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Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century ReviewThis is a wonderful book to stimulate one's thinking about the future of the automobile and urban transportation. Even if you are skeptical about some elements of the authors' vision, it is likely to enrich your understanding of how technology, design, functionality, and economics interact. Reinventing the Automobile is clearly written, supported with ample attractive and helpful graphics. There is a bit of repetition, though it is probably desirable to help explain synergies among several of the key concepts.
The authors explore four principal ideas: a radical new "DNA" in the design of small urban vehicles (driven by wheel motors, for example); a "Mobility Internet" to help manage traffic flows and promote safety; clean energy, with vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen; and dynamically priced markets. Most of their discussion centers on two-seaters, either "neighborhood electric vehicles" or "electric city cars" with more range.
These vehicles will not be designed to achieve high speeds, which permits greater flexibility in structure, surfaces, and glazing. Elimination of the engine and the application of "by-wire" technology make it possible to imagine new shapes, and in one design even possible to "fold-up" the vehicles so that they occupy less parking space. Based on an electric "skateboard" chassis the vehicles are modular with relatively few parts, easier to construct and repair.
The authors suggest several applications of information technology to aid drivers, some of which can and do work quite well in cars today (GPS-based navigation systems, devices that receive information about traffic to assist routing, and safety sensors, for instance). More futuristic is their vision that eventually vehicles will be safely self-guided.
Current information technology can also support dynamic pricing applications. Chips that allow toll road access priced differently by time of day are just one simple example. Another that I found intriguing (and seemingly quite feasible already) applies sensors in parking spaces to notify drivers of availability, perhaps with the more desired spaces priced higher to reflect supply and demand.
One section presents an informative discussion of "fractional possession" systems with shared cars available for use on demand (these exist on a small scale in several cities today). The authors show how these systems can be greatly enhanced by dynamic pricing and, especially, when vehicles are able to travel autonomously to distribute themselves to points of need.
There are several important limitations to the authors' ideas. Most obvious is that there will still be a pervasive need for vehicles that are bigger than two-seaters -- family cars, trucks, buses, and so on. How will roadway systems safely accommodate the small guys (not designed to endure impacts with big guys), for instance? Or how can electronic vehicle interconnection work adequately unless nearly all vehicles are appropriately equipped? The authors suggest roadway separation, but that could require a massive infrastructure investment and consume even more space than required for transportation currently. They recognize that there is a chicken-and-egg problem inherent in the infrastructure needs: for example, that unless a widespread charging network is in place many people will be reluctant to use electric vehicles, but that without wide use development of such networks may not be economically feasible.
They offer an outline on how to reach their vision from here, but for the most part it consists of only broad principles and not specifics. The most useful guidance they provide, in my opinion, is that we should build on those "foothold " elements that have already been tested (for example, various kinds of electric and fuel cell electric vehicles, wheel motors, telematics systems, road pricing, bike and car sharing, etc.) and continue to look for synergies among them.
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