Can 3 million EVs replace 30 million oil cars?

Martyn1981

ed110220 wrote: »

I would suggest that the actual risk of death or serious injury per km travelled is much higher by motorbike than taxi. Reminds me of one of the women who led the anti MMR vaccine scare showing her understanding of risk by being photographed driving while talking on her mobile

But anyway back to the original topic, this is all very speculative. First we don't have full autonomous driving yet and there is no guarantee it will come soon. Second we don't know how people will react to it if it is available. How many people will use it? How will they use it? Will many people give up their own vehicles for shared ones? If it becomes popular, will journeys increase because road travel becomes easier and people can work, watch TV, sleep etc on their journey? Will conventionally sized vehicles be used, say autonomous versions of models used for private use, or will there be special smaller vehicles? There are multiple levels of unknowns at the moment. Really we need to be putting more effort into electrifying transport now with current technologies rather than relying on things that may or may not come at an unknown point in the future.

I agree with all of that, but just want to elaborate on the question:

"Will many people give up their own vehicles for shared ones?"

Can't answer for 'many' but I think it's safe to say yes, more people will. The reason we can be sure is that the model already exists (mainly in busy inner cities) where some folk choose to not own a car, and use public transport, including taxi's.

So, given the large numbers involved here, it's safe for us to assume trend lines. And if taxi's are a choice now, then reducing their cost by perhaps 80-90% per mile will definitely mean an increase in those choosing to dump the self owned car. But I again stress, whilst I'm certain of the impact, I don't pretend to know the scale of said impact.

Piddles

GreatApe wrote: »

Don't be an old grandpa

For me, one of the strongest arguments for the technology is the inclusion of large sections of society that have been denied cheap, independent transport up to now. The poor, the young, the disabled and particularly the elderly.

The elderly have been increasingly marginalised by technology, but it doesn't have to be so in this case. We know isolation and loneliness is a huge issue with this group and autonomous vehicles can do a lot to fix this, and as a society we should be doing it.

Smart phones won't be a requirement. A more familiar communications medium like regular phones will be an option. With an appropriate tariff, a human being at the end of the line too.

We'll all be old one day, and personally I think this will transform the quality of life when I get there.

Piddles

Pollution warning over car tyre and brake dust

When you take a step back, the current "consumable" vehicle braking systems are a bit of a rubbish technology. We can see how regenerative braking is starting to take over in electric cars. In autonomous vehicles the natural progression will be to remove the "consumable" element completely. So that is that problem solved.

The "consumable" nature of tyres? Well that's a bit trickier. Autonomous vehicles will be far kinder on their tyres. There will be a lot less acceleration and deceleration due to a variety of factors including the reduction of traffic jams, traffic lights and most things that get in the way of traffic flow, better forward anticipation by the vehicle itself will smooth out the remainder. Platooning will mitigate some the forward motion effort required from the tyres to overcome wind resistance. The likely centralised ownership will mean the usage of more appropriate compounds and will allow government to mandate new low polluting technologies as they come available. It's all a bit unknown, but wear could be reduced by at least a factor of ten apparently. So that is that problem almost solved.

The "consumable" nature of road surfaces? I haven't been aware of much discussion about that, but autonomous vehicles will from their shared knowledge and platooning will likely be using the same bit of road (think train tracks) so the authorities may have the option to engineer the roads so just that bit of the surface, on grounds of cost, has a low wear (and low noise pollution - another important factor not mentioned in the article) surface.

zeupater

Hi

There seems to be a rather large elephant in the room that hasn't been recognised yet ...

Currently, when someone makes a journey in their own car the mileage travelled is the mileage that is needed to be travelled. When that distance has been covered, the vehicle is normally parked away somewhere, normally on a drive, dedicated parking space or on some form of car park ... think of this as being a shortest distance point-to-point model ....

Looking at autonomous vehicles we can really consider them as being an unmanned taxi service, so let's look at the journey model for a taxi.

The 'taxi' starts off at a base location (A) and, when requested to do so, travels to location (B), delivers the passenger(s) to location (C) and then either moves to a 'waiting' location (D), which may or may not be the same as original (A), depending on how the service operator sets it's rules, time of day etc ...

So, unless there's a move to ride share in close individual company (ie 1:1) with what could be complete strangers (which is effectively possible at the moment, but people don't tend to do so!), what is the likely outcome? ... Well, there may be less vehicles registered as being available to be on the road, but there'll also be more vehicles on the road at any one time as some would be travelling between 'fares' also resulting in an increase in the total distance travelled, energy consumed etc ...

As the total mileage travelled on point-to-point journeys is supplemented by service provision mileage there's a very strong argument that more vehicles being on the road at any one time will overwhelm existing infrastructure .... employing technology in urban areas to help alleviate peak-time infrastructure issues may end up in creating the opposite ...

In heavily populated urban areas there's already a solution, decent public transport, but for many the inconvenience of walking (/cycling ...) to a transport node (bus stop, train station etc) would be seem to be addressed if that transport system provided a cheap door-to-door service, which may place further personal transport load onto an already highly loaded & therefore capacity fragile infrastructure ...

It's not as simple as it may first seem - fewer cars in existence doesn't necessarily mean fewer cars on the road at any point in time -or- fewer miles travelled -or- lower overall energy consumption ... in reality, unless there's a complete change in the average mindset regarding personal space (etc), the opposite view would make for a far more logical outcome.

HTH
Z

Piddles

zeupater wrote: »

there's a very strong argument that more vehicles being on the road at any one time will overwhelm existing infrastructure ....

That's a very common perception. But actually not.

Next time you're at a set of traffic lights, watch the traffic as the lights go green. The first car sets off, then as the human driver needs a large safety margin to the car in front, the second car sets off after about 2 seconds (I was taught the 2 second rule). As more cars go through the lights and their speed increases, the physical gap between the cars gets larger. At the same time count the number of occupants in each car. The average will be between 1 and 2.

Now image they are platooning autonomous cars and you can fill all the physical gaps with other autonomous cars. Or, if it's easier conceptually, the entire queue of cars all sets off at the same time, en mass. You're talking at least 3 times the capacity.

The human driver needs a safety margin on either side, the autonomous car less so. Replace each car with 6 of GreatApe's half width pods (3 wide, 2 rows). Or shared minibus pods with say 12 people.

Then you have a type of "smart motorways" concept, where you might have three rows of traffic in one direction, and just one in the other. The line in the middle of the road is no longer a valid concept.

There is an expectation that the capacity could be increased five fold. From the above, you can see it could be higher than that.

There are other factors like the reduction in queues will mean the autonomous vehicles will be in "productive" use more, rather than sitting in traffic.

An exception is likely to be London, where the commuter density is such that the existing mass transport will still be required.

The cheapness, increased inclusion, convenience and freedom will mean a big increase in usage. Some of it should displace air travel too. Which is absolutely fine as autonomous vehicles have the potential to give us carbon neutral road transport within ten years.

Piddles

zeupater wrote: »

the vehicle is normally parked away somewhere, normally on a drive, dedicated parking space or on some form of car park ...

Future generations are going to look back at us and think we were nuts. Spending all that money on that big lump of metal that just sits on our drive/road/car park for 96% of the time....

Another not often talked about advantage of autonomous vehicles is its potential to solve the housing crisis.

"What?!" I hear you say splutter in disbelief...

Drive onto a housing estate in the evening and there will cars parked everywhere. If you listen carefully, you'll probably hear some neighbours bickering about the parking. Now, take those cars away and reclaim the streets for the residents you'll have a very different picture. New housing estates won't have all this parking provision, so the density can go up and prices down, all with a better living environment.

Now take a look via Google Earth at your nearest urban area. Between a quarter and third of the real estate will be given over to car parking and associated infrastructure no longer required, which can be re-purposed for desperately needed housing. Much of this will be council owned, and brother, do they need the income.

See.... there is something for everyone with autonomous vehicles

zeupater

Piddles wrote: »

That's a very common perception. But actually not.

Next time you're at a set of traffic lights, watch the traffic as the lights go green. The first car sets off, then as the human driver needs a large safety margin to the car in front, the second car sets off after about 2 seconds (I was taught the 2 second rule). As more cars go through the lights and their speed increases, the physical gap between the cars gets larger. At the same time count the number of occupants in each car. The average will be between 1 and 2.

Now image they are platooning autonomous cars and you can fill all the physical gaps with other autonomous cars. Or, if it's easier conceptually, the entire queue of cars all sets off at the same time, en mass. You're talking at least 3 times the capacity.

The human driver needs a safety margin on either side, the autonomous car less so. Replace each car with 6 of GreatApe's half width pods (3 wide, 2 rows). Or shared minibus pods with say 12 people.

Then you have a type of "smart motorways" concept, where you might have three rows of traffic in one direction, and just one in the other. The line in the middle of the road is no longer a valid concept.

There is an expectation that the capacity could be increased five fold. From the above, you can see it could be higher than that.

There are other factors like the reduction in queues will mean the autonomous vehicles will be in "productive" use more, rather than sitting in traffic.

An exception is likely to be London, where the commuter density is such that the existing mass transport will still be required.

The cheapness, increased inclusion, convenience and freedom will mean a big increase in usage. Some of it should displace air travel too. Which is absolutely fine as autonomous vehicles have the potential to give us carbon neutral road transport within ten years.

Hi

Technical observation ... and what happens until autonomy reaches the 100% saturation point? ... that's all vehicles, on all roads, including delivery vehicles, refuse collection, tractors, classic cars, motorcycles, bicycles etc - even the odd horse&rider or towed caravan in some areas ... it only takes one, so there's plenty of scope for something simple to throw a massive spanner into the works & completely upset the basic theory!

Real world solutions often don't mirror original theory, this almost universally being due to poorly applied logic & poor contingency recognition within the planning & development stages ...

HTH
Z

GreatApe

Capacity won't be a problem
Milage will go up a little but if people share it will go down

There will be surge pricing so as to smooth out the peaks but as noted the idea of one big peak in the morning and one at night is mostly wrong. Just sit on the A406 and look it's not like the road is empty outside of the 7-9am 5-7pm commuter rush...no it's pretty much 'full' 6am to 9pm and that's what the data shows for car useage it's very high during those hours and low outside of those hours.

Currently there is no price signal to not use roads at time X but there will be
Even the peak times will be cheaper than now but the non peak times will be cheaper still

Piddles

zeupater wrote: »

Technical observation ... and what happens until autonomy reaches the 100% saturation point?

That my friend is the THE question. Very astute of you! I've got to do some work. I'll be back tomorrow with my take on this.

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Technical observation ... and what happens until autonomy reaches the 100% saturation point? ... that's all vehicles, on all roads, including delivery vehicles, refuse collection, tractors, classic cars, motorcycles, bicycles etc - even the odd horse&rider or towed caravan in some areas ... it only takes one, so there's plenty of scope for something simple to throw a massive spanner into the works & completely upset the basic theory!

Real world solutions often don't mirror original theory, this almost universally being due to poorly applied logic & poor contingency recognition within the planning & development stages ...

HTH
Z

Piddles wrote: »

That my friend is the THE question. Very astute of you! I've got to do some work. I'll be back tomorrow with my take on this.

You don't need platooning or cars setting off instantly all together they don't offer much.
Just the average occupancy going from 1.25 persons (or whatever) to 2.5 persons will cut down traffic

Cars can and probably will act very much like humans do now

The only difference is there will be able 1/10th as many of them but they will do about 10x the milage each. And of course they will be electric and probably a little smaller (say 150cm wide rather than 185cm for a model 3 and four seater rather than five seater) and a little more aerodynamic (no wing mirrors maybe rear wheels covered maybe a little lower) so as to get say 6 miles per kWh rather than 4.5 miles per kWh. The battery will also be smaller maybe 20KWh rather than 50-100KWh so lighter car too. 20KWh @ 6miles per unit = 120 mile range which is fine for taxi services which do about 8 miles average for a trip so can do ten trips then supercharge then do ten trips then supercharge etc. With maybe 5% of the fleet as 50KWh models with 300 mile ranges for those who need longer trips.

Much further down the line 20+ years maybe they will start becoming different types of design (3 seater tandem) or platoon etc to get higher efficiency but that isn't needed anytime soon...if ever