Freeman H. Shen A future with fewer cars TED
I love cars. I really do.
But what we are currently doing
is a bit insane.
Cars put smog in the air,
create traffic and congestion
and cause accidents.
This might seem like
a crazy thing for me to say,
but I am hoping for a future
with fewer cars,
mostly smart EVs
and cars that can do more for us.
Some of the biggest changes
that ever took place in the auto industry
are happening right now,
affecting not only the cars,
but the very fabric of the cities
in which we live.
Governments across the world
are committing to change the way we move,
and EVs are at the center of this change.
Today, most of the cars powered by engine
or battery are not truly smart vehicles.
Only smart EVs are computers on wheels.
They not only connect vehicles,
but more importantly,
use a lot of technology,
including artificial intelligence,
autonomous driving, big data,
cloud and agile computing,
5G connectivity
and highly efficient e-powertrain, etc.
These technologies are creating
cars that can talk to us
and the world around them,
and act accordingly.
This will have a huge impact on our cities
and the way we live in them.
Let’s start with something that’s always
a challenge in a city: parking.
The reality is that cars are parked
nearly all of the time,
taking space in our cities,
costing us money.
But right now,
technology that allows your car to drop
you off and then go park itself exists.
My company, with our partners, has created
an autonomous valet parking system
which will be powerful enough
to allow you to step out of your car
and leave it to park itself
hundreds of meters away.
This technology is real.
It’s already in our production car.
In the near future,
your car will be able
to book a space beforehand,
and it doesn’t take up room
and cause traffic jams looking for one,
simply by talking to the parking lot.
When full autonomy becomes the norm
in just five to 10 years,
the car won’t even need to park.
It will be driving other people around
on a car-sharing platform,
plugging itself into the grid
to charge when needed.
When this is the case, we don’t need
so many cars on the road.
Access to cars will be
prioritized over ownership,
and this will be great for cities.
In my vision of future mobility,
autonomy will reduce congestion
and necessary infrastructure,
creating more room
for better-looking, greener spaces.
Imagine a shopping center
next to a huge playground for our kids,
instead of miles of concrete
and cars lined up in the sun.
And what about all those
roads and bridges and signage
that carry us through a city?
That will, of course, change, too.
Autonomous cars will be designed
to read the environment around them,
knowing the best routes
and guiding passengers
to their destination with less congestion.
We won’t need signs for one-way streets
or pedestrian crossings
or how to get to the bridge
or when not to take a left turn.
Imagine an intersection
between two busy roads
that has no traffic lights.
Cars will speed up
and slow down automatically
to avoid other cars in the intersection.
The sky above the road
will be clear and open.
In the auto industry,
the ability for vehicles
to interact with their environment
while taking data from essential
storage in the cloud
about roads and navigation
is called V2X or “vehicle-to-everything.”
V2X is what needs to happen
in order for us to take
the final steps toward a city
where cars can drive themselves,
because it is at that point
that our vehicle will hold everything
us humans need in order to drive
at an even greater scale
and definitely more safely.
The number of cars with V2X capabilities
is growing rapidly around the world,
and especially in China.
In Wuxi, a city of 6.5 million people
in China’s Jiangsu province,
there are already experiments
with V2X in autonomous driving.
Around 220 square kilometers
of the central city is designed for V2X,
with over 40 assistance-driving solutions.
You will see traffic lights automatically
adjust to green for ambulances
as they approach intersections.
Cameras spot pedestrians on the road
and deliver a warning directly to the cars
if they are approaching too quickly.
Smart EVs can also receive alerts
about unexpected situations,
such as nearby construction sites,
accidents, traffic jams
or emergency vehicles.
And with this comes massive
implications for safety.
Imagine someone is having
a medical emergency.
Today, getting yourself or someone else
to a hospital in a hurry
can put you and others in danger.
A car can only tell you
the best routes to the hospital.
In the future,
the car will be able to send
the medical information ahead of time
to the hospital,
allowing them to prepare corresponding
medical equipment in advance.
The car could signal to the city
that it has a sick person on board,
and the whole city can respond,
making traffic lights green the whole way,
clearing bus lanes
and letting the medical response teams
automatically tie into the car
through the connecting systems.
This new era where our cars talk
to the world and the world talks back
will dramatically change us,
our mobility
and our cities.
I believe we’ll have
fewer cars on the road,
but we’ll get where we need to go
more efficiently, safely
and with more fun green space
and blue skies along the way.
Thank you.