της Wendy Koch από το National Geographic

An autonomous or self-driving electric cab in 2030 could emit up to 94 percent fewer emissions per mile than a conventional gasoline car of today, and it could be far cheaper than taxis with drivers, says a study Monday by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Almost half the savings occur, because the taxi is “right-sized” for each trip.

«Most trips in the U.S. are taken singly, meaning one- or two-seat cars would satisfy most trips,» author Jeffery Greenblatt says in announcing the findings. Small taxis use less energy and emit fewer greenhouse gases than larger ones that carry multiple passengers or those with luggage.

Consumers won’t be buying cars that completely drive themselves anytime soon. Still, tech companies and conventional automakers are experimenting with robotics. General Motors, for example, has announced that its 2016 Cadillac sedan will include a system that keeps the car in the lane and automates both braking and acceleration.

Google’s adorable self-driving car, which looks like the police cruisers in Disney’s Cars movies, hit the road in California this summer. It has no steering wheel or pedals but, to meet California law, it will have a human aboard—just in case.

“If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years,» Google said in May, noting it will build 100 prototypes for testing. Some media reports say Google is looking to develop its own car-sharing business.

Not to be outdone, ride-sharing giant Uber has partnered with Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University to develop its own autonomous cars. Its prototype appeared on the streets of Pittsburgh in May.

The new study, published online in Nature Climate Change, found that self-driving vehicles could cut energy use and heat-trapping emissions the most when used as part of a shared transit system.

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Τα αυτοκίνητα είναι πλήρως αυτόνομα με προαιρετική δυνατότητα οδήγησης από άνθρωπο.

For years, the car of the future has been stuck going in circles. Although Google’s converted self-driving Lexuses have hit the road in a few select areas, the company’s custom-designed fully robotic self-driving car has been confined to the test track. But there’s only so much that can be learned in a testing zone, even for an autonomous car. Announced today, Google’s cars will like fledgling birds leave their nest, and travel forth onto the streets of Mountain View, California. And they’ll do so very, very slowly. For their city driving, Google is capping the cars” speed at a neighborhood-friendly 25 mph.

This will be the first time Google’s specially designed cars go onto the road, but the cars” brains have already been there, logging miles and miles on California streets in a virtual simulation. The robot cars will use the same software as the converted Lexuses, and they’ll have human «safety drivers» on board. These humans will have access to a steering wheel and gas pedals for the tests, but that’s a limited feature. Google designed its weird, rounded cars to be fully autonomous, not optionally driven, and to cement that mandate, the company plans to strip the very trappings of driving from the inside of its automobiles.

When Google’s cars do go on the road, they’ll be ready to avoid cows. Hopefully next they’ll find out how to dodge the human drivers that keep crashing into them.

Watch a short video about the car below:

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