Customer Reviews

Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century

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This is a wonderful book to stimulate one's thinking about the future of the automobile and urban transportation. Even if you are skeptical about some elements of the authors' vision, it is likely to enrich your understanding of how technology, design, functionality, and economics interact. Reinventing the Automobile is clearly written, supported with ample attractive and helpful graphics. There is a bit of repetition, though it is probably desirable to help explain synergies among several of the key concepts.

The authors explore four principal ideas: a radical new "DNA" in the design of small urban vehicles (driven by wheel motors, for example); a "Mobility Internet" to help manage traffic flows and promote safety; clean energy, with vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen; and dynamically priced markets. Most of their discussion centers on two-seaters, either "neighborhood electric vehicles" or "electric city cars" with more range.

These vehicles will not be designed to achieve high speeds, which permits greater flexibility in structure, surfaces, and glazing. Elimination of the engine and the application of "by-wire" technology make it possible to imagine new shapes, and in one design even possible to "fold-up" the vehicles so that they occupy less parking space. Based on an electric "skateboard" chassis the vehicles are modular with relatively few parts, easier to construct and repair.

The authors suggest several applications of information technology to aid drivers, some of which can and do work quite well in cars today (GPS-based navigation systems, devices that receive information about traffic to assist routing, and safety sensors, for instance). More futuristic is their vision that eventually vehicles will be safely self-guided.

Current information technology can also support dynamic pricing applications. Chips that allow toll road access priced differently by time of day are just one simple example. Another that I found intriguing (and seemingly quite feasible already) applies sensors in parking spaces to notify drivers of availability, perhaps with the more desired spaces priced higher to reflect supply and demand.

One section presents an informative discussion of "fractional possession" systems with shared cars available for use on demand (these exist on a small scale in several cities today). The authors show how these systems can be greatly enhanced by dynamic pricing and, especially, when vehicles are able to travel autonomously to distribute themselves to points of need.

There are several important limitations to the authors' ideas. Most obvious is that there will still be a pervasive need for vehicles that are bigger than two-seaters -- family cars, trucks, buses, and so on. How will roadway systems safely accommodate the small guys (not designed to endure impacts with big guys), for instance? Or how can electronic vehicle interconnection work adequately unless nearly all vehicles are appropriately equipped? The authors suggest roadway separation, but that could require a massive infrastructure investment and consume even more space than required for transportation currently. They recognize that there is a chicken-and-egg problem inherent in the infrastructure needs: for example, that unless a widespread charging network is in place many people will be reluctant to use electric vehicles, but that without wide use development of such networks may not be economically feasible.

They offer an outline on how to reach their vision from here, but for the most part it consists of only broad principles and not specifics. The most useful guidance they provide, in my opinion, is that we should build on those "foothold " elements that have already been tested (for example, various kinds of electric and fuel cell electric vehicles, wheel motors, telematics systems, road pricing, bike and car sharing, etc.) and continue to look for synergies among them.

What would cars be like if they were optimized for urban use, taking maximum advantage of technology? They would be much smaller, designed for the typical load of one or two people. They would be safe due to sensors and software and would lack the heavy "armor" of crumple zones and steel cages. They would be energy-efficient zero-emission electric vehicles. They would be as helpful and informative as iPhones. The authors make a convincing case that these cars are possible with today's technology, and that cities would be cleaner, safer, and would need less space dedicated to parking lots and roads.

The problem with this "small is beautiful" vision is that it will be hard to sell it to most Americans, who are used to getting more, not less. But what if these little cars actually got you to your destination sooner, because they could go on tracks that bypassed intersections and congestion, and because they could augment their battery with power supplied by the road? In that case, even a Texan might want one. The Third Generation Roadway by Roger Davidheiser describes such a system, based on the same small cars described in "Reinventing the Automobile" but with the addition of an interface for a dedicated track, or "Roadway." I recommend that these two books be read together.

Their styles are different. "Reinventing the Automobile" reads like a PowerPoint presentation by a design professor, and "The Third Generation Roadway" reads like a master's thesis by an engineer. Neither asks nor answers the difficult and divisive question, "Do these improvements in auto technology negate the need for more investment in trains and buses in American-style cities?" But both are important and stimulating attempts to imagine how we will get around in the cities of the fairly near future.

Excellent book, refreshingly out-of-the-box thinking, and not so futuristic after all, as three GM EN-V prototypes (Xiao - Laugh, Jiao - Pride, and Miao - Magic) are now being exhibited in Shanghai, and the MIT CityCar prototype is being built in Spain, due for field testing next year in five cities around the world, and already scheduled for mass production by late 2012. The electric driverless car is just around the corner.

In quite a masterpiece of original thinking, the authors deliver a solution for our current model of unsustainable cities by proposing a reinvented automobile, with a new DNA, combined with Mobility Internet and smart clean energy. They proposed ultra-small vehicles (USV) as a solution, an urban car designed for megacities, as opposed to the 20th century solution of designing and adapting cities and their landscape around cars. USVs and their wireless capabilities would allow electronically managed variable pricing systems for roads (congestion pricing), parking, car sharing and even auto insurance. But the most promising new concept is "mobility-on-demand" systems, to efficiently complement public transportation by providing a personal mobility service for the "first mile" and "last mile" of urban trips. Certainly the combination of the proposed schemes would result in a safe, environmentally friendly, affordable, and sustainable solution for the personal mobility needs in urban environments.

Despite the book's futuristic view, Chapter 9 is a must read for both urban planners and traffic engineers, and particularly for the laymen. This chapter presents the best collection of evidence I have seen (presented in very nice graphs and figures that deliver a crystal clear message) demonstrating the unsustainability of our current model of automobile travel (in the U.S and around the world), not only because of the well known traffic congestion problems, death toll due to accidents, air pollution and waste of time and fossil fuels, but also because of all the indirect negative impacts (externalities in more technical jargon). This chapter makes an excellent case for getting rid of the internal combustion engine and to move on asap to more sustainable and more efficient means of transportation, whether you believe in global warming or not, whether you are concerned about energy independence or not.

This book is a must read for scholars and practitioners of city planning and urban transportation, as well as the serious fans of electric cars and all city dwellers concerned about the negative impacts of urban transportation.

This book presents a series of interrelated and innovative ideas for the redesign of personal transportation. Some of them are worthwhile and thought-provoking, but I struggled through the first few chapters because they sounded more like a GM sales brochure than a vision of improved urban transportation. Some features were so oversold they required a willful suspension of disbelief (tell me again how putting the passengers into the crush zone of the vehicle makes them safer, as illustrated on page 70?) Some of the statistics are pretty lightly sourced and carefully selected, but still thought-provoking. The ideas are worthwhile, and the concept of electrification and integration of urban personal transit seems compelling.

What is less compelling in the approach as presented are issues raised but left unanswered, but critical to the sustainability of the urban vehicle concepts presented. What will be the licensing regime for drivers of these vehicles? Will we use the same roadways, or devote more land area to an additional transit mode? What is the top and average speed at which these vehicles will travel, an estimate studiously avoided by the authors? Will that speed be controlled by regulation (and enforced with electronic governors)? Will next year's model be allowed to be 5% faster, heavier and more opulent, and will that be seen as desirable? What will that do to the vehicle's interaction with people powering themselves? On what basis will manufacturers compete? Will we be willing to impose design regulations to maintain the benefits of the original designs? Are a billion batteries really the best way to provide electrical load balancing, given their limited life and the exotic materials (presently) required to replace them?

Also largely unacknowledged by the authors are the parallel developments in urban transit systems that compete with their vision of a more efficient, environmentally friendly urban personal vehicle. Public transit systems (public in access, not necessarily ownership) are seeking to achieve the same goals as the model presented here; increased access points and modes; reduced environmental impact; better urban and regional land use; compatibility with human powered transit modes. The questions remaining here are, which vision is more equitable? Which is more economically implementable? Which promises the most desirable future for high density urban dwellers, who make up the increasing majority of the world's people? If both models, personal and public transit, are converging on the same solutions, including automated separation, caravaning, and shared ownership (Mobility on Demand in the authors' parlance) does it really matter which one we choose and if not, what is the best way to get there?
I enjoyed the book, but I'm not sure I bought the product.

Excellent read - filled with innovative ideas about mobility that are backed by research and statistics.

A very refreshing view/vision on how mobility will evolve in the next years/decades. Not only limiting to pure e-vehicle typical clarifications, but really a holistic future view incorporating other important topics like mesh-networking, design, social and urbanization etc.
A must read for anyone interested in how we can create a much more human/ecological view on mobility ... makes you want to get started yourself.
Great comprehensive and easily digestible work from the authors!