Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
The End of Car Ownership, or a High-Carbon Dystopia: Environmental Scenarios for Autonomous Vehicles
February 22, 2021 at 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM
| Location: | This event will be held virtually. Please register to receive a link to access the event. |
| Cost: | Free |
Autonomous vehicles are enjoying a lot of hype right now, with many analysts, policymakers, and NGOs predicting confidently that they will one day replace the mass use of private gasoline-powered vehicles with a shared system of electric robo-taxis. This would radically reduce carbon emissions from transportation. However, other predictions have suggested that autonomous mobility could instead lead to a massive increase in vehicle-kilometers travelled. This would be a result of people taking advantage of the technology to travel further, drive larger vehicles, and even send their vehicles on errands unoccupied. Thus far, most of the academic literature considering these possible outcomes has not seriously engaged the social science research studying which outcome might be more likely to occur in practice. This presentation will address this gap, discussing these two literatures in tandem. It will consider which use-cases for autonomous vehicles are most likely, and what the environmental consequences of these would be.
5:30-5:40 Login
5:40-6:20 Presentation
6:20-7:00 Q&A
Registration is required. Register here.
Cameron Roberts is a postdoctoral research fellow at Carleton University. Cameron works with The Transition Accelerator on electric mobility and mobility on-demand, as well as on other transportation technologies that can radically disrupt the car-dependent transportation system in Canada. His background is in the history of transportation, having studied the history of aviation, railways, and automobility during graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester. Cameron has been a recipient of the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh PhD scholarship, and has published articles on the history of transportation and sustainability transitions in Energy Research and Social Science, Science as Culture, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Technology Analysis and Strategic Management.