Where Robot Cars (Robocars) Will Really Take Us

Or how computer geeks can enable the electric car, save the planet and millions of lives using near-term A.I. to make taxis and trucks deliver, park, recharge and drive themselves.

People have dreamed of cars that drive themselves for decades. Now, thanks to a contest sponsored by the U.S. military, they are much closer to becoming reality than many people realize. It now feels possible to make the bold prediction that if we, as a society truly will it, we can make them ubiquitous by around 2020. More and more people are ready to declare that -- technology-wise -- it's a question of when, not if.

The technology behind this is fascinating, but even more interesting are other questions that surround the robot car future. Those issues include:

• Why we must do it.
• How we might get past the social and legal barriers.
• How it will change energy, pollution, cities, transit, war, work, real estate and manufacturing -- and yes, cars.

I'll tell you why and how robocars can deal with much of this, and paint you a "roadmap" to this future. I'll reveal why a number of the most interesting robocar results come from what they can do when they're vacant.

But I want to start you with some amazingly huge numbers, so large they seem almost absurd. Nonetheless, I believe that robocars could, in the USA alone, per year, enable savings like these:

• 40,000 lives and a million injuries (NIH). Mostly young people, for whom car accidents are the leading cause of death among major categories.
• 230 billion dollars of accident cost (NTSB). About 2-3% of GDP.
• 50 billion hours (or 1 trillion dollars) of people's time. Almost 10% of GDP.
• 50 billion gallons of imported gasoline, replaced with the equivalent of 5 billion "gallons" of domestic-source power plant fuel. Thus eliminating about 12-15% of the USA's CO₍₂₎ emissions and nastier pollution.
• A serious reduction in the urban land devoted to the ~600 million parking spaces, estimated to be up to 10% of urban land in many cities.

Now multiply that by 10 to get figures for the whole planet. If that's not enough to get you going, I am not sure what is.

Executive Summary

• They're Coming: Robot cars (Robocars) are coming, and sooner than you think. Many of the technologies are already present in real cars and prototypes. There's an incremental path to get us there. Robocars make computers the most important part of cars, and bring the Moore's-law acceleration to transportation.
• Military-prompted: The combination of military demand and desire for fancy safety systems in high-end automobiles will drive most of the rest of the technology. See videos of real robocars in action today.
• Enables electric car: By providing a solution to the range/battery problem, self-delivered cars enable the small electric car, which is vastly more efficient than existing cars or even trains. Don't know who killed the electric car but robcars can save it.
• Greener: Efficient electric cars could reduce urban car greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.
• Less War: A move to electric cars would vastly decrease the need to import oil from unfriendly nations.
• End of Transit: Ultralight, single-rider urban robocars can get the equivalent of 400 miles per gallon. In that future, our 20-30 PMpG bus and rail transit systems fade away.
• Autonomous: Unlike earlier designs, robocars will probably be fully autonomous (no special lanes or central control) and ride the streets safely with human driven cars and pedestrians.
• Saves lives: Every year we delay deploying robocars (and related technology) in the USA, human driving will kill another 45,000, and a million worldwide.
• Solves parking, congestion: Robocars can remove most problems with parking and traffic congestion.
• Truly enables alternative fuels: Through the ability to go refuel themselves when not in use, robocars can experiment with novel fuels without needing a dense network of refueling stations on day one.
• Right vehicle: On-demand, cellphone-summoned robotaxis can let you summon the right vehicle for the trip, freeing you to buy the right car for most of your trips rather than insisting on a car to handle all your needs. If you buy a car at all. And if you do, you might hire yours out when not using it.
• Self-delivered: Before the robotaxi, a car which will bring itself to you on demand but which is still driven by a human could provide many of the benefits.
• Little public money: Robocars require no new infrastructure or public money. It's all paid for incrementally by private citizens.
• Bottom up adoption: Robocars can be designed for a competitive market, and bought by consumers. In electronics, this causes soaring innovation vastly unlike what central planning of transportation offers. Rich, technophile "early adopters" will drive the technology before it's ready for everybody.
• Legal issues: Serious barriers exist in the law and public attitudes, but they can be overcome.
• Deliverbots: Deliverbots can change the economics of shipping and rarely used manufactured goods with just-in-time on-demand rental delivery.
• If not here, elsewhere: If the USA isn't ready for them, Robocars will appear elsewhere first, like China, India or Japan.

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In addition, you can read and subscribe to the Robocars section of my blog.

Here are a copy of the slides of my Robocar talk though they need updating.