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Sustainable mobility

A vision of our transport future

Nature volume 497, pages 181–182 (2013)Cite this article

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Lawrence D. Burns explains how networks of driverless, shared cars will revolutionize motoring.

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References

  1. Mitchell, W. J., Borroni-Bird, C. E. & Burns, L. D. Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Mobility for the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2010).

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  2. Sacks, D. 'The Sharing Economy' Fast Company (18 April 2011); available at http://go.nature.com/co6pte.

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  3. Summary of Travel Trends: 2009 National Household Travel Survey (US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, 2011).

  4. Shankar, V. Strategic Analysis and Benchmarking of Global OEMs Micro-Mobility Solutions (Frost & Sullivan, 2012).

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  5. Burns, L. D., Jordan, W. C. & Scarborough, B. A. Transforming Personal Mobility (Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lawrence D. Burns is professor of engineering practice at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, and directs the Program on Sustainable Mobility at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA. He was corporate vice-president of research and development and planning at General Motors until 2009.,

    Lawrence D. Burns

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  1. Lawrence D. Burns
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Correspondence to Lawrence D. Burns.

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Competing interests

L.D.B. advises Google’s Self-Driving Car Project as a paid consultant. He is also an adviser to Hess Corporation and to several investment firms.

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University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute

Training the Brain of a Driverless Car — Scientific American

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Burns, L. A vision of our transport future. Nature 497, 181–182 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/497181a

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  1. Michael Lardelli

    First I thought I was reading one of Nature?s little science fiction short stories but then I realised the author was serious! Where will the energy to build and run this fleet of driverless cars come from, not to mention the energy to build and maintain the roads they will run on? Nature would have been better to publish a commentary by Zittel et al. on their recently released study, Fossil and Nuclear Fuels ? the Supply Outlook that sees the combined energy production rate from all fossil fuel sources and uranium peaking by 2020!

    A high tech future requires increasingly high levels of energy production for mining and to power the integrated global logistical web of high tech manufacturing required. Since we will not have the energy for that we will not have the driverless cars. It is that simple.

  2. Thomas Dent

    The photograph seems to show a driverless car passing a cyclist with a bare few inches clearance. This is, regrettably, what many drivers (or as the caption calls them 'human drivers') think they ought to be able to do, but it is absolutely unsafe and bad driving. There should be at least 3 feet (1 metre) clearance when passing.
    I sincerely hope this is a staged photo rather than an example of the driverless car actually in operation.

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