Imagine a future in which your car no longer needs someone behind the wheel.
The time you devote to your daily commute—now often a waste—would be available for reading, working, watching videos or even napping. Physical disabilities would no longer keep you homebound. You could send your kids to karate lessons or band practice without having to go along.
It’s no longer a sci-fi pipe dream. Vehicle automation is making its way onto public roads, and the day of the driverless car seems within our grasp.
But is it entirely a good thing? ORNL public policy researcher Paul Leiby and colleagues at the University of Leeds in Great Britain and the University of Washington in Seattle explored this question for the journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, looking specifically at energy demand and carbon emissions.
As with many questions, the answer regarding energy use depends on the details. On the one hand, automation can make vehicles far more energy efficient, smoothing traffic flow and reducing fuel-guzzling habits such as stop-and-go driving and heavy acceleration. On the other hand, greater convenience and safety will no doubt lead to more driving. If automation allows us to drive safely at higher speeds, it’s also likely we’ll want to do that, thereby increasing our energy consumption.
“If you don’t get a big increase in travel demand, then the energy-efficiency factors overwhelm,” Leiby explained. “But if people become much more interested in driving and much more willing to commute or travel long distances by car, and if we don’t get all the anticipated energy efficiency gains, then you could see a big increase in energy consumption.
“We’re not sure which way it will go, so we’ve identified the key factors, and estimated some bounding cases, to help guide future research and policy.”
