The Pitfalls and Potholes of the Self-driving Revolution

Posted April 22, 2016

Vivek Ghosal, professor in the School of Economics, believes that once the autonomous vehicle revolution becomes established, the economic world that underpins wheeled transport will never be the same. Ownership, liability, and manufacturing paradigms could all change in major ways.

And, like others, he believes the conversion process will be costly and that both government and industry will have to pick up a very large bill. Whether cars are semi-autonomous or fully autonomous, electric or fuel cell powered, they’ll require wide-scale improvements in roads, traffic signals and controls, road markings, and signage. They’ll also need a vast charging/fueling infrastructure that today barely exists.

“Fully autonomous transport will require absolutely reliable navigation systems, major changes in highway infrastructure, and traffic control that’s synched to the vehicle, plus new fueling, insurance, financing, and manufacturing paradigms,” said Ghosal, who studies the automotive industry.  “Yes, we have prototypes, but the operationalizing of autonomy is still far away.”

“Even if you could let level-four autonomous cars out on the streets right now, there would be serious problems,” said Ghosal. “Major infrastructure investments are needed to operationalize this technology.”

Observations from Ghosal’s research include:

• Ownership of cars could be substantially reduced under an autonomy-centered paradigm. Even today, car-sharing markets in Europe are expanding quickly, and major car makers there are scrambling to compete with Car2Go, Zipcar, and others. The combination of quickly available level-four cars and extensive car sharing will likely produce lower demand for personally owned automobiles.
• Changes in ownership patterns will likely propel current automotive, lending, and insurance markets into unmapped territory, as consumers gradually learn to regard cars as a transportation service rather than a purchase.
• Self-driving vehicles are essentially information technology-enabled devices, a fact that software companies realize. Ghosal believes the autonomous prototypes being developed by companies like Google and Apple aren’t aimed at starting new car manufacturing corporations but are instead focused on developing definitive operating systems for autonomous control. This proprietary software could become a costly necessity for established automotive manufacturers as they evolve driverless vehicles.

Said Ghosal: “This is perhaps the most significant disruption in this industry since the invention of the assembly line by Ford.”

One thing is certain: The self-driving revolution is on its way. What isn’t known is what form it will take as it becomes a reality. Georgia Tech research teams will continue to study and develop effective real-world approaches as the transformation continues.

Exploiting the Electric Grid

The autonomous vehicles of the future may be powered largely by electric engines, which offer energy advantages in stop-and-go urban driving. If so, the presence of millions of high-capacity car batteries could have major implications for the U.S. electric grid.

Valerie Thomas, who researches renewable energy, is studying the interplay between electric vehicles and the grid. She notes that plugging in a host of electric vehicles could increase the U.S. system’s flexibility. Electric vehicles are often plugged in when not in use, allowing them to charge with under-utilized power — late at night as demand goes down, or when wind power is high, or on sunny days with high solar power.

By using the excess power of the grid, the presence of myriad electric vehicles could result in lower electricity costs, said Thomas, who is Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and has a joint appointment in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy.

“Some have argued that electric vehicles’ flexibility means they’ll be consuming mostly ‘dirty’ power such as low-cost coal-generated power,” Thomas said. “But our studies have found the opposite — these vehicles’ flexibility lets them take advantage of renewable electricity when it is available, and to a large degree can solve the problem of the intermittency of wind and solar.”

And if charged car batteries could send some electricity back into the grid when required, smoothing out power crunches, there could be additional cost savings for all electricity users.

These are excerpts from an article originally featured in Georgia Tech Research Horizons which encompasses the breadth of research beind done here on autonomous vehicles. Read the full article