What is Behind the Trend to Autonomous Vehicles?

I’m one of these people who likes to think he has his finger on the pulse of the major trends in his chosen discipline – in my case, clean energy and transportation. If, five years ago, you had wanted to bet me that there would be mass interest in autonomous vehicles, like the Induct Navia, discussed in this article, or BMW’s driverless car (pictured here) I would have bet you $100 against a dime you’d be wrong. But, for some reason that I can’t fully understand, this subject is all the rage here as we enter 2014.

If I were confronted by the concept five yeas ago, I would have asked, “Are you kidding? Who cares about getting rid of the driver? Aren’t we far more interested in getting rid of the internal combustion engine, burning hydrocarbons with its 20% efficiencies, ruining our planet, causing rising rates of lung disease, and keeping our planet in a constant state of hostility?”

My personal theory, albeit a cynical one, is that the very last thing that the Big Oil and Big Auto are going to allow is a trend that would effectively end the stranglehold they have on our way of lives/wallets. I should have known that some fairly meaningless new trend was just around the corner, ready to captivate our attention, directing us away from the issues that have real bearing on a sustainable course to transportation. Voila.

Glenn Doty says:

January 12, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Craig,

Autonomous driving technology has been instrumental in reducing the number of accidents on the road/100,000 miles by nearly 50% from their peak in 2002-2003 – despite all the hoopla about the “killer cell phone” phenomena… The number of deaths on the road per year in America has fallen from ~43,000 in 2005 to ~30,000 in 2013.

Some people see automated driving as a further push towards increased safety, some people see it as a means of essentially eliminating traffic snarls and improving transit times… But most are excited about the prospect because they envision a future where they have all the freedom of their own personal transportation, but they no longer have to focus and/or “work” the 5% of their lives they spend driving around.

I don’t know why you don’t see the potential here… Yes public transportation is better in cities that have a reasonably high population and population density… but even in NYC there’s hundreds of thousands of cars on the road in any given hour… People will still drive even with good public transit, and the prospect of them not getting into accidents is a good thing.