In our last article (the Car of the Future), we posed the question ‘Is the search for a more environmentally friendly vehicle in the technology of the engine, or in the makeup of the vehicle itself?’ We posed the question to drive the conversation beyond miles-per-gallon, and into other areas of energy efficiency in transportation design. Think of the hyper-milers, people who can get extreme efficiency from their own vehicles. What if we could make our own driving habits so efficient that we could all achieve such mileage? Even better, what if your vehicle was smart enough to do it for you?

Most new cars these days have GPS systems which are independently hooked to the vehicle, and do not talk to the computer inside the car.   Your GPS might know about traffic conditions, directions and weather, but it does not know how much fuel is left in the vehicle, what the conditions on the road are, and how fast the vehicle is going.  Likewise your car knows all of these things, but isn’t communication with your GPS system.  And while most GPS systems are smart enough to determine alternate routes, only a limited few are able to determine what the current traffic conditions are and make a decision accordingly. Furthermore, while GPS systems can tell you where you are, most cannot tell you what is in front of you. In fact, none would be able to tell you if the street light upon which you are coming to is going to be red, or green.

BUILDING A SMARTER VEHICLE

So, let us build a better smart vehicle. Let’s start by locating a few sensors in the wheels of the vehicles, to determine tire pressure, and road conditions. We can then install a full GPS system on the vehicle, hooked to the traffic light city grid. Instead of telling the vehicle what your immediate destination is, we tell the vehicle what we intend to do, for the duration of the trip, letting it know if there are specific times when we have to be in a specific place, and have it do the trip for you, as per the most efficient route. Immediately the vehicle will be able to tell you if there is enough gas, or electric charge in the tank/battery, and recommend the best stop for you to refuel. Hook it up to the citywide internet, just like every other vehicle, and voila, instant traffic conditions for the entire city. Because the vehicle has full knowledge of where each car is, and vice versa, the city wider grid is able to manage the traffic in the city much better than a bunch of irritable individuals all trying to get to different destinations. Even better? Because you have told your vehicle what all your routes are, and it know where you will be going, it will recommend the use of public transport where appropriate to match your needs.

THE NETWORK EFFECT

Let’s take this train of thought to the next level. Imagine that the vehicle you are sitting in is not yours actually, but rather, part of your neighborhood car sharing service. Because this information is provided in advance, the car sharing service can in principle link a number of drivers going to the same destination together. Once both reach their destination, let’s say, the supermarket, each one could go back together to their neighborhood, or each could take their own vehicle to their next destination. Smarter car-sharing could become the next big thing in transportation, blurring the boundaries between public and private transportation.

All of these technologies currently exist today.  GPS systems, mobile phones, even proximity sensors are readily available almost anywhere. The computers in our pockets are more powerful than those found on your desks a decade ago, and the costs are certainly low enough that you can have a device the size of a mobile phone do as much as most desktop computers. But the fact remains that most vehicles don’t really make use the potential of contemporary networked technology. There are a number of prototypes existing for vehicles which can tell an incoming vehicle from another, and which can tell when a human being is walking in front of it, and GPS systems are getting more and more sophisticated. The next step is taking all of this distributed information that exists within each vehicle, and connect it all into one gigantic system. Not only will vehicles use less fuel, but our cities will become more livable by the fact that better planning solutions will be possible.

This of course provides another solution to fuel efficiency and emissions. But they are not the only problem, not even by far. As the emissions from the ongoing operation of the vehicle are reduced, the proportion of the emissions from the manufacturing of the vehicle becomes larger. Once the operational side of the equation is solved, what is the next big frontier for vehicles?