i3 - July/August 2019 - 30

allowed. The reason, he offers, is cities'
struggles with congestion and air pollution. Many cities in Europe have already
implemented emissions zones where diesel and older, dirtier gasoline-powered
cars are banned, he says
Eventually they'll be restricted to EVs
(electric vehicles), "and of course the
move to driverless shared vehicles is the
logical next step, reducing the number of
vehicles, reducing congestion and increasing safety," Bonte says.
The link between shared self-driving
vehicles and electrification is critical, he
emphasizes, because only 2% of vehicles
sold worldwide were electric in 2018 and
EVs accounted for only 0.4% of cars on
roads globally. Without a solid consumer
base, the only way to grow EV sales will
be through cities mandating EVs as part
of shared driverless fleets, he says.
Additionally, another key, will be a
communications infrastructure that connects traffic management systems to vehicles. This could include a city-licensed
remote vehicle monitoring center staffed
with teleoperators or run by artificial
intelligence capable of taking over a vehicle if the need arises - a concept being
pursued by companies like Designated
Driver, which launched in March.
"It's a much more managed way of
thinking about mobility," he says.
Further, Bonte imagines cities setting
some manufacturers' specifications for
self-driving vehicles in fleets serving their
populations. Plenty of options for customization exist on a city-wide level, including
mandating that shared-ride service vehicles also be designed with cameras for
neighborhood watch duties, he adds.
Stephen Bell, resident analyst at
Chicago's TU Auto, sees the development
of self-driving cars as a marathon, not a
sprint. Only a few places are conducive to
self-driving cars and robo-taxis, he says,
because there's no common development
roadmap cities and nations can follow.
"Robo-vehicles will increasingly be
deployed and used in campus-type environments that are relatively easy to manage but will be a long time coming to cities
in mass simply because they are one part
of a much larger complex system," he says.
30

JULY/AUGUST 2019

Terabytes
Needed
A I R B US A 3 80

Terabytes needed to fly on
autopilot across the Atlantic Ocean

2.5

AU TO N O M O US V E H I C L E

Terabytes needed to enable a
Level 4 autonomous vehicle to
perform routine driving tasks

Still, there is a clear connection between self-driving
and smart city technologies,
Bell says.
"As cities digitize and
explore the use of IoT technology, heaps of data will be generated from street lighting, traffic, transit systems, road and
transport infrastructure, which when combined with data
from vehicles can mean a city could be mapped as a digital twin
- enabling more efficient traffic management, less congestion
and potentially less pollution."

MAKING CITIES ROBOT FRIENDLY

Personal self-driving cars will be the last to emerge, and even
autonomous ridesharing vehicles won't gain popular acceptance anytime soon, says Kaan Ozbay, professor and director
of the C2 Smart Center, in the department of civil and
urban engineering at New York University's Tandon School
of Engineering.
Rather, the first self-driving vehicles on city streets are likely
to be delivery vehicles and shuttles or buses, Ozbay says. Not
only are the retrofits that make them autonomous inexpensive
relative to the economic payback, but they won't burden the
city with major adaptations either. For instance, self-driving
buses can use pre-existing dedicated lanes, and self-driving
delivery vehicles can make their rounds during "off hours"
when streets aren't crowded.
His team at NYU Tandon is studying how self-driving buses
can reduce congestion in the Lincoln Tunnel that connects
Manhattan and New Jersey. They found that 20% more buses
could use the buses-only lane if all were self-driving, he says.
And in terms of the number of people carried, "that's equal to
building another tunnel for cars."
To be sure, the real world does present some obstacles to
such innovation, Ozbay concedes, suggesting that New York's
Port Authority Bus Terminal may not be able to contain 20%
more arriving buses.
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

i3 - July/August 2019

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