Three Revolutions

Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future
by Professor Daniel Sperling, Founding Director & Professor, Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis; Board member of California Air Resources Board

Main Points:

• Intelligent vehicle and highway systems (IVHS) 
• 1991- Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis is founded  
• Define “revolution”: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something and a changeover in use or preference, especially in technology.   
• Three Revolutions: 

• 1.) Electrification 
• a. Enabler: 2008 better batteries/power electronics, 2010 Nissan Leaf, and 2012 Tesla Model S. 
• b. Goal: Electric vehicles 
• c. History: 1990- California adopts a zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate to curb air pollution blanketing Los Angeles. California amped up these mandates in 2012 to reach 15% penetration.  
• 2.) Shared Use 
• a. Enabler: Iphone 7 
• b. Goal: Pooling – filling our buses, cars, and trains with more passengers 
• c. History: Lyft and UberPool will replace individual car ownership. Lyft Line introduced in 2014. 2016 both Lyft and GM partner to work on on-demand networks of AV’s. Meanwhile Uber and Volvo launch self driving AV/ride sharing partnership.
• 3.) Automation 
• a. Driverless cars will leverage all of the benefits of pooling
• b. Reduce crashes but 3.5 million people losing their jobs 
• c. History: 1939 GM exhibits it for first time, 1997 GM and Honda demonstrate, 2010 Google announced it had a self driving car (Waymo) in SF.  In 2004 DARPA had a course in the middle of the desert  and not one car could successfully navigate that competition.   

• Goal of this book: outline the policy that is needed to guide automation toward public interest and a better future. 
• (1) User incentives to use more mobility services instead of vehicle ownership 
• (2) pooling and Ev’s  to motivate automakers design AV’s for pooling
• (3) Encourage transit operators/mobility service companies to collaborate at lower costs 
• (4) Land use is better off with redesigned cities.  
• Later Chapters: 1.) Public transit 2.) Equity 3.) Auto Industry 4.) China  

Dan Sperling Lecture at MIT:

• Problem statement: cities and lifestyles are too car-centric. 
• Snapshot of current Transportation: The amount of carpooling has gone down from 20% (1970) to less than 10% (now), despite huge investment in HOV lanes. Today in the US of all the passenger miles traveled (PMT), only about 1% is public transit. 
• Car-centric monoculture is expensive:
• Road infrastructure costs: $100 billion/yr
• Personal cost to own a car: $5,000-9,000/yr
• Air pollution: contributes to about half of urban pollution
• Massive System innovations, but none since the 1950's:
• People: 
• Streetcars (1890)-> Automobiles (1910) -> Airplanes (1930) -> Highways (1950's)
• Goods:
• Canals (1800) -> Railroads (1830) -> Trucks (1910) -> Airplanes (1930) -> Containers (1950)
• What do we need to do? 
• Electrification
• Automation- moving to new players (Google, Apple, Tesla, and Uber)
• Pooling - must increase the load factor in our vehicles. 
• Autonomous Vehicles
• Level 0- no autonomous features
• Level 1- these cars can handle one task at a time (like auto braking)
• Level 2- these cars have two automated functions
• Level 3- these cars can handle "dynamic driving functions" but need manual intervention
• Level 4- these cars are officially driverless in certain environments
• Level 5- these cars are operable on their own in any environment (what we are aiming for and we have mobility service companies that keep costs low)
• Technology of an AV greatly exceeds a Boeing 787- ECU's, lidar, sensors, ML, AI, etc.
• Cost Issue:
• For new highways, 3/4s of the benefits are time-savings. But now that is gone because Level 5 cars allow for us to use our time ($30/hr -> $0/hr). 
• A car is about $0.50 per passenger mile
• Electric AV with pooling is about $0.10 per passenger mile. 
• Are Uber/Lyft creating more congestion in the streets and at airports?
• True for single occupant uber/lyft services. 
• What we are talking about is Lyft Line/ UberPool. 
• How are automobile companies responding?
• The auto industry make a 5-10% return for selling a car
• Service companies get 20,30,40% returns. 
• How do automobile companies run mobility service companies? 
• Benefits for the 3 revolutions: Safety, personal costs, congestion, less pollution, more jobs.
• Congestion pricing is difficult because it is a free right currently. Right now without AV's on the road, we should introduce congestion pricing in way that cannot be introduced in a robust sense. 
• What happens to the non-automated cars that people need to trade them in?
• The large number of those old cars being traded in will reduce their price to a point where it doesn't make sense to trade them in, but keep them on the road. Need policy disincentives to remove the old used cars.

Listen to an interview between author Prof. Dan Sperling and David Keith, MIT Sloan School, as part of the MIT Energy Initiative lecture on Three Revolutions!

Waymo is changing up the way we use autonomous cabs by purchasing a total of 82,000 cabs in North America, but ~50% of all miles in a TNC vehicle are w/o passenger!

Read an article on how the growth of Transportation Network Companies has caused an increase in trips, mileage, and number of trips for cars!

Another article by CityLabs talks about how total passenger trips increased by 15% even though taxi trips declined significantly!

A great piece by Alex Roy of The Drive on why autonomous cars do not have a 'Trolley' Problem!