Page 726 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 March 2016
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Bringing driverless cars to our city is not just about early adopters of new technology playing with new gadgets. Driverless cars will change lives. Being unable to get a drivers licence due to living with infirmity or a disability means too many in our community miss out on what our city offers, and leaves them isolated from family, friends and support. You cannot have independence without mobility, and mobility is exactly what driverless cars offer. We must make sure the potential freedom driverless cars bring reaches those who need that freedom most.
There will also be benefits for the environment. Autonomous cars can improve fuel economy by up to 10 per cent just by efficiently controlling acceleration and braking. When multiple driverless cars talk to each other they can improve fuel economy by nearly 40 per cent.
Madam Speaker, as you would know, our city is well on the way to having 100 per cent of our electricity supplied from renewable sources. Motor vehicles account for about a quarter of the ACT’s greenhouse gas emissions—and that is the case today—and this share will increase as we move towards 100 per cent renewable electricity. Reducing the impact of transport on the environment is the next step to doing our part to reduce carbon emissions and to combat climate change.
Autonomous vehicles communicating with each other, and transport systems more widely, means more efficient and productive use of our city’s infrastructure. A driverless vehicle which drops a passenger off and parks itself elsewhere frees up expensive land that is locked up at the moment by parking and would allow for other uses such as housing, entertainment, jobs and parks. Driverless cars support and complement strong public transport networks, giving the public even more ways to get around their city.
Even apart from the economic benefits that flow from safer and more productive transport, autonomous vehicles open up a range of exciting new business opportunities for Canberra. I do not anticipate that car-producing factories will spring up in Hume or Fyshwick, but we do not really need them to. Our city’s strength in the global marketplace is in research and development and technology and in business innovation—the fundamentals of being competitive in the automotive industry of the 21st century.
The auto industry is moving from engines and gears to software and services. General Motors has formed a long-term partnership with ride-sharing company Lyft to develop autonomous vehicle sharing services, and it has invested half a billion dollars to bring these services to reality.
Like driverless cars themselves, this is not a never-never proposition for Canberra businesses anymore. Seeing Machines, with their headquarters just walking distance from where we are today, supply major multinational firms with driver monitoring and assistance systems. Locata, based in Fyshwick, have supplied their unique spatial positioning technology for crashes at the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
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