Failures in autonomous driving are good news for the climate

Less than a decade ago, two technologies raced to an invisible finish line. They were not in competition with each other: acceptance of one did not preclude the other. But to avoid catastrophic weather, the order of arrival was important.

Autonomous vehicles had to lose and electric vehicles had to win.

It was not clear at the time who would fly the checkered flag. Somehow, autonomous vehicles seemed to have momentum in their favor and have made significant strides since DARPA’s painstakingly completed first Grand Challenge in 2007. Ten years later, everyone seemed to have a self-driving detachment.

Meanwhile, electric vehicles slowly took off. Early models could travel less than 100 miles per charge, with batteries costing about a third of the cost of the complete car. Tesla broke the mold in 2012 with the Model S, but the price was outside the hustle and bustle of the US auto market. In 2017, the picture hadn’t changed much.

What a difference five years makes.

Autonomous vehicles have largely stopped, while electric vehicles are on the rise. Autonomous vehicles may have overcome many everyday driving scenarios, but they are still often hampered by other situations that human drivers experience every day: pedestrians, bad weather, construction sites.

Yes, Waymo and Cruise have taxi services open to the public, but they’re only available in parts of Tempe and San Francisco, respectively, cities they’ve been mapping and testing for years. As anyone who has driven in another city knows, each metropolitan area has its own characteristics. Jumping into a new city won’t be easy. Even former funders like Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer, who said just six years ago that most trips on the network today would be self-driving, now expect only 1% to 10% of future trips to meet that bill.

Electric driving, on the other hand, is on the rise. Battery prices have fallen from over $1,000 per kilowatt-hour in early 2010 to just over $100. Investors are pumping money into battery start-ups and battery manufacturers are trying to build a global network of factories.

While affordable electric vehicles remain rare, prices have fallen since the introduction of the Model S and the number of models has increased dramatically. Sales in Europe, China and the US have skyrocketed and the future looks even brighter as legislative and regulatory action sees batteries become the preferred source for cars and light trucks.

These two trends are not deviating a moment too late.