Autonomous vehicle experiments and the city

ABSTRACT

As part of the infiltration of automation across urban life, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are traversing cities and regions across the world. This paper presents our critical analysis of trials of these vehicles, which are being shaped by, and are shaping, the material, political, and economic fabric of the city. We take the burgeoning literature on urban experimentation in a new empirical direction – that of mobility – and deepen understanding of the sense in which such experiments are urban. Our extensive analysis of global experiments with automated vehicles provides an analytical typology of four forms of experimentation – on-road, test bed, precinct, and living lab – each with differing relations to the city and differing potentials for political transformation. We illuminate the city as much more than a container for experiments, being multiply implicated in these AV trials through which, we argue, differentiated conditions of possibility emerge for contesting and reconfiguring the city’s “automobility.”

KEYWORDS:

• Urban experimentation
• smart mobility
• autonomous vehicles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There is debate about the accuracy of the term “autonomous”. AVs are autonomous in the sense that they have no human driver. Yet, as highly connected nodes in an internet of things, they are not autonomous. We follow the widespread acceptance of the term nonetheless and use it here.

2. A five-level spectrum of vehicle autonomy is often used to describe vehicles and imagine the development trajectory. These levels encompass a spectrum from driver assistance such as with automated parking, to automation with human driver oversight, and automation of all driving modes.

3. As is common in the tech sector, successful start-ups such as NuTonomy are frequently purchased by established players. This was the case with the purchase of NuTonomy by Delphi.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP170103384].