Okay it's time for the #EarthDay2021 thread.

AVs and the environment. Let's do this...

So the good folks at @PAVECampaign were kind enough to have me on a panel yesterday to discuss this topic. There are many ways in which AVs will impact energy/environment/climate , and only so much time to discuss it all. So I wanted to expand on it a bit.

So much of this comes down to how policy ultimately shapes/constrains deployments. If we want our streets today to be human-centered (and yes, we do), we should do what we can to ensure AV tech supports that objective.

Y'all have of course seen some variation of this. My concern with AVs is less about sprawl, and more about the way in which they may reduce the social frictions providing impetus today for reclaiming street space for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit vehicles.

EVs are in a similar boat, frankly. Going zero-emission doesn't capture all the negative externalities of leaving our roadways as they are, and you'll increasingly see automobility advocates claim they do.

"The tailpipe emissions is gone, so it's all cool."

Well, you still have noxious emissions from tire debris. A lot of it. Asphalt is impermeable & creates stormwater runoff issues. It also contributes to urban heat island effects. The more of it we have, the more extreme the effects of climate change.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-05/documents/reducing_urban_heat_islands_ch_5.pdf

So my concern with AVs (which are all going to be electric, but more on that shortly) is similar. The more people are okay with being stuck in traffic, the less they will want to invest in alternatives.

Okay, so that's the big negative. Let's get to the good stuff.

I see AVs supporting decarbonization objectives on 3 key fronts.

1. Increased viability of shared micromobility
2. Accelerated adopted of battery electric vehicles, particularly medium and heavy duty fleet vehicles
3. Redesigned, more energy efficient freight/delivery vehicles

1. I still think shared micromobility is a minor player in the grand scheme of things. Personal ownership of e-bikes and scooters (and whatever) is going to have a much greater impact, but we'll take every small win we can!

Automation *will* increase viability of shared models.

Automated rebalancing will reduce some of the need to send trucks and vans around the city so gig workers can pick up devices and either return them to their depot for recharging, or to a central location for additional use. It can also deliver directly to customers.

I suspect this will make these services viable in the places they can do the most good, which are areas poorly served by transit (e.g. not Manhattan or the Atlanta BeltLine) and too dispersed to walk anywhere. Maybe last-mile connectivity to suburban rail stations.

2. I talk a lot about how automation can accelerate fleet electrification. And it's something I do work on day-to-day.

But this gets super wonky and certainly doesn't capture the imagination the way robotaxis or semis on a highway do. So it's *super* underdiscussed.

Let's first talk about drivetrain. For automation you need drive-by-wire capability. That's why AV firms love the Chrysler Pacifica. PHEVs & BEVs (& FCEVs) are more likely to have fully electric drivelines, and are therefore steering actuation and pedal movement is much easier.

Well buses & trucks are much heavier and therefore harder to go fully electric on drive components. Kinda tough to ditch the air brakes and get appropriate stopping power on a 40-ton vehicle. So to automate those, you need expensive (though increasingly streamlined) workarounds.

Without getting too in the weeds here, it's not like the prospect of automation got truck and bus OEMs thinking about electric (mostly hybrid for now) drive components...those came with powertrain electrification, but it's accelerating that process through greater investment.

Electric drive components are inherently more efficient than hydraulic or pneumatic counterparts. So automation will push us toward the former, and accelerate adoption in those heavier (and more challenging) vehicle segments.

Bigger picture now. The heavier the vehicle, the more drive efficiency impacts overall fuel economy. This becomes a big problem w/ battery electric buses & trucks, which already face critical range limitations. The sooner we overcome these, the faster we can replace ICE vehicles.

For battery electric buses (BEBs), you might ballpark fuel economy at 2 kWh/mile on a 40-foot bus. Current long-range battery packs provide 350-400 kWh of available energy when brand new. So 170-200 miles. That degrades with age and use, of course. So...

All bus and trucks drivers have CDLs, but these are industries with lots of turnover, and there's a big difference between someone driving for 6 months, and someone driving for 6 years.

When you procure electric buses/trucks, you have to plan for the former. Big challenge.

We've seen huge energy efficiency variance from bus driver to driver. Net 40%+ (~20% in either direction). If you lose even 10% of your range, that's 20 miles, and a bunch of marginally viable routes you can't serve now.

Automation can solve for this variance. Standardization.

Yes, you're dealing with sensor and compute loads on the vehicle that tap into battery energy, but improved drive efficiency should more than cover it. If you can synchronize with signals via V2X/SPaT for more efficient braking, that helps too.

So that's on the operations side. What about capital planning? Well, if you want to go fully battery electric, you need a ton of charging infra (EVSE) in your depots. It's expensive & it takes up a lot of space. Real estate ain't free either. Automation can help alleviate this.

You can park vehicles in much tighter configurations (which may also come in handy if you need to retain legacy vehicles as spares for extreme temperatures, etc.), and also automate charging cycles with superfast charging via conductive or inductive charging.

Even with high capacity chargers, it's still going to take longer to refuel electric buses/trucks than diesel, CNG, or hydrogen. Managing charge cycles becomes an entirely new operational concern, and the more you can automate it, the better.

And misalign a bus with a pantograph charger by too much, you won't get a charge at all. Misalign one with an inductive (wireless) charge pad, and your charge efficiency decreases. Missed charge cycles can severely impact operations. Automation can align vehicles precisely.

And by the way, all those considerations are why USPS can't just electrify all of its vans tomorrow. There's a lot of planning and execution that goes into medium- and heavy-duty fleet deployments. Some areas vehicle automation can't help, but there are plenty where it can.

3. Finally, vehicle design. We design vehicles today for passenger safety & comfort. That does not make for the most energy or space efficiency. Remove passengers entirely for freight/delivery applications, & you can do *a ton* of redesign. AVs have transformative potential here.

It's not just steering wheels, brake pedals, and other gizmos. It's all sorts of crash safety features that fundamentally don't matter when human lives aren't at stake. And there is a lot of (physical) weight that goes into these design features.

That's what I love about what @AVGregR and the team over at Nuro are doing. It's not just that these are automated battery electric vehicles. It's that they can occupy much less road space and achieve far greater energy efficiency when designing a vehicle not to carry any humans.

And we're going to see a lot more vehicles like these for urban delivery and intercity freight, where there are no passenger compartments, and we can take lightweighting to an extreme. It means we can electrify more and faster (lower energy requirements, greater battery range).

So in conclusion....it's easy to think about the big picture transportation landscape (and associated land use), and how AVs might impact it for better or worse from an environmental perspective. But that's highly speculative and largely dependent on policy.

When you start to think about automation as a tool you can use to solve critical capital and operational barriers to growth in more sustainable transportation modes and/or their electrification...that's where it gets exciting.

Happy #EarthDay2021 !