The Benefits of Connected Cars

In late August, I had the pleasure of attending the "Accelerating Sustainability: Demonstrating the Benefits of Connected Cars" event here in Washington DC (I'm a little hard to miss in the video below). 

Years ago, I remember giving a talk about self-driving cars and one of my statements was that "the magic isn't that the car is driving itself, the magic is that every car knows - with 100% certainty - everything all the other cars know as well."

I know that sounds a little "woo woo" and out there with the car chase scene from Minority Report, but it's true - once you remove that uncertainty of what all the other vehicles on the road are going to do from one moment to the next, then traffic and transportation as we know it completely changes. 

But even before you get to that far future scenario, many technologies in the near future will have an effect on cutting oil consumption and GHG emissions. From the description of the event:

"ITS America President Scott Belcher and Analyst Anthony Shaw will describe their new report, followed by a panel discussion of leading experts on the role of policy and innovation in ensuring that such technologies are unleashed to reduce our current annual average of over 6 billion barrels of oil used, roughly 1.7 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions emitted, and billions of hours wasted on US roads."

You can read the report here and video of the panel is on the right.