Congestion Charge, Part 2

In Part One of this discussion on “Congestion Charge,” I suggested that ‘charges’ may be the solution to traffic congestion and pollution, but one person’s charge is another person’s tax. Frankly, I am not that optimistic that there is the political will to do much about it. However, could the combination of autonomous cars and the development of electric vehicles do the job instead?

Image source: Wikipedia, “Google Driverless Car.” Photo by Michael Shick, “Google self driving car at the Googleplex,” 2015.

Let’s start with autonomous cars, clearly there is lots of money being invested in autonomous technology by folks like Google, Apple and major automobile manufactures. Like it or not, this technology is on its way and there are predictions by most of the major automobile manufactures that fully autonomous cars will be available on the market by 2020, assuming all the regulations can be implemented. Additionally the IEEE predicts that by 2040 75% of all new cars will be autonomous. Heady predictions for the future? Skeptics may say ‘yes, and where are all the flying cars we were supposed to have?’ I, for one, believe that these predictions are somewhat optimistic, but probably not that far off the mark.

Image source: Wikipedia, “History of Autonomous Cars.” Photo by Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz, “Drive Me Volvo S60 SAO,” 2014.

Another interesting prediction by UBER is that they expect their fleet of cars to be completely driverless by 2030, assuming they are still in business. This target date coincides with the AIA 2030 Challenge, not that they are related. Assuming they can figure out plug-free recharging of the electric cars, it would be well within the realm of possibility that fleets of autonomous electric cars could be zipping around Boston taking people hither and yon. Geneva, Switzerland is implementing a new “flash-charge” system for some of their electric buses. Each time the bus pulls into a bus stop it receives a 15 second flash charge that refuels the vehicle. Who knows, maybe electric buses in Boston! Not only do you reduce the pollution levels but one can imagine the number of vehicles on the roads would be reduced.

Image source: Wikipedia, “Battery Electric Bus.” Photo by Lord Alpha, “BSVAG Solaris Urbino 12 electric “EMIL” Hauptbahnhof,” 2014.

Presumably this makes sense in the context of dense urban environments and perhaps less so in suburban and rural areas. What will this mean for car ownership? If you had almost unlimited access to clean, environmentally-friendly transportation without all the hassles of car ownership, insurance, maintenance, taxes and, not to mention, parking, why own a car? With the average purchase price of a new car today north of $35,000, one can imagine car ownership might start to decline. Additionally, one electric autonomous car is probably going to be pretty much the same as the next, all you will need is Wi-Fi so you can sit back and relax. What would distinguish a Toyota from an Audi? The quality of the leather? The plastic symbol on the hood? Who needs the ultimate driving machine if you don’t drive? And if you don’t buy the car in the first place who does? UBER? Or do the car companies get into the ride sharing business, just skip the whole sales process completely? One can imagine in the next 10 to 20 years the transportation industry is going to look very different indeed.

With the addition of green renewable energy sources, like wind or solar, one could actually envision a city where car and bus pollution is drastically reduced, if not eliminated. No more apocalyptic visions of dark clouds of noxious fumes and people living in crumbling dirty cities breathing through respirators. Finally, one can imagine that autonomous electronic vehicles may lead to cleaner, healthier cities and, ultimately, help save the planet. Now all we have to do is get all our buildings to be net zero energy use.