I want my PMV! Car-like Motorcycle-like Safe-definitely

Here’s the question: if you currently drive a car to work and for errands, would you prefer to drive a motorcycle-carlike vehicle that is one-quarter of a car? That is, one-quarter the cost, one-quarter the fuel consumption (easily 100 miles to the gallon), requires one-quarter the space to park at one-quarter the cost of regular parking, and pay one-quarter the cost of tolls.

OK, it’s true that its top speed might be 30 mph, with an average speed of 20 mph. But what if you could be traveling only with other lightweight vehicles traveling at similar speeds. [The average speed of cars is most cities is between 10-15 mph. In suburban areas you might be adding 5 minutes to your trip.]

Are you saying yes? Are you focused on the one-quarter the price part? And one-quarter the space to park?

I have this theory that lots of Americans would choose this option. And even more if they access to a second car, owned by them or shared nearby, that they could use on the small percentage of trips where they need a bigger and faster car.

Last week I got to ride (not drive) in one of GM’s eight EN-Vs (electric networked vehicles, pronounced “envy” – what an excellent name).[Video with the trend/business explanation; video with the EN-V/people dance performance]. It was enormously fun. My guess is that this vehicle will not be sold for ¼ the price of their regular cars, but some models could be. So I wondered:

Why would people switch? Because
 63% percent of all trips (and 75% of all work commute) they take are already alone in their car
 they would reduce the 18% of their income they spend on their car today
 they would not be beholden to price spikes in fossil fuels
 they want to find parking everywhere
 they want to be in the uncongested lane

Why do people not do it today?

 Well they do, particularly in Asia
 Here in America none of us relish the idea of going up against truck traffic, SUVs, or regular cars
 Motorcycles, as we know them, are scary (for some) to drive, you get wet and cold, and they are incredibly dangerous (60 times the fatality rates of regular cars – because of speed and the going head to head with much heavier vehicles).

Personal motorized vehicles would address an enormous number of problems associated with today’s cars: cost, congestion, pollution, CO2 emissions, parking. And I think consumer’s would choose them, based on cost, convenience, reliability, autonomy.

The problem lies with the extreme difficulty of enabling transitions. Two suggestions to get us there:
1.Take some lanes or some roads and make them accessible only to light weight and low speed vehicles (bikes too could travel these lanes, and we could split current lanes in half and get as many as 4 times the vehicles (and people traveling) in the same amount of space). These lanes could be used starting today by bicycles, motorized and electric bikes and small motorcycles. Think of all the people who would buy these vehicles and switch to these lanes if we gave them a lane of traffic.

2. Change the regulatory and safety requirements for these vehicles in line with the lesser accident risk. This would mean a lower cost to introduce new types of vehicles that meet the qualifications. And maybe even no driver’s license (!). In Europe today there are small engine electric vehicles that people can drive to get to work when their license is revoked. And in the US, we similarly don’t require licenses for small engine motorcycles.

Are you ready? What do you think? Would you switch?

And for the record, in dense metropolitan areas, it would still be faster to walk shorter distances, and take transit in dedicated lanes or rails, and never ever have to worry about parking.

See here for photos of lots of microcars
And here to take a virtual tour of the microcar museum.

Read more!

Brilliant Strategy for Transition to Road User Fees

Everybody in transportation knows that we need to move from a gas tax to a road user fee in order to finance transportation infrastructure. Regular people – that is, everybody else – hate this idea and doesn’t get it. A colleague has come up with what I think is a genius political approach that I describe in the second half of this post. The first half describes the problem.

THE PROBLEM. This is what the public says:

I’m already paying for the roads through my taxes. [Actually, you are paying with 18 year old prices since the fuel tax hasn’t been changed in that long. In the meantime, the costs have increased enormously. And compared to the price and volatility of the gas itself, the taxes are not that significant a percentage. ]

It works great. Why touch it? If the amount of money raised is the problem, just raise the tax. [Well, 1) you can’t just raise the tax, which is why it hasn’t happened in 18 years even though we are experiencing a crisis in our transportation infrastructure which is crumbling and ancient. If you’re lucky enough to do any traveling to Europe, you’ll note that our airports, train stations, trains, roads, and sidewalks are so much worse than what you see there. We are looking like the poor, ragged cousin. And if the fuel tax is broken as a means of raising money, as we move to more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative fuels, it will get increasingly broken.]

Paying by the mile is an unfair and regressive as a tax. What about the miles I drive out of state or on private roads? What about poor people? [Today’s gas tax has all those same problems. Some of the road user fee implementations could correct some of those problems.]

What about my privacy? I don’t want the government to know my every move. [Good point, read this that I wrote earlier]

THE SOLUTION. Here is a strategy that can get political buy-in and offer us a transitional path toward adopting road user fees. I’m thinking it is pretty clever and viable.
Put together a working group of legislators and outside stakeholders to discuss how we pro-actively address the impending transition to electric vehicles. Here is how the logic can proceed:

1. Everyone is willing to agree that EVs should pay their fair share, and that the gas tax system let's them off the hook.

2. It is far better to pro-actively come up with an appropriate solution before there are lots of them. With the tax expectation in place, people can buy EVs with full knowledge, rather than government trying to change the rules after this has become a significant market with a significant constituency.

3. The bill itself should be lightly worded. Owners of electric vehicles need to pay for miles driven within the state according to some referred-to rate plan (which definitely needs to adjust with inflation). The simplest means would be an odometer reading at time of inspection. Other mechanisms that result in the appropriate payment, as approved by the state, would also be allowed.

4. To be fair, any driver/vehicle can choose to opt in to this new method of road user fees, instead of paying gas taxes.

Implications: We have a platform for experimentation on this new payment method, and working it through the entire system with low volumes. We start with the lowest common denominator for payment (odometer reading) that side steps privacy and technology concerns. However, other technology solutions could come online and be approved by the state (payment with GPS using smart phones, or with other in-vehicle devices – those built in to the car or those retrofitted on existing vehicles). Having multiple payment options will ultimately provide consumers with an array of choices that many people will find more appealing. Some solutions will address the privacy issues. Some will be able to track out-of-state versus in-state miles. Just about every other option could be a preferred choice over the crude odometer reading because it will reduce the distance taxed. As time goes on, there would likely be all sorts of methods for payment and collecting of the data that use a wide range of devices, evolve over time, and take the burden of devices and refreshing them away from the state.

That is the gist. I think it is a brilliant strategy that should have few detractors now, gives a slow easy opportunity for working the new payment mechanism through the collections systems, and opens up the path for any kind of vehicle, to opt into the system.

Read more!

If I were CEO of a Big-Three Car Company

Fast Company, April 2009, published 25 Ways to Jump-Start the Auto Industry. Here is what I sent them, found alongside the other ways.

"Let's assume the bailout solves the immediate cash crisis. Now what? First, I'm going to ask Congress to raise the price of gasoline. I need to be assured that there will be enough demand out there to merit an investment in more fuel-efficient cars. If our gas prices are in line with those of other countries we like to sell cars to (perhaps starting in 2011 when my new cars will be coming off the line), I'll be confident that consumers will embrace these new cars.

Next, I'm going to start experimenting with new product and service models. We recently passed the tipping point of 50% of the world's population living in urban areas. 'One adult, one car' doesn't work in congested and parking-scarce urban environments. Let's expand beyond manufacturing and selling cars to selling transportation as a service.

I'd take 10% of my current R&D budget and put it into a venture fund. I'd finance startups, experimenting in areas where I lack core competency: truly alternative vehicles; services that relate to car maintenance and in-car experience; services that conceive of the car as one node in the larger transportation network; and ideas that leverage my cars and my consumers as a means of collecting data or marketing other in-car services. This is a smart use of my money because I would be investing alongside others instead of financing all the R&D in-house. In the process, I'd gain firsthand insight into a whole realm of business models that might be my future.

Third, I'd definitely stop fiddling with closed, proprietary wireless technology inside my cars and immediately introduce a generic wireless platform into every new car. A standard feature of this platform is the ability for owners to access critical car information remotely. I'd send owners text and email updates telling them about their fuel and battery levels, when it's time to change the oil, and when the car received an unusual bump while parked. This would tie car owners to my company, provide dealers an ongoing revenue stream for maintenance and repair, and give me insight into exactly how consumers use (and abuse) my vehicles. I'd also develop a device that could be easily installed into cars already on the road so I'd have more owners participating.

This wireless platform lets me farm for ideas. As an open system, it would attract the minds, money, and efforts of thousands of innovators to think up desirable applications that a person with a screen in a car might find useful. This platform would be like my PC: Car owners could download any apps they find useful. I'd let the loser applications or those with no revenue model muddle along, and I'd buy up the winners.

By mitigating our investment risk and placing lots of low-cost and low-risk bets, we'd bring the Big Three into the future."

Read more!

Where Do Cars Belong in 21st C America?

Right now the transportation world seems polarized into two camps. Depending on where you live, what your past is, and who your patrons are, the vast majority of experts seem to place themselves into one of the two sides. And it does feel like a polarity. Trying to avoid characterizing these as 1 vs 2, A vs B, loaded names vs loaded labels – how about columns? Darn, there is still left to right. It seems impossible to be balanced.


Because of America’s past -- cheap fuel; government spending priorities (the interstate highway system and federal funding for highways) and tax incentives (home mortgage interest deductions fueling sprawl); lots of land; and lack of foresight about adverse effects (in addition to climate change, see below) – we find ourselves today with this reality:

Ninety-two percent of American households have access to a car and 87% of trips are taken by car.

The benefits of cars: fastest, most convenient, cheapest and often only alternative to get from A to B for the current built environment in the US.

The costs of cars:
- high cost of participation in the system (middle income Americans spend about 22% of their annual incomes on cars and the lowest 20 percent income bracket spend 42 %);
- escalating number of hours, number of affected roads, and parking lots classified as congested;
- 46k traffic deaths and much larger number of injuries,
- high rates of asthma, obesity, and other adverse health affects;
- loss of farmlands, wetlands, water resources and other negative land use impacts;
- 50% of the population unable to participate directly because they do not have a license or own a car;
- 20% of CO2 emissions.

As we move toward the future, in which we are both an active player – infrastructure can be destiny – and passive recipient of unfolding demographics, we can make some confidant predictions about some aspects of 2025. And 2025 is where we will fully feel the results of decisions made over the next four years around government infrastructure spending priorities, tax incentives, and regulations.

In 2025:

• 80% of our population will live in metro-areas
• 18.1% will be older than 65 (up from 12.4% in 2000)
• Fossil fuels will be more expensive (increased world demand & reduced supply)
• Carbon taxes (whatever form they take) will shape energy demand & type

If we turn this into Tom-Friedman-speak, and try to describe America in 2025, it will be urban, older, fossil-fuel efficient. Therefore, the bulk of our transportation investment dollars should go to meet the needs and desires of this population shape.

Urban means less car dependent because there is no space on the roads or in parking garages to accommodate the 1 driver to 1.1 cars ratio we find in America today. We see this reality in the more free-flowing cities of New York City (50% car ownership) and Boston (75% car ownership) and its opposite in the most congestion cities like Atlanta.

Older means less car dependent if we don’t want to spend increasing portions of local budgets on transporting the aging around to meet their routine food, medical, and social needs.

Fossil-fuel efficient means that yes, all motorized transport will prefer fuel efficient and alternative fuel sources.

But government and planners cannot forget or neglect significant minority groups, poorly defined here as “non-urban,” nor dismiss the occasional need of even the most committed urban environmentalists for a car sometimes. So, we shouldn’t be talking in terms of being pro-car or anti-car, or thinking about solutions that will only work in rural America, or only work in urban America (hmm, I feel like I’m echoing a certain President).

But we do need to move from our increasingly broken status quo that is almost entirely car-dependent to one that reduces both the burdens of today’s car-dependent costs (remember that list above) and looks ahead to meet the needs of our future. Moving this country and the world toward cleaner transportation fuel and better vehicles is absolutely critical, but low carbon cars alone will not solve today’s problems nor meet tomorrow’s needs. President Obama, legislators across the US and around the world, I repeat: low carbon cars alone will not solve today’s problems nor meet tomorrow’s needs. For that, we need to improve the balance, and enable more Americans to lead car-independent routine lives. Not no cars and highways, just fewer and better ones.

Sources
http://www.bts.gov/publications/highlights_of_the_2001_national_household_travel_survey/html/executive_summary.html
http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/aging.cfm
http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/usinterimproj/
www.bls.gov/cex/csxann02.pdf

Read more!

Which cars get the best mileage?

We all use the Prius (45 mpg highway) as the short-cut reference for a fuel efficient car. The folks at Honda must be ripping their hair out at the relative silence yet equal performance of the Civic (also 45 mpg). And the Mini Cooper, with its award winning ad campaigns, should surely be taking advantage of its incredible mileage (36-40 mpg). And for me, the fact that the Pontiac Vibe, a car I know little about, is in the top ten was a revelation.

Note to policy makers and car buyers, as I've said before, don't give special treatment to "hybrids." More than half the cars on this list have regular engines. Fuel efficiency is the key, and even more relevant is passenger miles per gallon. More than seventy-five percent of car trips carry only one driver. The most expedient way to improve fuel efficiency is to move more people per gallon consumed. [I have to reference GoLoco here, our best-in-class ridesharing site.] It takes 25 years to turn over the US fleet of passenger vehicles to get the full benefits of the new CAFE standards. But we could get those benefits this week if more people would share rides.

Here is the top 10 list link from AutobeTel.

Here is an interesting article about how buying high mileage used cars is actually the most CO2-minimizing path (if you are going to buy a car).

Read more!