sophisticated, gold A car stopped at a busy corner market, and a middle-aged couple got out. A woman loads her suitcase into the spacious trunk of the same vehicle. Later, Doodle and his master watch Rocket’s video in the front seat as the car slowly drives through the neighborhood. No driver, no steering wheel, no pedals, no waiting, no traffic, no worries: this Tesla Cybercab drives itself.
That’s the vision Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid out last week in a presentation broadcast from the set of Warner Bros. Studios outside Los Angeles. Approximately 20 prototypes toured movie theaters, and a series of mock-up images showed the idyllic scenes of tomorrow that these sophisticated people movers would lead us to. . But experts say Tesla’s brave new cities of the future will require more than a few robotaxis to turn these high-definition renderings into reality.
Musk focused primarily on what a self-driving taxi service would mean, while largely sidestepping the technical challenges of building self-driving technology. Starting next year, he said, Tesla owners should be able to share their personal cars by putting their cars into self-driving mode when not in use. It’s a kind of Uber-cum-Airbnb, where the car heads off busy earning a paycheck while the car owner busies himself with his money. If vehicles are always on the move, the need for parking may be eliminated. “We’re taking the ‘parking lot’ out of parking lots,” Musk quipped, referring to the expanses of asphalt surrounding Los Angeles’ notoriously traffic-heavy Dodger Stadium and SoFi Stadium. Indicated by green space.
In other words, Musk and Tesla argued that autonomy means a more comfortable life for everyone. “In the self-driving world, your car is like a little lounge,” Musk said, noting that self-driving taxi rides are cheaper than buses. “You can do whatever you want…and just go out and get where you’re going. So, yeah, that’s going to be great.”
But if we make personal self-driving cars too cheap and too comfortable, we run into city-scale problems. Adam Millard Ball, an urban planning professor and director of the UCLA Transportation Institute, said cheaper and more comfortable rides could lead to more traffic and more driving. For proof, check out the research on the impact of Uber and Lyft on U.S. cities. Research suggests that despite marketing promises to eliminate private car ownership, its introduction has increased rather than decreased urban traffic.
In this way, cheap robot taxis are a kind of double-edged sword, leading to further urban sprawl. “This is counter to other city goals, whether it’s the environment or being physically active or socially inclusive,” Millard-Ball said.
“-ing Lot” out of the parking lot?
Installing parks instead of parking lots could be a good advantage for autonomous driving. (Installing apartments instead of parking lots could also be very nice.) But getting there will take more than just switching to self-driving. Anyone running a self-driving car service who wants to use as little parking space as possible needs to build a hyper-efficient network. This would require people to share vehicles. And people don’t like sharing.
“People like to travel in a safe and comfortable way,” says Andreas Nienhaus, head of the consultancy Oliver Wymans Mobility Forum. “People have a choice and in the absence of guidance, they will definitely choose their own car.”
