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Study: ‘Robocabs’ could slash vehicle emissions

By Chris Mooney, The Washington Post
Published: November 6, 2015, 6:05am

Whenever we hear the latest buzz about driverless vehicles — such as the ones in development by Google — one of the first benefits brought up is safety. The gist is that the vast majority of car accidents are the result of human error, and taking the human out of the equation would thus make streets a lot safer.

But that’s hardly the only benefit, suggests a new study in Nature Climate Change by Jeffrey Greenblatt and Samveg Saxena of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The researchers model a future in which electric-powered driverless cabs, or “autonomous taxis,” roam the streets, in a range of sizes and specifically tasked to pick up a matching number of passengers for a given ride.

” ‘Autonomous taxis’ are anticipated to be deployed according to each trip’s occupancy need (‘right-sizing’) because it is cost-effective for owners (capital and operating costs are lower) and passengers (who pay only for needed seats and storage),” the authors write. Smaller vehicles will save energy, and moreover, the authors project, there will be additional efficiency gains from two sources. These vehicles will be more likely to be electric, and thus powered from renewable energy source; and they will travel considerably more miles per year, meaning that more miles will be clean-powered.

It all adds up to a strong business case, meaning the vehicles would be “likely to gain rapid early market share.” The result is that by the year 2030, autonomous taxis could be dramatically cleaner not only than current cars, but also than projected hybrids in that year. The emissions reduction over cars we currently drive would be 87 to 94 percent, Greenblatt and Saxena find, and over future hybrids would be 63 to 82 percent.

The new study is “an exciting addition to the emerging field of analysis exploring the role of advanced connected and automated vehicles,” writes Austin Brown, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in a study commentary.

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