SXSW Day 5 session 4: Beyond driverless cars - our transportation future

A panel discussion moderated by Neal Ungerleider (Fast Company) featuring Anthony Foxx (former US secretary of transportation and mayor of Charlotte), Chandra Bhat (University of Texas), and Don Civgin (Allstate insurance company)

The panel started with some statistics:

• Cars are not utilized (i.e. parked) 96% of the time
• 8 Billion hours wasted on congestion (I guess annually)
• For low and middle income families, transportation costs represent their second highest expense

Transportation sits on three pillars:

• Technology: this is where advances happen most rapidly
• Infrastructure: need to think about how to adapt infrastructure to the prevalence of autonomous cars
• Human awareness: benefits and unintended consequences need to be thought through.  For example, if autonomous cars free me to do whatever I want during the ride (work, entertainment), then time of travel is not as much of an issue as it was in the past, which may encourage urban sprawl, lead to longer drives, and increase waste.

Will autonomous vehicles be owned, or will we just use ride sharing?  Younger, more educated people gravitate towards the shared economy, so they will be buying less cars.

Autonomous cars will come sooner rather than later:

• Autonomous cars are "killer apps"; they will be the feature people use to decide to buy a car, and which car.
• Companies pioneering the technology (primarily Uber and Tesla) are not playing in the traditional manner; they are disruptive and aggressive.  Traditional car manufacturers have to accelerate their own plans to keep up, and as a result, the entire timeline is accelerated. 

How will liability be assessed around autonomous cars?

Today humans who drive cars have to be tested and licensed.  How do you license the software behind the self driving car?  We would need to have a centralized standard.

Government's approach to this question is still being guidelines.  The US government has published guidelines but needs to expand them and have them periodically reviewed.

How do you keep your data private, but also make the information about autonomous vehicle accidents public and available to manufacturers and government so it can be reviewed and learned from?  Possibly will need to adopt a similar model to the one used for aviation accidents.

Car manufacturers are beginning to view themselves as mobility companies, rather than car companies.  One unexpected possible feature of autonomous cars is that because they are much safer than regular cars, they may be able to lose a lot of weight taken up in today's cars by safety features (bumpers, reinforcements, airbags, etc.), which could lead to smaller engines and better efficiency.