How Autonomous Vehicles Will Reshape Our World
THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING
How Autonomous Vehicles Will Reshape Our World
Self-driving cars are just one piece of the puzzle.
Former New York City traffic commissioner Samuel I. Schwartz (aka Gridlock Sam)
explains.
By Samuel I. Schwartz Oct. 18, 2018 10:00 a.m. ET
Nobody, not even transportation experts like me, had an
inkling that ride-on-demand services like Uber would change our travel habits
so quickly and dramatically. Never in our lifetime have we witnessed such a
rapid shift in transportation. Despite global protests, pushback and even
outright bans, Uber has become a commanding social and political force—and a
$70 billion company—in just eight years. Including Uber’s competitors, like
Lyft and Via, the ride-share industry has provided more than 10 billion rides.
But the reverberations from ride-share apps are nothing
compared with what will happen when autonomous vehicles become the norm. This
new industry is on its way to becoming a multitrillion-dollar business—bigger
than Amazon and Walmart combined. According to the World Economic Forum, the
digital transformation of the auto industry will deliver $3.1 trillion annually
in societal benefits by reducing the number of crashes, the impact of carbon
emissions and the cost of car ownership, including maintenance, fuel and
insurance. A 2017 study from Intel predicted that the global autonomous-vehicle
market will generate $7 trillion annually by 2050—both directly (industrial
use) and indirectly (savings from shorter commutes and a reduced need for
emergency services).
Everything around us will be altered by autonomous
vehicles—our roads, our warehouses and even our definition of what a car can
be. Say goodbye to four wheels and a running board; the cars of the future will
barely resemble the vehicles choking our cities today.
Warehouses Take Flight
Autonomous technology and advancements in other fields
will give rise to blimplike “floating warehouses,” with drones that deliver
goods to your door (Amazon and Walmart have applied for patents to create such
a vessel). Operated autonomously or by a remote human pilot, these warehouses,
flying 500 to 1,000 feet in the air, will slash the costs of fulfilling online
orders and the number of delivery trucks—to the detriment of shippers like
FedEx and UPS.
Kiss Conventional Car Design Goodbye
Prototypes for autonomous vehicles resemble streamlined
versions of the cars you see on roads today. But autonomous vehicles won’t look
like cars for long. “Once you eliminate the need for a steering wheel and a
driver, the design possibilities are endless,” says the car designer Dan
Sturges. Cars could be compact and egg-shaped or boxlike mobile homes, and
they’ll offer much more than mobility. They’ll be our personal assistants and
come with flexible design features: a pop-up workstation that turns into a
baby-changing table, a gym that becomes a mobile exam room that can transmit
test results to your doctor.
The Multilevel Street
Drastically different car design means drastically
different roadways. Freeing up the ground level for pedestrians and shopping,
underground roads could be reserved for autonomous cars. Instead of lane lines
and street signs, a network of smart devices—embedded in vehicles and
infrastructure—would communicate on the fly to accommodate traffic. The road
itself could suggest a faster route for you to take.
The End of Motorcycles
Driverless vehicles could be a death knell for
motorcycles. Motorcycle ridership is already in decline. Autonomous technology
will make things even worse. “There is a very real risk of motorcycling being
completely cut out of the conversation,” a 2017 report from Give a Shift
concluded. As autonomy makes transport safer, city planners, insurance
companies and car manufacturers may see motorcycles as an unnecessary danger.
The police report for a crash last year in San Francisco—in which a driverless
car hit a motorcycle—found the motorcyclist at fault.
“AV” Meets ATV
New technology may present an opportunity to make more
all-terrain vehicles, especially for industry. Honda is developing an ATV that
can carry just about anything except a driver. These machines could be used in
various settings, from farming and construction to search and rescue.
Schwartz is an international traffic consultant. This
essay is adapted from his new book, “No One at the Wheel,” which will be
published on Nov. 13 by PublicAffairs.
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