IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 6

Intelligence (AI) - the driverless car.
It could certainly be argued that it
provides a grounded, highly relatable
application for the study of machine
ethics and moral decision-making
based on pattern-matching [3], for
issues of responsibility and safety
in vehicle manufacturing and traffic
regulation, and transparency in the
pursuit of "explainable" AI. However, from a user-centered perspective, it might be more reasonable to
inquire: why would anyone own, or
even need to own, a driverless car, if
they do not get to drive it? Which in
turn begs the question, if the central
tenet of the personal car ownership
model (i.e., ownership) no longer
holds, then what is the replacement
business model?
One alternative could
be rooted on a more general trend to a switch from
the purchase of objects
Besides questions of responsibility
towards a subscription to
and liability, driverless cars raise
services (life by subscription [4]). So, for example,
other questions concerning control,
increasing number s of
people no longer ow n
transparency, and ownership.
"records" or "discs," but
instead subscribe to an
using public transport, reduce waitInternet music-streaming service;
ing and journey times, reduce exposimilarly, increasing numbers do
sure to the elements, and pander to
not own DVDs but instead sign up
an unwillingness to share personal
to subscription-based video-onspace with complete strangers. And
demand content-streaming serfor some, there is pleasure in ownvices that offer direct access to film
ership in and of itself, even if for
and television media. The same
some of the terminally insecure, it
phenomenon has already been
provides an ostentatious symbol of
seen, in fact, in the approach and
what they might be lacking in social
attitude towards car tires: in the
status, and for some others, allegevent of a flat tire, many drivers
edly, over-compensation for goodprefer to turn to a service provider,
ness knows what else they might be
such as an automobile association,
lacking in physical stature.
rather than fixing it themselves,
However, the car itself has proved,
even if this comes at the cost of
in recent years, to have been a consome (further) de-skilling [5].
venient vehicle (sic) or significant
The same "*-as-a-service" model4
could also be applied to revolutionize
driver (sic) for research and development in battery technology, but also,
4
*-as-a-service refers to something (anything,
seemingly, the foundation of the 'Ur'
hence the "*") being made available to a subscriber or customer as a service.
challenge for data-driven Artificial

the personal car ownership model,
by supplying not the car, per se,
but the journey as the service. This
idea of mobility-as-a-service [6] (also
referred to as transport-as-a-service
or journey-as-a-service) presents a
vision of mobility as a concept that
can be bundled, marketed, monetized and sold as a standalone
product delivered directly to travelers,5 bypassing car manufacturers,
civil authorities, scheduled public
transportation, and on-demand service providers (i.e., taxi companies)
that traditionally control, regulate,
or deliver such activity.
Let us envisage, then, a world of
driverless cars that has dismantled
the personal car ownership model
and replaced it with mobility-as-aservice. A journey could be booked
by logging in to the service provider's platform, specifying the
details of the journey (start point,
end point, depart time, arrive time,
one-way or return, etc.,), customizing the model of car for a particular task. A type of 'standing order'
could be set up to specify a regular commute. The details of the
requested journey would be submitted to some warehouse-sized
centralized computer which would
allocate the vehicle, calculate the
route and duration, and schedule
accordingly. All vehicles would be
electric and street parking would be
eliminated, avoiding contention
for charging points. At off-peak
times, multi-story car parks would
conveniently double-up in function
as large, distributed second-tier
batteries that can help compensate
for over- or under-generation of stochastic renewable energy sources.
The car itself picks up and drops off

much closer than the recommended stopping distance) could be as
much as 4%. Similarly, the spare tire
that used to be carried in the trunk
occupied space, carried significant
weight and often went unused. Like
turning off the standby button on
electronic devices, making a small
savings on a large number adds up
to a large savings, and automakers began eliminating spare tires
to make vehicles lighter, in order to
meet fuel efficiency standards.
Ranged against this, of course,
is the fact that a car ownership is an
undeniably comfortable and convenient mode of transport: it is a
ready-made "bubble" that can alleviate (some of) the aggravation of

6

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

5
We use the term "traveler" here to denote the
user of a service: however, we would certainly prefer the term "passenger," i.e., denoting
someone who is taking advantage of the provision of a service, over the term "customer," i.e.,
denoting someone who is taken advantage of in
the sale of a service.

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JUNE 2019
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019

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