Seyed Toliyat Blog on Autonomous Vehicles

13 April 2022

Seyed Toliyat

The advent of autonomous vehicles has raised fundamental questions about various aspects of future mobility from safety and security to sustainability and equality.

When I started my PhD at the Centre for Risk Research in 2018, I was concerned with risks that Artificial Intelligence can pose to our lives. This motivated me to focus my research on the safety risks of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) as one of the foremost applications of AI in a complex socio-technical system. In 2021, I was invited by PPS to join an interdisciplinary team of prominent academics and prepare a response to a Call for Evidence on The Future of Connected and Automated Mobility in the UK which was launched by Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV). Besides extending my network and exploring the benefits and risks of CAVs beyond the safety aspect, I began to appreciate the link between evidence-based policymaking and academic research. This further encouraged me to embrace the splendid opportunity of undertaking a PhD placement at CCAV.

CCAV was established in 2015 and is a joint unit between Department for Transport (DfT) and Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Its unique position enables to consolidate wide range of expertise from across the public, industries and academia to foster new technologies, strategies and business models for delivering innovation, safety and regulations. Together with its partners, CCAV has already maintained a proven track for the UK to lead in connected and self-driving vehicle innovation.

The advent of autonomous vehicles has raised fundamental questions about various aspects of future mobility from safety and security to sustainability and equality. With the net zero target ahead of us, a present dilemma is how CAVs are going to impact carbon emissions from the transport sector? The figures from 2019 show that 27% of total emissions in the UK were produced by transportation means of which over 90% was from road transport. There are on-going debates about whether CAVs will contribute to carbon saving strategies or give rise to emissions. To constrain the uncertainties, a semi-systematic literature review was conducted to identify the ways that CAVs may decrease or increase road carbon emissions. With a group of economists at CCAV we looked into various mechanisms and features that can influence key performance indicators such as VMT, vehicle occupancy rate and CO2 per mile.

The next phase of our project was designed to extract estimates for the impact of primary mechanisms and features to prioritise them based on their magnitudes and effectiveness. Pertinent policy interventions were ascertained too. The findings are also going to feed into the modelling stage of this project to build evidence base for shaping policy. Multiple presentations were arranged for teams across DfT and external groups to discuss the findings and potential policy interventions.

It is expected that a combination of AVs and EVs (i.e., AEVs) would significantly reduce GHG emissions from road transport. Such a compound platform can revolutionise the transport sector and form the backbone of Smart Mobility. This opens up new avenues for future research and further explorations to inform policy making and development of infrastructure.

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