Reinventing the automobile - MIT book proposes drive-by-wire, all roads priced

The internal combustion engine (ICE) was in most respects a huge advance for road vehicles - in speed, efficiency, and range. But we lost the intelligence of the horse. In the 1940s when I was a child there were still lots of horse-drawn carts and trailers used for deliveries. Milk, fresh vegetables, groceries, parcels, firewood and other delivered goods usually came from a  horse-drawn cart. Also blocks of ice for the ice chest, the standard method for keeping food from spoiling before the era of cheap electric refrigerators in the 1960s. The 'iceman' would carry the ice block on his shoulder on a thick piece of sacking. The intelligence of his horse allowed him to use all his energy moving from curb to kitchen, while the horse managed the trailer's progress down the street from customer to customer.

The horse's intelligence and autonomy gave it an advantage over the ICE-powered truck or van. The milkman or other deliveryman could repeatedly walk back and forth between the cart and his customer's front door, while the horse moved the cart up the street on command, or sometimes simply knowing that his job was to keep the cart positioned close to the deliveryman.

And out in the country a horse was safer than an ICE-car for the farmer who got tired or drunk. He could put his arms around the animal's neck, tell it to go home, and sleep safely for the duration of the trip.

The car needed to be driven. The horse didn't, at least not for journeys it had learned.

Location-finding (GPS) and sensing technologies, communications and computing power now allow us to build automobiles with horse intelligence and more. Three MIT guys have written a fascinating book about how to achieve huge advances in automobility, re-engineering the vehicles, and the roads they run on.

It's the most interesting book we've read on transportation in a long time. Since horses disappeared from the roads perhaps.

ITS always promising, never quite delivering

ITS has delivered one unfulfilled promise after another. Traffic signal coordination, ramp metering, traveler information, traffic management, safety, reliability…

you name the ITS application, it has failed to deliver significant results.

For all the incessant hype about "ITS" the actual amount of intelligence applied to ICE-vehicles today has yet to match the intelligence of the horse.

Kiss of death

The kiss of death for ITS has been federal funding and federal regulation. Also perhaps too its treatment of problems as discrete, separate problems to be solved, rather than systems with synergy and interrelatedness.

Take electronic toll collection.

The federal 'idee fixe' has been a national ET standard based on a  new RFID technology.

Federal programs lavished money first on ASTMv6, later on 5.9GHz. The result has been, not just waste, but greater proliferation of technologies - the precise opposite of the stated objective.

Feds not asked for "help"

The MIT 'Reinventing the Automobile' project thankfully contains no suggestion that there's a need for federal "help."

The stress is on spontaneous market-driven initiatives that exploit network externalities - the way the web, iPhones etc developed. Entrepreneurs solving so-called 'wicked problems.'

The book envisages development of dynamically priced markets in roadspace and parking based on ubiquitous tolling. They describe the development of something akin to Orbitz/Expedia style presentation of different trip/park options, their prices, at different times and at different speeds and with different parking spots, the same way the airline trip search engines present the alternatives for airlines and hotels.

Electricity for recharging electric cars would also be priced dynamically to help smooth demand and encourage recharging when there's surplus capacity.

Governments plan, as USDOT's awful 'strategic plan' document reminds us using the word more times than my browse search function can count. It is the antithesis of planning - knowing it all beforehand and then working to make stuff conform - that is envisaged.

Gorgeous CityCar

The neatest thing in the book is the gorgeous proposed MIT CityCar, illustrations of which we display all around. The authors have no illusion that any electric car can compete in carrying capacity, range and speed with an ICE-vehicle. No battery has the power density to be in the same league as the petroleum-based fuel tank of an ICE.

Instead they propose a specialized city vehicle:

- carrying capacity strictly only two people,

- top speed 30mph, 50km/hr,

- range between recharges 50 miles, 80km

Their argument is that average vehicle occupancy is below two, 80% of trips are less than 50 miles, 80km/day, and that a lot of urban driving doesn't need more than 30mph, 50km/hr. The 4 and 5 person carrying capacity, the 100mph, 160km/hr top speed, and the 300 mile, 500km fuel tank range - they argue - is simply not used for most trips. So why not get down to basics?

They started with a clean slate looking at what can be done to simplify a car for urban use. They get rid of the engine and the drive train and use an electric motor in each wheel hub. That saves weight and allows front entry and exit.

Weight of the CityCar is under 1,000pds, <450kg.

Parked, the CityCar is short and high with a  footprint just 1.5m x 1.5m, 5ft x 5ft. Getting in is like sliding onto a barstool. Once the door is closed a 4 bar linkage has the car 'fold' down and extend spreading the wheels apart. The occupants assume a chaise lounge type position driving and the CityCar has the stability of greater length (2.5m, 8.2ft) and a lowered center of gravity.

The CityCar has very little steel in it. Strength comes from a cast aluminum exoskeleton and panels are polycarbonate with the curves giving them strength - of the kind used in modern aircraft windshields.

There are no pedals. Controls are by joystick.

Everything is electronic, or by-wire.

Better fuel economy per passenger than transit

The MIT CityCar achieves extraordinary energy economies and low emissions - way better than ICE-automobiles of course but much better than transit too. Energy consumption is put at 0.88mJ/passenger-mile which compares with a Chevy Malibu's 3.45, the Prius 1.61, the Smart 4 Two 2.33 and a transit bus 1.56mJ/passenger-mile. That is to say the MIT CityCar is a 45% improvement on the per passenger efficiency of a transit bus or a Prius. (p177)

For those who see virtue in low CO2 emissions the CityCar does 54g/passenger-mile v 100g transit bus, 118 Prius, 168 Smart, Chevy Malibu 281g. (p177)

CityCars safer, carry more passengers/hour than transit

CityCars might be able to mix safely with bicycles the MIT book suggests because of their lower speeds and size.

They calculate that that electronically platooned and with automated lane keeping, Berkeley-style, CityCars can operate in 1.8m, 6ft lanes, meaning that two streams of CityCars can be accommodated in the width of a normal 3.6m, 12ft lane as used by a regular car or bus. Nearterm such CityCars can achieve 29,000 passengers/12ft-lane width/hour v 20,000 of the Lincoln Tunnel bus lane in New York City, held to be the highest throughput of any transit facility.

In the future they envisage a tuning of electronic platooning to get about 47k people/hour/12ft lane in CityCars, way ahead of any transit throughput. (p178)

There are also major improvements in parking efficiency with MIT CityCars.

Normal American cars are put in a bay 25ft, 7.6m by 8ft, 2.4m in parallel parking.  Just 5ft x 5ft, 1.5m x 1.5m in folded/upright parking configuration, between three and four times as many CityCars can be parked in any given space as regular cars.

The authors say the CityCar can be sold for less than $10,000.

Left a bit vague in this book is how the CityCar's IQ might rank with that of the average horse.

see

Reinventing the Automobile, Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century

William J. Mitchell, Christopher E. Borroni-Bird and Lawrence D. Burns, MIT Press

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12044

a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSKpE2d3BaY

TOLLROADSnews 2010-05-31