A future in
which electric cars drive themselves and be hailed through a smartphone app may
be closer than we think. Or not. Chris Cottrell reports from the International
Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany.
Deutsche Welle, 29 May 2015
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| Google self-driving car |
It's
fitting that the movers and shakers of transportation policy have descended on
Leipzig this year for their annual summit. It was here that two of the Romans'
massive, intracontinental trade routes once converged, and it is here that
global leaders from the fields of trade, transit and tourism have been
discussing the future of mobility.
Buzz words
at the International Transport Forum (ITF) have included autonomy - as in
autonomous, or driverless, cars and trucks - electromobility and the sharing
economy.
More than a
few people here have raised the possibility of a future in which urban centers
are entirely void of gas-guzzlers piloted by humans. Self-driven,
battery-powered vehicles are the goal, they say. Some are eagerly waiting for
these prophecies to come to fruition; others are investing heavily to ensure
that they do.
A recent
study by the Boston Consulting Group forecast that Germany would have
self-driving cars on the Autobahn by 2017 and in cities by 2020. By 2025,
commuters here could be sharing nearly every roadway with fully autonomous
cars.
"This
is a visible signal that mobility is changing," German Transport Minister
Alexander Dobrindt said moments after arriving at the transportation summit in
a pilotless BMW i3, a sleek, black SUV that rolled to a gentle stop outside
Leipzig's trade fair grounds.
Big changes
The auto
industry is in the throes of big, often eye-popping changes and Germany's
engineering and design prowess has put its carmakers in a unique position to
get behind a possible shift to a driverless future.
A few
floors up from where Dobrindt arrived, luxury carmaker Audi was showing off how
those changes have manifested themselves in a virtual semi-driverless cockpit
of the future, dubbed "James 2025."
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| This Delphi automotive Audi Q5 is fitted with laser sensors, radar and multiple cameras |
It wasn't a
full prototype, just two black fabric front seats and a dashboard, but it was
turning heads all the same. Sebastian Hinzmann, an engineer in the group
research division at Volkswagen, Audi's parent company, said the model was
based on the A6.
Audi is of
course already testing its self-driving cars on a specially allocated stretch
of the Autobahn in Bavaria. Just two months ago, Dobrindt took a spin there in
a souped-up Audi A7 named "Jack" that was equipped with autopilot
technology.
But what
set "James 2025" apart from "Jack" were the extra bells and
whistles. Push two buttons on the black leather steering wheel morphs into an
airplane yoke-like control and sinks into the dashboard, while a sleek
instrument console with touch controls softly pings the driver to alert him or
her of any imminent danger.
Audi says
consumers will first be able to get their hands (so to speak) on its
semi-driverless technology in 2017 in the A8 model. But it's not only German
auto giants that are hedging their investments for the future.
Bill Ford,
the great-grandson of Henry Ford and executive chairman of the Ford Motor Co.,
said in an interview with Bloomberg that he was aware that car and truck sales
wouldn't be enough to guarantee his company's existence for another 100 years.
Urban
migration
Ford's
remarks added another layer to a debate that has been going on here as well
about urban migration and how to prevent crippling gridlock as more people
flock to cities. There has been ample speculation in the last few days in
Leipzig of the potential benefits that could befall urban centers if all
vehicles in cities were one day driverless.
"If we
replace all the private cars and all the buses in a city, just leaving the
metro and the shared, autonomous cars, we would need only one-third of the
vehicles and 10 percent of the parking space," said Jose Viegas, the ITF's
secretary general.
But ITF
economist Philippe Crist isn't so sure. Not because fleets of shared, electric
cars that run on autopilot wouldn't reduce congestion and eliminate the need
for parking, but because there's no guarantee that's where things are headed.
There is precedent for cities being blindsided by trends they did not expect.
Asia, for
instance, and China in particular is home to a majority of the world's 21
million electric vehicles. But rather than cars, drivers there get around on
battery-powered two- and three-wheelers. That's compared to the roughly 500,000
electric cars that are registered around the world.
"The
model for replacing a fuel car with an electric car - the same car, same size,
different drive train technology - that's not the winning electromobility
strategy in the world," Crist said. "The real winning strategy is a
small, low-range, light, city vehicle."
He said
this was allegorical for what may happen with the rollout of automated vehicles
too.
"Many
expect these vehicles to be used the same way," Crist said. "I
wouldn't put my money in the bank on that."
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