CES is underway right now in Las Vegas. About 200,000 people are in attendance. 

Since tech and mobility are today closely intertwined, the show has become an important platform for the automative industry.

Here is a video showcasing BMW’s new iNext concept (expected by 2021):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9-f3cALABk&w=560&h=315]

It is based on level 3 autonomy, which means the car will do mostly everything, but you need to be ready to take over at any time.

The video is interesting because it begins to show you what becomes possible when you no longer need to pay attention to the road. It is a bit like flying (but hopefully more enjoyable). 

And here is a video of Bell’s new urban air taxi, which is called Nexus (expected by the mid-2020s):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4d8N-A1G8&w=560&h=315]

This is the company’s first concept. But they’ve been working with Uber since 2017 to develop a network of flying taxis for cities.

Finally, flying cars.

I was on two panel discussions over the last week and, as is the case with all real estate panels, the topic of parking invariably came up, as did the impact of autonomous vehicles.

There seems to be a general consensus that the advent of driverless cars will result in less demand for parking. Every developer I know is trying to build as little parking as possible and is thinking about how – when the time comes – they might convert their parking into something more productive. I have yet to speak to anyone who is building excess parking in order to prepare for autonomy.

Where there’s a split, however, is whether autonomous vehicles will represent a decentralizing or a centralizing force for our cities. Historically, new technologies have lowered transportation costs and encouraged decentralization. Before the advent of rail, the US population hugged the coasts, because it was cheaper to navigate across the Atlantic than it was to move inland.

A similar phenomenon also played out with our streetcar suburbs and with our car-oriented suburbs. These new technologies made it possible for people to travel further distances in order to get to work and other places. So it is not at all surprising that many people today are inferring that autonomous vehicles will produce this same outcome.

But there is a counterargument. 

We know that the demand for transportation services is highly elastic. Uber and other ride sharing apps have demonstrated this to us. Lower fares translate into dramatic increases in demand. So the opposing argument is that as the cost per kilometer drops – autonomous electric vehicles are going to be much more cost effective to operate – we’re going to see boatloads of induced demand.

This induced demand will then force us to look toward road pricing and other demand management tools in order to cope, which then begs the question: How much cheaper and more convenient will autonomous vehicles really be? 

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that autonomous vehicles should correct many of the inefficiencies currently caused by humans acting like humans. There is also the opportunity to operate these autonomous vehicles more like public transit than as personal vehicles. And that will have a profound impact on urban mobility.

Still, it is not yet clear, at least for me, that autonomous vehicles will be the decentralizing force that many assume they will be.

One of the challenges that self-driving vehicles present is not about technology per se, it is about ethics. The typical example scenario is this one: If a pedestrian were to step out in front of an autonomous vehicle illegally, should the car be programmed to hit the pedestrian or veer off the road at the risk of potentially harming its passengers?

I believe that self-driving vehicles will ultimately result in fewer accidents. Statistically they will be safer. But self-driving vehicles, particularly early on, are going to get a lot of attention when they do get into accidents, even if they are still safer as a whole. And that’s because they will make for good headlines.

Safety and statistics aside, in turns out that the answer to the above moral question could depend on where you’re from. Nature recently published what they are calling the largest ever survey of “machine ethics.” And out of this survey they discovered some pretty distinct regional variations across the 130 different countries that responded.

The responses were able to be grouped into 3 main buckets: Western, Eastern, and Southern. Here is the moral compass that was published in Nature:

And here are a few examples. In North America and in some European countries where Christianity has historically dominated, there was a preference to sacrifice older lives for younger ones. So that would guide how one might program the car for the case in which a pedestrian steps out in front.

In countries with strong government institutions, such as Japan and Finland, people were more likely to say that the pedestrian – who, remember, stepped out onto the road illegally – should be hit. Whereas countries with a high level of income inequality, often chose to kill poorer people in order to save richer people. Colombia, for example, responded this way.

Also interesting is the ethical paradox that this discussion raises. Throughout the survey, many people responded by saying that, in our example here, the pedestrian should be saved at the expense of the passengers. But they also responded by saying that they would never ever buy a car that would do this. Their safety comes first in the buying decision. And I can see that.

There’s an argument that these are fairly low probability scenarios. I mean, the last time you swerved your car, you probably weren’t driving on the edge of a cliff where any deviation from the path meant you would tumble to your death. But I still think that these are infinitely interesting questions that will need to be answered. And perhaps the answer will depend on which city you’re in.