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40119.1
Introduction
19.1.3 The rise of mobility-on-demand (MoD)
The challenge is to ensure the same benefits of privately-owned cars while removing
dependency on non-renewable resources, minimizing pollution, and avoiding the need for
additional roads and parking spaces. A lead to a solution for this problem comes from
realizing that most of the vehicles used in urban environments are overengineered and
underutilized. For example, a typical automobile can attain speeds well over 100 miles per
hour, whereas urban driving speeds are typically slow (in the 15- to 25-miles per hour
range [5, 8]). Furthermore, private automobiles are parked more than 90 percent of the time
[5]. Within this context, one of the most promising strategies for future personal urban
mobility is the concept of one-way vehicle sharing using small-sized, electric cars (referred
to as mobility-on-demand, or MoD), which provides stacks and racks of light electric
vehicles at closely spaced intervals throughout a city [1]: when a person wants to go some-
where, she/he simply walks to the nearest rack, swipes a card to pick up a vehicle, drives it
to the rack nearest to the selected destination, and drops it off.
MoD systems with electric vehicles directly target the problems of oil dependency
( assuming electricity is produced cleanly), pollution, and parking spaces via higher utiliza-
tion rates. Furthermore, they ensure more flexibility with respect to two-way rental sys-
tems, and provide personal, anytime mobility, in contrast to traditional taxi systems or
alternative one-way ridesharing concepts such as carpooling, vanpooling, and buses. As
such, MoD systems have been advocated as a key step toward sustainable personal urban
mobility in the 21st century [1], and the very recent success of Car2Go (a one-way rental
company operating over 10,000 two-passenger vehicles in 26 cities worldwide [9]) seems
to corroborate this statement (see Figure 19.1, left).
MoD systems, however, present a number of limitations. For example, due to the spatio-
temporal nature of urban mobility, trip origins and destinations are unevenly distributed
and as a consequence MoD systems inevitably tend to become unbalanced: Vehicles will
build up in some parts of a city, and become depleted at others. Additionally, MoD systems
do not directly contribute to a reduction of congestion, as the same number of vehicle miles
would be traveled (indeed more, considering trips to rebalance the vehicles) with the same
origin-destination distribution.
19.1.4 Beyond MoD: autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD)
The progress made in the field of autonomous driving in the past decade might offer a
solution to these issues. Autonomous driving holds great promise for MoD systems because
robotic vehicles can rebalance themselves (eliminating the rebalancing problem at its
core), autonomously reach charging stations when needed, and enable system-wide coor-
dination aimed at throughput optimization. Furthermore, they would free passengers from
the task of driving, provide a personal mobility option to people unable or unwilling to
drive, and potentially increase safety. These benefits have recently prompted a number of
Autonomes Fahren
Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte
Gefördert durch die Daimler und Benz Stiftung