AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES TRANSIT LEAP


years from mainstream adoption”. By 2012, Gartner upgraded this prediction to “the Plateau of Productivity will be reached in five to 10 years”, a five-year advance in 24 months. That projection has remained unchanged since then.


THE TROUGH OF DISILLUSIONMENT A lot of excitement (and hype) has indeed built since 2010. But as with all technologies studied by Gartner, the full, Level 5 autono- mous vehicle is now inescapably poised to fall into the Trough of Disillusionment and recover on the Slope of Enlightenment before it reaches the Plateau of Productivity within Gartner’s estimated 2020 to 2025. The impending slide through Negative Hype and into the


Trough of Disillusionment has started, manifesting as barriers to the gradual, market-envisioned feature creep through advanced driver assistance systems. This household ownership model would spawn 20 or 30 lucrative years for consumer vehicles and technology companies, as they would eventually reach pervasive uptake of SAE’s Level 5 autonomy (Fig 2, top). One of the barriers is that humans generally come to rely on


Google (and now reportedly, Ford7 ) has elected, jumping imme-


diately to Level 5 AVs skipping the intermediate semi-robotic lev- els altogether. Of course Level 5 AVs would suffer severe access limitations in their first decade or so. The owner of a Level 5 AV would be able to use it only on fully qualified lanes and areas. These would not likely appear quickly given the social, political and funding hurdles that slow any major change to our public spaces. Access-anxiety for early adopters of Level 5 AVs would be worse than the range-anxiety afflicting early EV adoption. A further barrier to consumer ownership of fully robotic vehi-


cles will be financial. Because the technology for robotic mobility will evolve so rapidly, household vehicle lifespans will plummet and their ability to retain resale value after purchase will be abys- mal. These vehicles will not have 12-15 year life spans as now.


“Strategic expansion of the geographic reach of autonomous Transit Leap vehicles will increasingly erode the need for vehicle ownership. Peak car ownership becomes declining car ownership”


assistive technologies quickly and incautiously. The reliability with which drivers will remain attentive while using intermediate levels of semi-autonomous features, or be able to rapidly re-refo- cus their attention in the event the vehicle requests oversight, is very challenging.5, 6


Driving becomes the distraction. Another barrier is the organization of public infrastructure.


Near term use of fully autonomous, Level 5, vehicles implies either mixing them with semi-autonomous ones on the same roadway, setting up separate lanes and safe-havens at great expense, or as


SIDEBAR 1: ARRIVAL HYPE


It is important for governments to be prepared for vehicles that drive themselves, whether moving people or goods. Since there are scores of considerations, this anticipation is critical. The untold number of effects, interactions and unintended consequences, means the task of mapping out this future is daunting. Technological change has a habit of taking far longer than promised to arrive. When is does arrive, it sweeps in dra- matic and sudden change on its famous S-curve. That will happen with Level 5 AVs. They will take far longer to begin penetration than automo- tive marketers and consultants suggest (remember the lesson learned as range anxiety halted the meaningful uptake of electric vehicles). Once accepted, Level 5 vehicles will likely become pervasive in a tsunami. When the upswing on the S-curve begins, the ensuing scramble would result in disruption of almost everything. That’s the fear that consultants thrive on, but the number of reliable, nuanced projections is near zero. We know robotic vehicles are coming, but little else. There are many contradictory promises regarding when Level 5 tech-


nology will become pervasive. Some of the contradiction is because the expression “self-driving” correctly describes both a fully robotic machine (no driver role) as well as the features of Level 2 or Level 3 vehicles when they are switched to automatic mode – a temporary state set by the driver that still requires driver presence and attention to varying degrees. The marketing of increasingly capable semi-autonomous features provides a


CONNECTED CANADA SUPPLEMENT 22


degree of market confusion that benefits manufacturing and consulting brands. This promotes the expectation that showrooms will soon have fully autonomous vehicles requiring no driver at all, and turning munici- pal planners into deer in headlights. Experts that understand the deeper complexities of AI, of prepar-


ing the road and infrastructure environments, of fleet turnover, of re- tooling plants and regulations, predict Level 5 arrival and acceptance in meaningful numbers sometime between 2040 and 2070. The high-end Level 3 semi-autonomous vehicles that automotive marketers promote as “self-driving” still need drivers and parking spots. Level 3 vehicles may be a tremendous improvement over Level 1 or Level 2 vehicles – they would likely deliver a safer, cleaner ride for their owners, and for the pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles they share the road with – but they don’t wipe out driving jobs or return vast tracks of parking real- estate for redevelopment. It is true that there are many things to prepare for the arrival of Level 5


vehicles. It is prudent to start thinking and planning now. The likely span of two or three decades of Level 2 and 3 dominance means a significant period of more congestion, more parking, more distracted driving, more sprawl and reduced transit ridership. Such an interim outcome threat- ens cities 2020-2040+ and leaves urban environments that much more difficult to heal when the Level 5 vehicle does arrive.


www.thinkinghighways.com


THE SLOPE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Happily, there is a solution to this impending slump in enthu- siasm for the fully self-driving car. Just as the barriers to the household market for Level 5 autonomous vehicles are becom-


Three years would become a more typical expectation for even meagre value retention. If you are on your second or third smart- phone, you will understand. For consumers who can’t use them or can’t finance them, how much more disillusionment is needed?


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