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Public transport and CBD-centric congestion charges will not solve future traffic problems for sprawling cities says Mercedes-Benz, but autonomous driving may be one way outMercedes-Benz's California-based Society and Technology Research Group has detailed a future for US cities that makes cars and autonomous driving virtually essential. And its experts suggest Australia is in the same boat.
The revelation is a take out of a review of the changing demographics of the United States which suggest America's next generation of mega-cities will largely be grown via a return to, and expansion of, sprawling suburbs.
Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America Society and Technology Research Group Manager, Fred Kim, detailed the findings of the company's research as part of an autonomous driving 'TecDay' at the company's US advanced research base in Sunnyvale in California's Silicon Valley.
According to Kim, the USA already has as many mega cities as China but almost all of them are magnitudes larger in land area. Mercedes-Benz defines mega-cities as those with populations of over 5.0m.
Kim told motoring.com.au that unlike Asian mega-cities, the vast majority of US cities' growth in the last two decades has been in outer suburbs. He says CBD populations are declining and even trend-based urban renewal driven by Gen Ys and Empty Nesters accounts for barely one per cent of total growth. In contrast, cities like Las Vegas (Nevada) and Phoenix (Arizona) have more than doubled their area in the 20 years to 2010.
He contends Melbourne and Sydney – both on the way to mega-city labels – will be the same.
"The USA, Australia and Canada, because of our urban geography and values, there are a lot of similarities," Kim explained.
It's these sorts of cities that will have to rely heavily on autonomous systems, the researcher stated. Not to reduce traffic congestion per se, but to allow drivers and their passengers to better utilise the time they spend travelling and in traffic.
Kim uses the term "in-vehicle lifestyle" to describe the characteristics of vehicle usage in the USA today. He says commuting to and from work is increasingly a smaller proportion of total miles travelled, citing the example of stay-at-home parents who travel out of peak but increasingly use the time in their cars with their children as "quality time".
Public transport is not an option for these users he contends, adding that the new suburbs of mega cities will be hard to service.
"If you look at public transit in the USA, everyone [experts] says you cannot run trains in the suburbs — it's too inefficient in terms of cost and people per mile. The option is buses but Americans don't like buses… So the only viable solution for most Americans is to drive," Kim explained.
"This is the context we're in. So how do we approach the problem of congestion in the suburbs? In the cities [CBDs] you can have a different solution. In the suburbs you have to focus on an automotive infrastructure as your baseline," he stated.
One of just four companies with licences to operate autonomous cars on the roads of California, Mercedes-Benz is forging ahead with autonomous driving development at its Sunnyvale campus.
motoring.com.au experienced the company's experimental autonomous S-Class as part of the TecDay event — albeit from the back seat. Under the conditions of the licensing, trained engineers must be in position to take control in the event of a failure – hence the 'ride' rather than a true drive.
In a 15-20 minute loop around Sunnyvale, the self-driving S-Class successfully negotiated a variety of street types up to and including a short stretch of freeway. Protected and unprotected left-hand turns were tackled plus a freeway merge and exit, as well as the need to detect and cope with parked vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic.
The S-Class in question gets extra sensors via which it positions itself and monitors conditions and other road users. Short and long range radars, stereoscopic and conventional camera are also used along with a colour-sensing camera to 'read' traffic signals. Using these and super-accurate GPS, it then drives a route mapped out on detailed digital maps.
The drive was far from silky smooth and required human intervention in one instance during my test drive and on a couple of occasions during other loops on the same afternoon. Mercedes-Benz's engineers are frank in terms of the maturity of the system — it has a long way to go but overall the results are promising.
One Mercedes-Benz spokesperson labeled the exercise of putting motoring journalists in the cars at this stage as: "gutsy".
With fly by wire systems proliferating in modern cars, the mechanical operation of the vehicle is the [relatively] easy part. It's when the autonomous vehicle has to interface with the real world and real drivers that the real challenges emerge. For example a broken down car stymied one of my colleague's test drives and the combination of parked and oncoming trucks confused the system enough on another of the drives to have it hand back to the human 'smarts'.
For many good reasons, some as postulated by Kim, manufacturers will continue to develop the technology that will facilitate seamless autonomous operation. For the moment, even a brief experience suggests to me that the claims from some makers (not Mercedes-Benz it should be pointed out) that autonomous drive will be available by late this decade are wildly optimistic.
By then the technology may well reach a level of maturity that is sufficient for autonomous cars to operate in some conditions (for example: on freeways and the like), but the changes required to deal with even the obvious legislative and societal factors have barely begun.
Mercedes-Benz will deliver its view of how the first 'native' autonomous cars will look
at the New Year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
at the New Year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The work of teams from right around the Benz world, think of that as a very early 'taster' — the reality is real life autonomous cars are at the moment a very, very long way off...
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Written byMike Sinclair
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