It almost seems like focusing on electric cars is a silver bullet in the fight against climate change, but it isn’t. What we should also be focused on is whether anyone should use a private vehicle at all.

As a researcher in sustainable mobility, I know this answer is unsatisfying. But this is where my latest research has led.

Battery EVs, such as the Tesla Model 3 — the best selling EV in Canada in 2020 — have no tailpipe emissions. But they do have higher production and manufacturing emissions than conventional vehicles, and often run on electricity that comes from fossil fuels.

Almost 18 per cent of the electricity generated in Canada came from fossil fuels in 2019, ranging from zero in Québec to 90 per cent in Alberta.

Researchers like me compare the greenhouse gas emissions of an alternative vehicle, such as an EV, with those of a conventional vehicle over a vehicle lifetime, an exercise known as a life-cycle assessment. For example, a Tesla Model 3 compared with a Toyota Corolla can provide up to 75 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases emitted per kilometre travelled in Québec, but no reductions in Alberta.

Hundreds of millions of new cars

To avoid extreme and irreversible impacts on ecosystems, communities and the overall global economy, we must keep the increase in global average temperatures to less than 2 C — and ideally 1.5 C — above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100.

We can translate these climate change targets into actionable plans. First, we estimate greenhouse gas emissions budgets using energy and climate models for each sector of the economy and for each country. Then we simulate future emissions, taking alternative technologies into account, as well as future potential economic and societal developments.

I looked at the U.S. passenger vehicle fleet, which adds up to about 260 million vehicles, to answer a simple question: Could the greenhouse gas emissions from the sector be brought in line with climate targets by replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs?

The results were shocking. Assuming no changes to travel behaviours and a decarbonization of 80 per cent of electricity, meeting a 2 C target could require up to 300 million EVs, or 90 per cent of the projected U.S. fleet, by 2050. That would require all new purchased vehicles to be electric from 2035 onwards.

To put that into perspective, there are currently 880,000 EVs in the U.S., or 0.3 per cent of the fleet. Even the most optimistic projections from the International Energy Agency suggest that the U.S. fleet will only be at about 50 per cent electrified by 2050.

Massive and rapid electrification

Still, 90 per cent is theoretically possible, isn’t it? Probably, but is it desirable?

In order to hit that target, we’d need to very rapidly overcome all the challenges associated with adoption of electric cars, such as range anxiety, the higher purchase cost and availability of charging infrastructure.

A rapid pace of electrification would severely challenge the electricity infrastructure and the supply chain of many critical materials for the batteries, such as lithium, manganese and cobalt. It would require vast capacity of renewable energy sources and transmission lines, widespread charging infrastructure, a co-ordination between two historically distinct sectors (electricity and transportation systems) and rapid innovations in electric battery technologies. I am not saying it’s impossible, but I believe it’s unlikely.

So what? Shall we give up, accept our collective fate and stop our efforts at electrification?

On the contrary, I think we should re-examine our priorities and dare to ask an even more critical question: Do we need that many vehicles on the road?

Buses, trains and bikes

Simply put, there are three ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger transport: avoid the need to travel, shift the transportation modes or improve the technologies. EVs only tackle one side of the problem, the technological one.

And while EVs do decrease emissions compared with conventional vehicles, we should be comparing them to buses, trains and bikes. When we do, their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions disappears because of their life cycle emissions and the limited number of people they carry at one time.

If we truly want to solve our climate problems, we need to deploy EVs along with other measures, such as public transit and active mobility. This fact is critical, especially given the recent decreases in public transit ridership in the U.S., mostly due to increasing vehicle ownership, low gasoline prices and the advent of ride-hailing (Uber, Lyft).

Governments need to massively invest in public transit, cycling and walking infrastructure to make them larger, safer and more reliable. And we need to reassess our transportation needs and priorities.

The road to decarbonization is long and winding. But if we are willing to get out of our cars and take a shortcut through the forest, we might get there a lot faster.

• Alexandre Milovanoff is a Postdoctoral Researcher, Environmental Engineering, University of Toronto
• This article first appeared on The Conversation

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The car that arrives has no driver or steering wheel. As you climb in, the electric motor silently comes to life, and the car whisks you into an aerodynamic peloton of vehicles, slipping through cross-traffic at intersections without stopping.

This utopian vision is a common prediction for the disruption of today’s road transportation. This future of autonomous, on-demand electric vehicles is tantalizing. It promises a hands-free solution to various transportation woes.

The prevailing belief is that a system of self-driving cars will solve several environmental and social problems without us needing to worry about messy stuff like politics, activism or changing our travel habits.

Unfortunately, this future will almost certainly never come to pass. Self-driving cars, left to their own devices, will likely do more harm than good. To avoid that outcome, we’ll have to turn off autopilot and shape the system of autonomous mobility so that it best serves both our needs and the needs of the planet.

More roads, more cars

Futurama, a General Motors-sponsored diorama at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, made a similar promise: fast and efficient highways would make traffic congestion and accidents a thing of the past.

Once these highways were actually built, however, induced demand quickly clogged them up, as people took advantage of the new roads to make new trips that they didn’t make before.

Autonomous vehicles risk a more dangerous version of the same phenomenon. Not only will efficient autonomous highways tempt people to drive further, but the ability to work — or even sleep — while travelling will make people think much less of a two-hour commute.

Cars might also become less energy-efficient as they’re modified to meet the demands of users. Passengers may run them at higher speeds because they’re safer, which consumes more energy due to aerodynamic resistance. Car manufacturers may also begin to design larger vehicles to accommodate mobile offices and bedrooms.

This might be mitigated somewhat by electric vehicles, but that electricity may still come from fossil fuels. Plus, bigger vehicles with bigger batteries will produce more carbon emissions as a byproduct of their construction.

These processes could, theoretically, be carbon-neutral, but that may not occur quickly enough. The safe bet is to reduce the number of kilometres travelled, rather than increasing them.

There’s also the threat of an empty vehicle travelling many kilometres. Why search for a parking spot when you could send your car home?

Scholars who have used computer models and other techniques to predict the environmental impact of autonomous vehicles have found the mass use of private self-driving cars could lead to increases in carbon emissions of up to 200 per cent.

Robo-taxi rejection

Most of the utopian visions of self-driving cars assume that they will be shared, rather than owned privately. This would be a more sustainable option.

Unfortunately, people are attached to their cars. They like having a vehicle that is instantly dispatchable, that they can use as a mobile storage locker, and that signals their social status.

Shared vehicles might also be uncomfortable. Because of the risk of vandalism and mess caused by unsupervised passengers, robo-taxis might be equipped with hard plastic, bus-style seats, rather than the plush upholstered interiors that motorists are accustomed to.

Surveys show that if autonomous taxis cost US$1 per mile, only 10 per cent of respondents would give up their car to use them. Even if they were completely free, a quarter of motorists would still keep their cars.

Autonomous taxis are far more likely to win over cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders. But this would likely make those people’s trips less sustainable.

None of this will be helped by the fact that autonomous vehicle enthusiasts envision a future of road systems free of traffic lights, which will rarely provide space for cyclists or pedestrians.

Best-case scenario

But what if your autonomous trip to the theatre looked a bit different?

In a model being explored by many scholars and experiments in Europe, the autonomous vehicle that picks you up on your way to the movie theatre would be more like a last-mile shuttle for public transit.

It would move slowly but comfortably, picking up multiple passengers on its way to the local transit hub, where you would board a fast and efficient light rail line. You would still arrive at the movie with time to spare.

This model could supplement existing forms of sustainable mobility rather than competing with them, making car ownership less mandatory. And because owning a car predisposes people towards using a car, this could be a powerful way to support sustainable transportation.

Shared, slow, autonomous shuttles integrated with public transit and other forms of sustainable mobility would get around a lot of the technology’s current hurdles. They could, for example, drive slowly enough that there would very little risk of them hurting or killing anyone.

If paired with other forms of sustainable urban transportation policy, such as committed support for bike lanes, as well as fast, efficient, and cheap public transit networks, they could play a key role in helping to realize a transportation scenario with vastly reduced car use, which could be our best shot at averting the worst consequences of climate change.

This outcome, however, will not emerge autonomously. It will require us to actively shape the mobility system through regulation, activism and planning.

It will require pushing back against vested interests that support dependence on private cars. And it will require us to reconsider our travel habits.

In short: Autonomous vehicles will not automatically drive us to a better transportation future. We’ll have to take the wheel ourselves.

• Cameron Roberts is Researcher in Sustainable Transportation, Carleton University
• This article first appeared on The Conversation

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Unlike human drivers, these vehicles won’t get tired, drive drunk, look at their phone, or speed. What’s more, AVs will reduce congestion and pollution, increase access to public transport, be cheaper, improve mobility for people with disabilities, and make transport fun again. Right?

Well, that’s what the brochure says.

Rightly or wrongly, billions of dollars are being poured into autonomous vehicle research and development to pursue this autopia. However, barely any resource or thought is being given to the question of how humans will ultimately respond to the AV fleet. In a city full of autonomous cars, how might our behaviour and use of city streets change?

In one scenario, people could act on the knowledge that these vehicles will stop any time someone chooses to step in front of them, bringing traffic to a halt.

Humans (and animals) will adapt

O⁠n⁠e⁠ ⁠o⁠f⁠ ⁠h⁠u⁠m⁠a⁠n⁠s’⁠ ⁠g⁠r⁠e⁠a⁠t⁠ ⁠s⁠t⁠r⁠e⁠n⁠g⁠t⁠h⁠s⁠⁠ is our⁠ ⁠a⁠d⁠a⁠p⁠t⁠a⁠bility⁠. We quickly ⁠⁠l⁠e⁠a⁠r⁠n⁠ ⁠t⁠o⁠ ⁠m⁠a⁠n⁠i⁠p⁠u⁠l⁠a⁠t⁠e⁠ ⁠a⁠n⁠d⁠ ⁠e⁠x⁠p⁠l⁠o⁠i⁠t⁠ ⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠e⁠n⁠v⁠i⁠r⁠o⁠n⁠m⁠e⁠n⁠t⁠.⁠ A future road environment saturated with autonomous vehicles will be no different.

⁠F⁠o⁠r ⁠e⁠x⁠a⁠m⁠p⁠l⁠e⁠, think about why you don’t walk out in front of traffic or drive through stop signs. Because other cars could injure or hurt you, right?⁠ ⁠

But autonomous vehicles promise something new. They are being designed to “act flawlessly”.

There are two elements to this: the first is not making mistakes, and the second is compensating for the occasional errors and misjudgements that fallible humans make. Autonomous vehicles promise alignment with Asimov’s First Law of Robotics:

A robot may not injure a human.

Now imagine crossing a road or highway in a city saturated by autonomous cars where the threat of being run over disappears. You⁠ ⁠(⁠o⁠r⁠ ⁠a⁠n⁠y⁠ ⁠o⁠t⁠h⁠e⁠r⁠ ⁠mildly i⁠n⁠t⁠e⁠l⁠l⁠i⁠g⁠e⁠n⁠t⁠ ⁠a⁠n⁠i⁠m⁠a⁠l⁠)⁠ might quickly learn that ⁠⁠oncoming traffic poses no threat at all. Replicated thousands of times across a dense inner city, this could produce gridlock among safety-conscious autonomous vehicles, but virtual freedom of movement for humans – maybe even heralding a return to pedestrian rights of yesteryear.

A simple example of how this might happen comes from game theory. Take two scenarios at an intersection where pedestrians and vehicles negotiate priority to cross first. Each receives known “pay-offs” for behaviour in the context of the other’s action. The higher the comparative pay-off for either party, the more likely the action.

In the left-hand scenario below, the Nash equilibrium (the optimum combined action of both parties) exists in the lower left quadrant where the pedestrian has a small incentive to “stay” to avoid being injured by the manually driven car, and the driver has a strong incentive to “go”.

However, in the scenario on the right, the autonomous vehicles has a desire to act flawlessly and pose no threat to the pedestrian at all. While this might be great for safety, the pedestrian can now adopt a strategy of “go” at all times, forcing the AV to stay put.

Can this potential problem be overcome?

One solution might be to ⁠p⁠r⁠o⁠g⁠r⁠a⁠m⁠ ⁠⁠a⁠l⁠g⁠o⁠r⁠i⁠t⁠h⁠m⁠s⁠ into vehicles ⁠t⁠h⁠a⁠t⁠ make them ⁠o⁠c⁠c⁠a⁠s⁠i⁠o⁠n⁠a⁠l⁠l⁠y⁠,⁠ ⁠p⁠u⁠r⁠p⁠o⁠s⁠e⁠f⁠u⁠l⁠l⁠y⁠,⁠ ⁠r⁠u⁠n into⁠ ⁠people, animals or other vehicles⁠⁠. Although this would maintain a level of fear and caution in the population, l⁠e⁠g⁠a⁠l⁠l⁠y⁠ ⁠a⁠n⁠d⁠ ⁠m⁠o⁠r⁠a⁠l⁠l⁠y⁠⁠ ⁠it is hard to see how this would be ⁠a⁠c⁠c⁠e⁠p⁠t⁠a⁠b⁠l⁠e⁠.

Another option could be infrastructure separating autonomous vehicles from vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. But the cost and reduction in amenity this would create would be enormous. Further, this type of solution could be applied now, negating much of the need for AV software and technology development in the first place.

A final, duplicitous idea is to simply turn off the safety systems that cause so-called “erratic vehicle behaviour” (i.e., slowing down to avoid hitting people). This is reported to have occurred when a self-driving Uber struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona last year. However, if this is the solution, you then have to ask, “What is the transport problem autonomous vehicles are actually trying to solve?”

It won’t happen overnight

In the scenarios above most of the fleet are autonomous vehicles, and humans adapt to their consistently safe behaviour. However, the complete transition to autonomous vehicles will not occur overnight and might create new crash situations that are, so far, poorly understood.

For example, we are developing simulations of interactions between vulnerable road users and a mixed fleet of autonomous vehicles and human-driven cars. These models show how inconsistencies between the behaviour of manual and autonomous vehicle types could even lead to more crashes during the transition.

The other day we built a small #ABM of #autonomous #cars being introduced into the fleet among current 'manual' cars, interacting with #pedestrians and #cyclists. Take home message is that even though AVs might 'act flawlessly', crashes may still increase as humans adapt :/ pic.twitter.com/juNzOLA63W

— Jason Thompson (@DrJ_Thompson) April 11, 2019

The future for AVs under threat?

As AV technology rolls on, and the marketing hype surrounding them continues to draw attention and burn up investment dollars, it should be remembered that humans and animals are still going to behave how we always have by continually adapting and exploiting weaknesses in our environment.

Part of the promise of autonomous vehicles is their proposed safety through deference to human life. But, if the point of transport systems is to enable efficient movement of people and goods for the benefit of society, this strength of AVs might prove to be their ultimate weakness as a viable mass transport mode.

• Jason Thompson is Senior Research Fellow, Transport, Health and Urban Design (THUD) Research Hub, University of Melbourne
• Gemma Read is Senior Research Fellow in Human Factors & Sociotechnical Systems, University of the Sunshine Coast
• This article first appeared on The Conversation

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