
long distance travel, etc. As a consequence privately owned cars show little
differentiation in such crucial
attributes as number of seats, range, weight, energy source, speed range. When cars
are shared, in contrast, the customer chooses the appropriate vehicle for each
trip. There is no need to request a five-seater with a range of 400km for the
lonely 15 minute morning commute. Thus cars in a rental fleet will be optimized
for a particular usage scenario: Small passenger cars for short-range city
trips, vans for the holidays, limousines for showing off.
Most
trips occur within the city and cover only a short distance. Mobility providers
therefore will operate a large number of small, lightweight, short-range cars
which can only transport one or two passengers. While this reduces capital cost
and consumes less of our precious natural resources, it also leads to a large jump
in fuel efficiency! Switching the average trip to a smaller, lighter car has a
much larger potential to increase fuel efficiency than all current technical efforts
to develop slightly more efficient engines.
In
the same vein, barriers to the introduction of low emission vehicles and of
electric vehicles will fall: Private car owners hesitate to purchase electric
vehicles because of their limited range. This is no concern for the short-range
part of a car fleet which can easily include electric vehicles. Today one of
the major obstacle for the adoption of alternative fuels is the need to invest in
distribution systems on a national scale. The problem becomes much more
manageable when the fleet contains thousands of short-range vehicles which
never leave the city. Local distribution systems can then target specifically
this market segment and compete heads-on with the established players.
Thus
automated vehicles turn out to be a very green technology. They may actually be
a potent technology to combat climate change. Many of the traditional
assumptions governing the commercial viability of green automotive technology
become obsolete.
Better public
transport
Automated cars are ideal
for delivering passengers to or from public transport systems. They can
Furthermore, when cars
are rented, the mobility provider will establish the necessary information technology
infrastructure required for coordination. The service provider will be able to
anticipate and coordinate travel plans and to avoid congestion through
intelligent routing. When traveling longer distances, providers may offer the option to switch to a more
public mode of transportation.
For example, instead of
renting a two-seater to travel from New York to Washington a two-seater may
pick up the travelers at their home, drive them a few miles to a gathering location,
where the passengers may need to wait for a few minutes until they can change
into a larger capacity automated vehicle - a bus. Of course, they are unlikely
to have to step out into the cold; they will wait in their car - continue to
watch their in-flight movies until the bus arrives (and when they sit down in
their seats in the bus, their movie will continue right where they left off).
As they reach their destination, their bus may drop them off next to another
two seater , which brings them to their final destination. There would be little
need for scheduling as the provider could assemble the buses based on actual
demand. In this way, the distinction between public and private transportation
will become quickly blurred.
Increased
road utilization
Rental
cars will improve the utilization of scarce transportation infrastructure:
Autonomous
cars cause less congestion. Such cars can coordinate their actions on crowded
street much more efficiently than human drivers (who tend to start switching
lanes, thereby making the problem worse). When waiting at a stop light, all
automated vehicles can easily synchronize their actions: As the stop light turns
to green, all waiting cars can start moving immediately; they don't need to
wait until the car in front has visibly moved out of the way. In cities, this
will make a large difference and thus increase the capacity of existing roads.
The ability to reduce congestion and increase the capacity of roads has
important implications for infrastructure planning. Many roads which are being
planned today because of an anticipated increase in traffic may turn out not to
be needed any more when automated vehicles become the main
stream. Automated vehicles will reduce worldwide infrastructure investments by
billions of dollars worldwide.
Rented
automated cars have another efficiency advantage: Their rental costs will be
lowest when transportation demand is low, i.e. late at night, highest during
the peak commute times. When commuters use rental cars, congestion pricing will
no longer need to be instituted on the road, it will occur on the car with the
added benefit that commuters will have an incentive to car-share part of the
way. Long distance travelers who are flexible (students, vacationers etc.) may
elect to drive during the night - when costs are lowest. Cars for long-distance
travel might even be convertible into sleeper-cars. The economics of automated
cars ensure a more efficient distribution of the load on our traffic
infrastructure and reduce the demand for peak capacity.
This
provides enormous cost and energy saving potential which far exceeds any
possible improvements which may still be reached in the fuel efficiency of
current cars. Automated vehicles are a very green technology!
Safety
Worldwide,
every year more than 1 million people die on the road. Traffic accidents are a
major cause of death for young adults. They cause unspeakable grief and impose
a large financial burden. While intelligent cars will never completely
eliminate traffic accidents, they will greatly reduce traffic fatalities.
Humans are no match for automated cars because technology is not susceptible to
many of our shortcomings: Automated cars never tire, are always alert, don't drink
and have no emotions which might take over at the wrong moment. Moreover,
automated cars have extremely short reaction times to external events. They are
not measured in seconds but in thousands of a second. They can process a much
wider range of information about what is happening around the car; there is no
limit to the number and type of sensors. They are also able to communicate
among one another. In the same instant that a car hits the brakes it can n otify
the neighboring cars of this action which can then react almost without delay.
The
potential to increase car safety by several orders of magnitude is clearly
there. It is up to our society to encourage industry to reach such a safety
level. Every child that dies on
the
road, every youth that ends their live in a car wreck on Friday night is a
death too many. Automated cars have the potential to greatly reduce the carnage
on our roads, a phenomenon we have grown strangely accustomed to.
Liability
trap
But automated
cars won't be without their own failures. While we accept thousands of lives
ending on the streets every year because of drunk driving, a single fatality
caused by an automated car could provoke a media frenzy and lead to huge
liability claims. As long as the car industry must fear that every accident involving
an autonomous car will become a feast for litigation lawyers, no such cars will
be built and traffic fatalities will continue to be a leading cause of deaths.
This
liability trap is an obstacle which car companies cannot overcome. It needs
concerted legislative action which requires autonomous cars to pass the highest
safety standards and then provide clear liability limits. Such safety
standards, for example, would require that their fatality rate, is by the factor
of at least a 100 lower than the fatality rate of a human driver. Safety
institutions must develop agreed upon standards for measuring the safety of
such cars. Exacting tests will need to be developed to ensure that autonomous
cars behave appropriately. Real-world test-beds will need to be set up with
real cars (possibly remote-controlled). Extreme situations will need to be tested
- similar to crash tests.
Real-time
simulation test-bed
But
extensive testing in a real setting is very hard. Therefore a real-time autonomous
car simulator will need to be developed. Such a simulator will feed the car
with simulated sensor information. The car in turn will respond with commands
for the drive train, motor etc. These commands need to be returned to the simulation
environment which then calculates the speed, location and other physical
properties of the car at any moment.
Such
a simulation environment will have the great advantage of being able to test
the behavior of the car in extreme situations (e.g. half of the sensors fail,
heavy rain etc.). Such a simulation environment will force car makers, sensor
builders and safety bodies to agree on a standard for modeling car control and
behavior which would also improve the interoperability of components and thus
reduce overall costs. Furthermore, such a simulation environment will provide a
boost to autonomous car research: The current rush of countless university
research groups gobbling up their own autonomous car prototype, encountering
the same problems over and over, could give way to more productive research
where different sensor arrangements and command and control strategies could be
tested.
Advantages
and weaknesses of different algorithms could be investigated in detail. At the
same time, the development of a real-time simulation environment for automated
cars poses interesting computing challenges which will advance basic research.
In the
United States, more than ten thousand people are killed each year in
alcohol-impaired driving crashes. Such accidents could easily be prevented with
autonomous driving technology. Every year which we can speed up the
introduction of such cars, we will be able to save this many lives in the
United States alone.
Implications
for the automotive industry
Autonomous
vehicle technology may rejuvenate the automobile industry. It presents many opportunities
for new products and services. But established players may find it hard to
adjust. The shift towards the rental model will greatly shrink the overall number
of vehicles in service, thus dramatically reducing demand in the long term (in
the short to medium term demand may actually pick up as a stock of automated
cars is built up).
Marketing
will be turned upside down. Professionally managed car fleets will be less
interested in design and brand appeal. They will aim to reduce average lifetime
operating costs and focus on maintenance, improved fuel efficiency, fleet integration,
etc. They will certainly want to have their say during development. We may find
that car marketing will take some cues from the way Boeing and Airbus market
commercial airliners. Fleet managers will always have very specific needs for
their cars. As they usually order larger numbers, there will be significant
demand for customization. This includes furnishing the interior in the mobility
provider's style, adding technology for monitoring, billing, passenger authentication,
adding devices to simplify maintenance, etc. While it is possible that established car
vendors perform these services, these needs will also lower the barriers for
new entrants to the market.
Some
established segments of the car industry will shrink: Fewer gas stations will
be needed because it won't be left to chance when and where a car needs to
refuel. The dealer networks will shrink dramatically or even vanish. Repairs will
be managed by the car fleet which will pay close attention to maintenance costs
and durability. The number of repair shops will greatly fall.
Autonomous cars conserve
resources
·
Car sharing greatly reduces
total number of cars
·
Smaller average car size
increases mileage
·
Fleets simplify
introduction of alternative fuels
·
Can meld public and private
transport
·
Improved road utilization
·
Fewer roads needed
·
Inherent congestion pricing
New Services and business
models
Automated
cars are robots. They may become the first major intrusion of robots into our
daily lives and into the consciousness of the public. They will change our
world view and the way we think about ourselves. For a time, there will be a
discussion about whether autonomous cars take away human freedom to drive. This
may be a political issue for a while. But commuters will be quite happy to release
the steering wheel and it is only a question of time until a broad consensus
emerges that humans should only drive cars for fun and certainly only in places
where they can not endanger the lives of others. Automated cars will lead to
the emergence of many kinds of new services, most of
New
products will arise in logistics and around the delivery of all kinds of
products. Supermarkets may use them to deliver their wares to your home (which
requires suitable receptacles/receiving mechanisms). Meals on wheels and other
services to the elderly may become much more ubiquitous thus enabling the elderly
to live on their own for much longer.
Lower
distribution costs also increase the ability to rent or share products. Why own
a bike when you only use it a weekend or two in a year? Just call the bike shop
and your favorite bike will be at your doorstep on Saturday morning. Need special tools - they
are just a call away.
No
need to own a lawn mower; they will arrive at regular intervals. Thus greatly
reduced local transportation costs and short delivery times may mean that fewer
items need to be purchased for yourself.
The
storage business could also benefit from the ability to transfer goods automatically
between storage site and usage location.
Automated
cars imply that machines can move by themselves to the destination where they
are needed. This is attractive for agricultural machines and in construction. A
logical step is to operate more and more machines by remote control. Smaller
special purpose autonomous machines may emerge which only operate in bounded
areas such as a construction site or a field. Roving 'inspectors' may become
popular - small robots equipped with a camera which can be remotely controlled
and feed images about a site from whichever angle and position is needed.
Automated vehicle technology will be applied for many smaller autonomous
machines. There is a huge potential for them on factory floors, warehouses,
hospitals and practically everywhere. Automated vehicle technology will be
applied to an incredible variety of moving systems.
Emergency response
Automated
cars may also perform a special role in an emergency. They might be able to
switch into emergency mode and deliver anybody to the nearest hospital or first
aid team at maximum speed. When an earthquake occurs, a hurricane approaches
etc. evacuation can be more orderly and faster. In cases of disease outbreaks autonomous
cars could help limit the spreading of a disease. Unfortunately, automated
vehicles also have offensive capabilities. No wonder
that
the military is so interested in this technology.
Driver
Assistance Systems?
At
present a large part of the automotive industry and of research funding
institutions (especially in
Action
items for faster introduction
Governments
- Legal framework to remove liability
trap
- Legal framework for inter-car
communication
- Legal framework to ensure
open access
- Review long-term
infrastructure investments
- Encourage test beds
Industry
- Update scenario planning to
include autonomous vehicles
- Adapt portfolio strategy
- Create real-time autonomous
vehicle simulator test-bed
- Standardize autonomous car
component interfaces
- Establish limited local
test-beds
- Experiment with autonomous
devices on different scales
Academia
- Build economic models of
autonomous car fleets to understand evolution paths and
success
factors
- Fundamental research for
real-time simulator
- Algorithms and tools for
autonomous cars
Conclusion
Autonomous
cars will greatly impact on our lives. They will make driving
safer,
more convenient, less energy-intensive and cheaper. They will greatly reduce
our CO2 footprint, enhance our freedom and reduce the risk of dying in a
traffic accident.
They
will force us to confront philosophical issues about us and the machines we
have created and they will change patterns of work, life and economic
organization. Although the benefits are obvious, the current legal framework is
still hindering the further evolution of this technology and may thus be
responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths per year which would have been prevented
if autonomous cars had reached maturity earlier.
It
is time to seriously consider this technology and to put it into service to the
benefit of our societies.