A study undertaken at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) suggests that self-driving vehicles could dramatically reduce car ownership, based on data of US car usage patterns.
The UMTRI study researchers – Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak – analysed the potential for reduced vehicle ownership within households based on the sharing of self-driving vehicles that employ a “return-to-home” mode, acting as a form of shared family or household vehicle.
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An examination of the latest US National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data showed “a general lack of trip overlap between drivers within a majority of households” UMTRI said. This, the study suggested, opens up the possibility for a significant reduction in average vehicle ownership per household based on vehicle sharing.
The study envisages a shared vehicle typically being capable of taking one member of the household to a place of work and then returning home for use by another household member before returning to the place of work for the first household member’s return commute. Currently, that would be a pattern of car use (one major commute plus a second household member using a car during the day) that would require two vehicles; with a driverless vehicle the household would now require only one car.
According to the study, the reduction in vehicle ownership and an accompanying shift to vehicle sharing within each household could, “in the most extreme hypothetical scenario”, reduce average ownership rates by 43% (from 2.1 to 1.2 vehicles per household).
Conversely, this shift would result in a 75% increase in individual vehicle usage (from 11,661 to 20,406 annual miles per vehicle).
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By GlobalDataHowever, the study also noted a number of current unknowns regarding sufficient gaps between trips, future self-driving-vehicle implementation, self-driving-vehicle acceptance, and possible vehicle-sharing strategies within households, that means “these results serve only as an upper-bound approximation of the potential for household sharing of completely self-driving vehicles”.
