Tag: driverless cars

The Surprising Downside of Driverless Cars

Remember last week when we shared a story about driverless cars and how they’ll be more popular in 10-20 years? Well a new study says we might want to pump the brakes on driverless cars, as they’ll consume more energy than current transportation methods.

Many auto experts believe that autonomous cars could help decrease fuel consumption, but according to a study out of the University of Michigan, that might not be the case. In essence, researchers believe that driverless cars could save people time, but waste more energy due to extra trips.

Driverless cars

Researchers explained that with traditional transportation, parents commute to work, run errands and shuttle the kids around in the fewest trips possible. If we added driverless cars to the equation, the team of scientists believe the self-driving car would drop one parent off at work, return home, drop off the other parent, return home, then drop the kids off at school, and it would follow a similar pattern in the afternoon. Even if families share or rent a driverless car, individual trips would lead to more total driving.

“It could be that sharing the vehicle ends up increasing the mileage because of all these connecting trips,” said Brandon Schoettle of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. “The net effect is probably going to be an increase in mileage, and in general the more miles you drive the more fuel you burn.”

Related Findings

Additional findings from the UM Transportation Research Institute include:

  • Increased driverless car sharing could mean Americans would own 43 percent fewer cars (1.2 per household, down from 2.1 per household).
  • Annual miles per vehicle could increase by roughly 75 percent (20,406 annual miles, down from 11,661 annual miles).
  • That said, even though we might be putting more miles on our cars, these miles would be more fuel efficient, assuming autonomous concepts could eliminate wasteful driving practices, like flooring the gas or slamming on the brakes.

“The upside is that vehicles could drive much more efficiently,” said Ethan Elkind, an associate director at the Climate Change and Business Program at the University of California at Berkeley. “The downside of course is you may see more people driving. More driving overall is not a great thing for the environment.”

U.S. Moving Forward to Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications

v2vNot too long ago, we wrote a blog post supposing that car-to-car communications could be coming to an intersection near you in the not so distant future, and it appears the U.S. is moving forward with the idea.

According to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. is preparing a report that will examine security concerns, technological issues, costs and safety benefits of vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Previous research by the U.S. Department of Transportation suggests that inter-vehicle communications would significantly reduce the number of annual automobile accidents.

The DoT’s report includes two interesting points of research. The findings suggest that two key features of vehicle-to-vehicle communications – Left Turn Assist and Intersection Movement Assist – could help prevent more than a half million crashes each year and save an estimated 1,083 lives each year.

As the name implies, Left Turn Assist prevents drivers from turning across traffic if another vehicle is approaching from the opposite lane, while Intersection Movement Assist helps drivers navigate intersections with heavy traffic.

“Safety is our top priority, and V2V technology represents the next great advance in saving lives,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “This technology could move us from helping people survive crashes to helping them avoid crashes altogether – saving lives, saving money and even saving fuel thanks to the widespread benefits it offers.”

In addition to the above technologies, the DoT are also studying:

  • Forward collision monitors
  • Blind spot monitors
  • Stop light warnings
  • “Do not pass” warnings 

The department believes the report as well as a commission on proposed rules will be ready by 2016. Once V2V technologies have been perfected, the DoT plans to focus their attention on personal driverless cars.

Related source: Motor Trend