This is a continuation of my thoughts on where we are headed with driverless cars. I would recommend reading this series from part 1.

Previously we discussed “What will the driverless fleet look like and how we will use it?” In this post, I wanted to provide some my thoughts on managing surges.

Managing surges

Many urban planners have to think through how to manage transportation veins to handle the mass transit that occurs on regular basis. To assume that these veins because of driverless cars are going away is misleading. Transportation demands’ peaks and troughs will continue.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Driverless Cars (part 2 of 6)” →

I can’t believe it was ~6 months ago, when Elon Musk posted his second master plan for Tesla, but since then I’ve been ruminating about who is going to win in this market. I thought I should share my thoughts.

Before doing so, I think it’s important to state that this vision is based on a lot of assumptions, so its best to see if you agree with these assumptions, before adopting my prescriptions. These assumptions include, but are not limited to:

• The primary method of driving will be autonomous/driverless
  • A highly disputed assumption
• Vehicles will be primarily electrically powered

I’m a strong believer in testing your assumptions before building any sort of effort towards a solution so I would suggest everyone to take these thoughts with significant grains of salt, as they have not been tested, and are often disputed.

Given those assumptions, I’ve broken my vision of the future driverless world into a couple of parts:

• What will the driverless fleet look like and how we will use it?
• How to manage surges in ridership demand?
• How does ride-hailing fit into all of this?
• How will it change urban planning?
• Who or what will have the biggest impact in this market?
• How will regulation have to adapt to this?

Continue reading “Thoughts on Driverless Cars (part 1 of 6)” →