Communications of the ACM
Computing Power Will Reduce Car Ownership, Expert Says
"Smart cars on dumb roads rather than dumb cars on smart roads, that's the next wave," says Michael Webber of the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin.
Credit: University of Texas at Austin
Americans devote an enormous amount of energy and resources to their cars. But what users want isn't the car itself, but the services it provides. As technological advances make computing essentially free, bandwidth essentially infinite, and sensing ubiquitous, current transportation systems will experience revolutionary change, says Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.
Webber believes the first glimpses of these changes are visible in the DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles and Google's driverless cars. Privately owned, dumb cars that are used a fraction of the time will be replaced by smart mobility services that are in perpetual use, tapping into this powerful information technology to drive down costs and improve the value of mobility, Webber says.
The costs associated with smart cars will be far less than the costs associated with smart highways, Webber says. "Smart cars on dumb roads rather than dumb cars on smart roads, that's the next wave," he says.
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