This week New York became the fifth state after Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California to begin accepting applications for self-driving cars. Autonomous cars are close to becoming reality and researchers have begun testing their effect on reducing traffic jams and congestion within population dense cities.
What will be interesting to observe is how autonomous cars perform in New York City, which has the highest population density in the US.Now, a new study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign finds that autonomous vehicles on the road can also reduce the effects of phantom traffic jams. These instances occur when a car within a steady flow of traffic uses its brakes causing a ripple effect of stop-and-go traffic all the way down the line. Due to intelligent speed control, autonomous vehicles can reduce the amount of speed deviation of all cars in a phantom traffic jam by 50%. In turn, this reduces the amount of braking down the traffic line and can reduce fuel consumption by 40% through reduced braking and acceleration, which will save money and be good for the environment.
What’s so intriguing is this study only included a single autonomous vehicle within a 20 car file. The car used for this study was also not as advanced as Waymo or the industry standards most companies are trying to achieve. The car was actually equipped with simple cruise control features, already available in most luxury cars.
Companies, such as Google, Tesla, Apple, and Uber are expected to start marketing their autonomous rides and test driving them in the empire state. Fans of these companies are already getting excited. Applications and the trial period will end April, 2018, but may be extended for an additional year barring any mishaps before then. Testing is prohibited near school zones and a $5 million insurance policy must be taken out on all autonomous vehicles.
In the rise of regulatory scrutiny, California is actually one of the states attempting to rewrite its autonomous vehicle laws. Cities like San Francisco, home to Uber and Lyft, and other smart cities across the California have benefited tremendously from ride sharing programs to alleviate traffic congestion and reduce carbon emissions.
This study comes after news that Mercedes was scrapping regulatory approval for the development of consumer diesel vehicles. While touted as more fuel efficient than standard gas powered cars, less than 1% of American car sales include diesel vehicles.
Globally, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 42% during Q1 of 2016, signifying a sharp rise in consumer demand for hybrid cars. Ford, the maker of the Mustang and a long line of hemi trucks is the top manufacturer of ecoboost engines and within the top three car manufacturers in EVs/hybrids. Increased consumer demand for EVs comes in congruence with the increased demand for autonomous vehicles despite all of the doomsday paranoia and safety concerns.
Take GM’s purchase of Cruise Automation and Ford’s purchase of Argo AI as evidence that the future of automotive manufacturing is in autonomous vehicles. Simply pumping out more steel and concrete from a factory to fill the roads with standard cars is not a viable option.
There are currently 263 AI startups in the autonomous vehicle vertical alone. The race for the first and best autonomous vehicle to market has resulted in an intense legal battle between Google and Uber. Despite this, Google has announced it will be allowing hundreds of families in Arizona to test drive the Waymo. Google is also increasing the number of autonomous Chrysler Pacific Hybrids on the road to 600.
Mercedes has promised self-driving taxis in three years and Ford has promised self-driving cars by 2021. GM is even testing out an app for ordering the autonomous taxis. Seeing how each car will enlist different technologies and advanced features will be truly exciting. Uber is expanding its research of self-driving cars outside the US and Toyota has enlisted Nvidia’s Xavier processor for its intelligent vehicles. The future of autonomous vehicles is inevitable, but how state policy and our social concerns will interact with this awesome technology will dictate the how big of an effect autonomous vehicles will have in solving our city’s traffic issues.
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