Failure in the success of EVs and AVs
There is a hidden danger in EVs and AVs that may be unnoticed by their advocates.
EV:
- Fewer moving parts
- Lower cost per mile
- Fewer emissions per mile (lower cost of guilt)
- Batteries will (soon) last longer
- Batteries will (soon) go further
- Batteries will (soon) charge faster
- Will soon far outperform ICEs on every consumer dimension — say within 10 years
- As EVs dominate sales, competition will improve the product and lower its price
- Therefore will dramatically lower the cost of personal vehicle ownership, without range or climate anxieties
AV:
- Safer
- More productive ("really can finish that report on the way to work")
- More fun/relaxing ("really can watch a movie/play a game in the car")
- Less tiresome to use in stop-go traffic ("like Advil for congestion")
- Really lets me move my family farther out of the city
- As AVs dominate sales, competition will improve the product and lower its price
- Therefore will lower the total financial cost of homeownership and will lower the pain-barrier of exceeding the Marchetti constant
EV, AV and especially ACE (automated, connected, electric vehicle):
- BigAuto marketing (abetted by well-meaning advocates demonizing ICEs) will fool people into believing their EV has little or no footprint (the "blue-bin" fallacy)
- Will generate more vehicle ownership (just as the smartphone did!)
- More VKT per person
- More VKT per population
- Lower average vehicle occupancy
- Will soon (~20+ years? less?) wipe out 90% of the ICE market (Tony Seba is right, just out by a decade or so, a forgivable futurist’s error)
- Force all surviving Big Auto firms toward making ACE (make-merge-or-die)
- Default Big Auto approach will be to increase private ownership consumption wherever possible AND also capturing as much of MaaS market as possible
- Therefore will generate more congestion
All vehicle makers will move toward ACE, most exclusively so. This will be for purely survival reasons (not for planet-saving reasons).
Unless MaaS is significantly better than it is today — and I mean significantly — automotive consumers will continue to choose what THEY want, for themselves, for their convenience, for their comfort, for their wallet, for their family, for their privacy, for their status. (They can always ease their conscience by paying someone to plant a tree.)
To be clear, removing the driver from an EV-Uber is not going to move the vehicle-ownership needle more than a couple of points.
ACES (automated, connected, electric, shared)
Warning to ACE-thinking advocates: Be careful what you wish for. Without the S in ACES, ACE will backfire, just as the ICE did. ACE is guaranteed to be 100% unstoppable for economic reasons. And I am all for ACE.
Vehicle- and ride-sharing will almost certainly increase, but by how much is unknown. There is no evidence that it will decimate the rate of personal and family vehicle ownership and yield thousands of square miles of parking space back to our cities; just the hope that it will. There are many barriers to achieving a significant drop in vehicle ownership — i.e., a drop greater than 10% or 15% compared to current rates.
The gap between ACE and ACES is cavernous. ACE is innovation and technology. It depends on physics and mathematics. Signals and coding. Maybe some planning and infrastructure. ACES is also innovation, but the "S" means cultural, social, and behavioral economic innovations — and these are harder things. Things that are imbued with politics, votes, wickedness, and entitlement. Things that are not easily changed. Or if they are, not necessarily for the reasons or in the direction you will have planned on.
Traffic - Road Safety - Mobility - Mes publications et opinions n’engagent que moi!
5 年They are also promising that EV's and AV's will reduce congestion...how...I don't know....I think it's going to be even worse with AV's...the AV will make more trips than a "regular" car....driving empty from A to B, taking the passenger from B to C and then drive empty again from C to D to park or take another user
Vice President and Director of Intelligent Transportation Systems at Johnson, Mirmiran and Thompson (JMT)
5 年The issue is: how do we make technology work for individuals, rather than making individuals subservient to technology? I was at the Congress for the New Urbanism Transportation Summit last week. It was an eye opener for me. For years, I’ve been focused on traffic / ITS tools (keep in mind many agencies still consider things like BRT, express lanes, ramp metering and adaptive signal control to be radical ideas). But at the grass roots level, from that perspective, everything ACES (including the “shared” part) is the work of some combination of bureaucrats, capitalists and technologists: “top down” solutions. The same kind of solutions that ran freeways through certain types of neighborhoods and not through other types of neighborhoods. A lot of the new mobility solutions are seen as gentrification, as opposed to dealing with real access to work and education opportunities in established, poorer, minority neighborhoods. Until we figure out how technology can solve those “mobility justice” problems (eg, making transit services work better and providing first mile/last mile connectivity in winter, and in pedestrian-unfriendly environments), ACES may be a top-down strategy that individuals feel they have no control over.
Transforming Mobility Through Sustainable Funding & Innovation | Transportation Policy Strategist | Collaborative Leadership for Complex Challenges
5 年'S' stands for Sustainable?? Just want to clarify.? Re the rest of the post, your predictions are not wild ones, Bern.? You simply re-apply trends seen in other industries (e.g. smartphones) to the mobility space and, in particular, the role of cars.? One of your most 'true' statements is reflects why MaaS in the US is, or will be, different from, say, the EU.? "Unless MaaS is significantly better than it is today — and I mean significantly — automotive consumers will continue to choose what THEY want, for themselves, for their convenience, for their comfort, for their wallet, for their family, for their privacy, for their status. (They can always ease their conscience by paying someone to plant a tree.)." We formed MaaS America because the American "form" of mobility is, well, American.? It's a manifestation of our unique characteristics as people and our built environments.
Sustainable cities planner and high-end control systems architect - I do not invite without telling why
5 年Solutions pushed before, and taking great care of, not posing the problem