A Sustainable Transportation Roadmap: Connected, Automated & Electric Vehicle Systems

Electric Vehicle

Photo credit: WSDOT

Investigator

Steve Underwood - Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Michigan-Dearborn

External Partners

Center for Advanced Transportation and Energy Solutions

Project Summary

The Livable Communities Integrated Assessment explored transportation-related policies and innovations that enable urban areas to create more livable communities. As part of the overall assessment, this project brought together experts from the public, business, and nonprofit sectors and academia in a year-long collaboration to develop a roadmap of short, medium, and long-term technical and policy solutions to advance sustainable transportation based on innovations in connected, automated, and electric vehicle technologies. Planners from the Seattle-Tacoma region of Washington State provided additional input on local planning considerations for testing these technologies in a comprehensive real-time community pilot demonstration project at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, one of the largest military bases in the U.S.

In addition to identifying key near-and long-term science and technology milestones, the project considered a range of public policy approaches for accelerating emerging technologies including, but not limited to:

Large-scale autonomous vehicle testing and demonstration projects
Government fleet buying programs
Electric power utility regulatory reforms
Zero emission vehicle legislation
Charging at work and at public locations
Public education and peer pressure
Tax credits and other temporary incentives
Options to address connected vehicles and incentivize adoption of increasingly autonomous cars
Integration of advanced technologies to improve public transit

Resources

Expert Forecast and Roadmap for Sustainable Transportation (PDF) 21.1 MB, 154 pages

For more details, read the project summary report (PDF)

This project received a $150,000 Integrated Assessment Grant in 2012.