Future-proofing cars with the latest tech
WASHINGTON: When Sheryl Connelly was growing up in Metro Detroit, she worried that the ease of newfangled power steering was going to lull Americans into oblivion.
“I had this vision as a little girl that there’d be a bunch of drivers that were sleeping behind the wheel,” said Connelly, the inhouse futurist for Ford Motor Co.
Prediction is perilous work, and that scenario failed to come to pass (though the November arrest of a sleeping California driver in a partially automated Tesla evoked similar anxieties.)
But as self-driving vehicles and electric scooters mix with pedestrians, cyclists and traditional motorists in congested communities from Washington to Arizona, government and corporate leaders have been pushed in new ways to try to predict the future and plan for what’s coming.
The stakes are high for both. Just as companies such as Ford have to give customers what they want, cities must try to provide the quality of life residents demand, Connelly said, and those basic tasks are made more complicated by the dramatic pace of change in transportation.
“Somewhere along the way, we had the obvious, but latent, idea that we need to build cars that people want. I think cities have the same thing,” Connelly said, adding that urban planning has become one of the world’s most influential jobs.
“In the days of Henry Ford, it was the industrialists. Then in the ‘40s and ‘50s, it was the civil engineers that created the roadways and the highways. I think this is the moment of urban planners,” she said.
Ford will begin testing selfdriving vehicles in the District of Columbia early this year, with plans to launch them commercially in Washington, Miami and other cities in 2021. Waymo began rolling out a commercial robo-taxi service in suburban Phoenix in early December, and autonomous shuttles are coming to cities from Youngstown, Ohio, to Jacksonville, Florida.
Officials have sought to steer, or at least keep up with, the developments. Working with the Aspen Institute and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the District joined Los Angeles, Austin, London and Sao Paulo, Brazil, among other cities, in crafting common goals for the driverless-car developers poised to affect their communities.
High on the list of priorities is cutting greenhouse gases and other pollution, eliminating congestion and ensuring that officials have the opportunity to adapt as changes barrel ahead.
As District officials put it, they don’t want to be stuck “making 100-year decisions for technology that is changing in 10 years.”
One upside to planning for the future at this moment is that cities can perform test runs before going big. Unlike with a major investment such as a streetcar line, shared self-driving taxi, shuttle and bus services can be piloted first, said Andrew Trueblood, the District’s interim planning director.
“Street cars, as even D.C. shows, they have their pluses and minuses,” Trueblood said. “The nice things about these is, if you do a pilot, you can see how it works - you can see if it works.”
Connelly trained as a lawyer and has an MBA. She said she didn’t even know “futurist” was a job until she stumbled into the position 15 years ago, after sales, marketing and other roles at Ford.
Soon after she started, with a charge to think further out and be provocative internally, she faced pushback. She was pointing to the “rise of the rental economy.” People were renting handbags, black-tie attire and baby clothes. They were even renting pets.
“I said the drivers underneath it are evergreen. It gives people access to things they can’t otherwise afford,” Connelly said.
Given the speed of technological change, people also wanted to avoid buying into “scheduled obsolescence,” she said. And even if money wasn’t a factor, “sometimes alleviating the burden of ownership has great appeal,” she told her colleagues.
If driverless cars can address technological shortcomings and safety concerns, they could reduce the number of people who drive alone - or spur new congestion, depending on how they’re implemented. Connelly is an optimist on this question, predicting they will lead urban parking zones to be converted into green space.
Self-driving vehicles are just one piece of the bigger picture facing cities, as they try to balance immediate concerns with futuristic ones.
That means fixing roads and bridges and finding ways to slow drivers at dangerous intersections, while also focusing on what infrastructure might be needed for the future and what information should be collected and shared as roads, and the people on them, are tied together through digital networks.
“When we think about the future of our city, we see less single-occupancy vehicle trips, more vehicle electrification and an emphasis on building the infrastructure and policy framework to support those goals,” said Jeff Marootian, director of the District Department of Transportation. — Washington Post.
In the days of Henry Ford, it was the industrialists. Then in the ‘40s and ‘50s, it was the civil engineers that created the roadways and the highways. I think this is the moment of urban planners. – Sheryl Connelly, in-house futurist for Ford Motor