Researchers Assert Cost-Effective and ‘Greener’ Future Trips with Self-Driving

The paper does make a number of assumptions, including: predicted vehicle efficiencies in 2030, that vehicles would be electric and re-designed to be more compact and efficient, and that every vehicle would be scheduled correctly to minimize emissions.

By 2030, electric-powered, self-driving taxis could produce one-20th the greenhouse-gas emissions (per mile) of the average auto on the road today, according to a new scientific analysis.

Nearly half the savings were attributable to what the researchers call the “right sizing” – tailoring the size of a taxi to its occupancy needs, so that a single passenger travels in a smaller vehicle than a party of four.

Switching to battery-electric autonomous taxis could also reduce oil consumption because oil provides less than 1% of U.S. electricity generation.

What is more, the authors assert that the driverless vehicles will have dual benefits; firstly since these vehicles will be powered by a renewable energy source and secondly, as these cars will travel considerably more miles per year, all those miles will be clean-powered.

Taking into account the cost of autonomous technology, now estimated to add as much as 150,000 dollars (£96,200) to the cost of a vehicle, the dramatic savings were a result of greater energy efficiency and doing away with the human operator.

The study was co-authored by Jeffery Greenblatt and Samveg Saxena from from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a USA Department of Energy National Laboratory Managed by the University of California. “By considering what happens when you’re sharing, these vehicles enable much bigger energy savings”, says Greenblatt.

By 2030, autonomous taxis could be far cheaper to operate than their driven counterparts, said the researchers, whose findings appear in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The scientists did not try to estimate how widespread this technology would be in 2030.

New York, July 7 (IANS): If driverless taxis roaming our cities become a reality, they would not only help cut our expenses but would also greatly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, says researchers, including one of an Indian-origin.

Self-driving “robocab” taxis could deliver huge environmental and economic benefits by running more efficiently than privately operated vehicles, a study has shown.

“I do think that they are in the right ballpark in terms of reductions”, says Ryan Chin, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab who studies the potential impact of automated vehicles.

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