Who parks an autonomous
What came first the chicken or the egg?
Today I'm going to ask you the single most important question: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Some will confidently say the egg! Obviously you can not have a chicken without first having an egg for it to hatch from. To this, others will snidely retort, "Well, you can't create an egg without a chicken can you?" By this point you might be wondering if I've changed my mind and this will now instead be a philosophy blog, to which the awnser is no (Noam Chompsky can @ me anytime though.) Today I want to pose you a seemingly ordinary question: What came first, the parking garage or the car?
Although the question seems mundane, as you could in theory park your car anywhere that's flat, the truth behind it is a lot more complex. You see, we no longer are talking about the old Model T's that were nothing more than a bunch of mechanical parts working in harmony. The modern car is controlled by a wide variety of electronics, and the car of future is set to be an all electric car, and possibly an autonomous car. This reliance on electronics sets forth a constant struggle that many who currently wish to buy an electric vehicle can understand: Why should I buy an EV if there's nowhere nearby to charge it?
The simple fact of the matter is that our every day life is greatly controlled by the available infrastructure around us. We can't go into the city for work, without expressways to make the drive quicker. We can't use an electric vehicle if there is not a location at which to charge it. This infrastructure problem is already recognized as the first great hurdle between us and electric vehicles being standard, as evidenced by the Biden administrations $174 billion budget for EV infrastructure. The issue remains however, that we've come to this solution AFTER EVs increased in occurrence. Every major OEM is pledged to commit to an electric vehicle design, but they're all held back from actual production by this lack of infrastructure for the common person. This is a problem, as it has capped an innovation that could be a critical piece of solving our environmental struggle. So in order to prevent this mistake as we move to the future, we have to ask now: What infrastructure is needed for autonomous vehicle adoption?
The path to the autonomous vehicle
To understand what is needed to support autonomous vehicles, we first to need to understand how they will change all modern systems of transportation. A Gallup poll in March of 2021 found that 821 out of every 1,000 americans owned a car, or about 82% of americans. This is a direct result of years of poor infrastructure, where in most places not having a car would mean complete isolation. Such high private ownership has shaped our modern culture to the idea that private ownership is the only way forward. However the truth of the matter is that Gen Z does not have the same perspective. With modern services such as Uber and Lyft younger folks are becoming more accustomed to the idea of transportation as a service. Tesla, a current leading EV manufacturer, has stated that in the long term they expect to all together stop the sale of their vehicles to private parties, and instead switch to transportation as a service fleets. With this new market growing, it's a matter of time until the next silicon valley billionaire, with an empire of EV friendly infrastructure to sell to AV EV fleets. In order to develop this needed infrastructure, its best to look at what our current theories are regarding how AEVs will likely operate.
Charging
First, we know that AEVs are going to be electric, so we need a method to charge them in such a way that we don't have to pay for a lot attendant to come in plug in a vehicle every time it returns. As such we're looking at 1 or 2 possible options. The first, is we could take the Tesla route, and create robotic assistants for each parking space, and have these robots plug themselves into the car. This allows us the ability to charge without any human involvement, however these chargers are going to take up a massive amount of space in an area where every inch of space earns us more money. The solution to this, is the second option: Inductive Charging pads. Inductive charging is not a new technology, as a matter of fact its already used in a wide variety of wireless charging devices. By using inductive charging pads in every space, we can maximize our available parking spots while minimizing operating costs. Additionally, inductive charging allows us to not have to worry about standards between vehicle brands. As long as the vehicle is equipped for charging all it has to do is line up, and get charged.
Autonomy
The second major factor in AEVs is the autonomy of each vehicle. Right now one of the largest struggles towards AVs is the limited computational power of an independent vehicle. What if however, we could take some of that overhead out of the vehicle, and using super fast 5G signals could instead place that computation in edge computing locations across a city, such that within the confines of a city, which is arguably one of the more computational intensive areas to drive in, the car would not have to rely on it's own computational power. If such edge computing locations were to be stored in the basements of these parking garages, you'd be able to mount larger radio dishes on the top of them, allowing a stronger signal to nearby cars compared to conventional inner city radio towers.
Energy Storage and Generation
Now we come to perhaps the most uncertain part of the entire idea. We've got a building with locations to charge AEVs, and a building that can act as an edge node for computations. How do we power said building? First, we'll want to pair our downstairs data centers with large battery banks, perhaps even using batteries like tesla's wall batteries alongside the interior of the garage. The key trick, is using the data center we can calculate when it is most efficient to take energy from the national power grid (typically at night) and charge the batteries the most at that time. Additionally, we could choose to line the roof with either solar panels or wind turbines depending on the city and which would prove more reliable. By combining this renewable energy approach with batteries that only take input during low cost hours, we can allow our garage the cheapest operational cost.
In Conclusion
In the end, what I've spoken of is just one idea of many on how to build infrastructure for the future of transportation. The point of this post isn't to push anyone towards my solution, it's to start the conversation on how we must begin to adapt now, so that when the time comes we aren't arguing over pennies, but instead creating new, even more powerful solutions to humanities problems.