Does automation strengthen the ‘system of automobility’? Critical considerations and alternatives to connected and automated vehicles

ABSTRACT

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are at the centre of considerations for future mobility systems and are seen as a potentially powerful solution to current transport problems. Accordingly, the debate on governance strategies and in engineering is determined by technological possibilities to overcome these problems. However, various studies show that CAVs will solve transport problems under certain conditions only. On the contrary, without respective governance strategies CAVs will (re-)produce and reinforce social and socio-spatial inequalities. Moreover, by reinventing the privately-owned automobile, CAVs could strengthen the societal formation of automobility. Therefore, alternative developments need to be considered, especially those that are not primarily linked to new technologies, but reflect on wider processes of economic, political and cultural transformation. Finally, this leads us to challenge the dominant technocratic approach in the current political debate on the future of mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Automated and connected mobility
• mobility transformation
• socio-spatial inequalities
• automobility

1. Introduction

The idea of driverless driving is now some 50 years old and has dominated the debate on how to tackle the current problems of automobility for the last ten years (alongside electrification). Governance strategies at the global level, the European level as well as at the level of most European national states can be read as marketing tools of automated driving. Although societal and ecological issues should be at the centre of consideration of future mobility regimes, the international competition of automotive industry and key technologies corresponding effects on the labour market, the argument of increased safety and capturing a share in new economic value chains are at the forefront of argumentation within the political debate (BMDV 2021; bm:vit 2018; EC – European Commission 2018, 2019; EP 2018).

Through the glasses of science and technology studies, CAVs are powerful sociotechnical imaginaries. Jasanoff and Kim (2015, 4) define grand technologies as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology”. According to Jasanoff and Kim, Forlano (2019, 2813) argue that “sociotechnical imaginaries of CAVs are collective, durable, performative, temporally situated, and culturally particular”. Moreover, “the language of sociotechnical imaginaries … address difference and divergence, time and change (present and futures), materiality (beliefs, meanings, and practices), space and social order, individual identity, and collective formations” (p. 2813).

In this article, we start by analysing the big promises of CAVs and critically contrast them with the discussed advantages and disadvantages of them. In the following section, we address current challenges in the automotive industry and question existing trends in the transport sector. Against the background of the necessary socio-ecological transformation of the transport sector we discuss required modes of governance of CAVs in the next section. The deployment of new technologies is not predetermined, but dependent on governance strategies and planning decisions linked to broader societal transformations. Finally, we tackle starting points for alternative forms of connected and automated mobility and beyond.

2. CAVs – the solution for all transport and mobility problems?

According to policy strategies and concepts of connected and automated mobility, automated vehicles will be safer, more efficient, cleaner, more comfortable and more socially integrative:

• safer, because the number of serious accidents can be reduced to almost zero;

• more efficient, because intelligent transport systems (ITS) avoid congestion and adjust speed (by using mobile communication or vehicle connectivity; IEEE 802.11p or ETSI ITS G5); existing infrastructure can be used to full capacity;

• cleaner, because fuel consumption and environmentally harmful emissions can be reduced by traffic management and control;

• more comfortable, because the driving task can be handed over to high- and full-automated vehicles; furthermore, connectivity allows to process additional information that makes driving more pleasant (for example by using new infotainment technologies and services);

• more socially integrative, because people who for various reasons are not able to drive a car can use high- (temporarily and in specific areas) and full-automated vehicles (without any restrictions) for being independently mobile and can maintain and possibly expand social contacts; this could enhance social cohesion in general.

Another advantage mentioned is that CAVs reduce the whole traffic volume on streets which will lead to a restructuring and reorganization of public spaces (Duarte and Ratti 2018; Gelauff, Ossokina, and Teulings 2019; Riggs et al. 2019; Zhang and Guhathakurta 2017). These assumptions, reaching up to a reduction of 90% of vehicles (for Berlin, Bischoff and Maciejewski 2016) or of 95% of vehicles (for Lisbon, Martinez and Viegas 2017) can be misleading. It is not CAVs alone that lead to this reduction, but their specific use in urban mobility systems as shared mobility services. Moreover, this includes intermodal transport solutions, new business models in the platform economy as well as massively changed mindsets and behavioural changes against different sharing-services (car-, bike-, or ride-sharing) and CAVs.

Since urban parking in the US is organised in huge car parks, the potential of re-using former parking spaces is considered mainly from a financial perspective in real estate sector. This debate differs much from the European, because parking is mainly organised in the streets: In Europe the debate is much more centred around the re-use of parking space or traffic lanes for other purposes like active mobility and abidance in public space (Larco 2018). However, it should not be ignored that the “new mobility” will also require additional spaces [charging infrastructure for e-mobility, mobility hubs for intermodal services, sensors for infrastructure to vehicle communication (c2e), etc.]. New conflicts between different spatial claims can arise – especially between new and innovative technologies such as micro-mobility or delivery boxes, more (protected) lanes for different traffic speed and vulnerable road users as much as spaces for walking and biking as well as spaces to rest, to interact, to consume and to move.

As new “grand technologies” ever raised beside opportunities as well risks (for the Smart City debate, cf. Townsend 2013), the above-mentioned advantages of CAVs need to be relativized:

• New technological developments will probably increase safety. However, it will be a long way as in the phase of mixed traffic vehicles of different “intelligence” need to communicate with cyclists, pedestrians and playing children, which could lead to higher risks especially at the stage of the “long level SAE 4” (Mitteregger et al. 2020, 57-98).

• Traffic management reducing the energy demand and emissions will be technically possible by adaptive cruise control (van Arem, van Driel, and Visser 2006); nevertheless, the question of according to which principles traffic flows will be optimized needs to be addressed (speed, economic aspects, environmental or climate considerations) (Wadud, MacKenzie, and Leiby 2016). Furthermore, it is unclear which degrees of freedom will still remain and how individuals could adjust their driving mode according to their own preferences.

• The contribution of CAVs to mitigating negative environmental impacts is compared with more efficient combustion engines and post-fossil powered cars definitely lower. CAVs require a simultaneous application of post-fossil forms of propulsion in order to achieve a significant ecological impact.¹

• The automotive- and IT-industries advertise the growing conveniences with CAVs: a relief from active self-driving, the “travel time” gained and seamless mobile connection to personal infotainment. The “joy of driving” is being re-interpreted as a new form of “autonomous driving”. CAVs are becoming a “third space” next to home and workplace. In addition, travel time can be perceived as shorter if one can use the time “meaningfully” during the journey. This in turn could lead to further, longer and more frequent trips with CAVs.

• Mobility has always been socially highly selective – especially in economic terms and in terms of gender roles (Cass and Manderscheid 2018; Geurs, Boon, and van Wee 2009; Manderscheid 2009a, 2009b; Mattioli and Colleoni 2016; Miciukiewicz and Vigar 2012; Ohnmacht, Maksim, and Bergman 2009; Sheller 2018). CAVs suggest that young people can also use these vehicles for the first time, and old people or people with disabilities in particular can use them (again) for independent motorized travel. Even if the social network can be stabilized and expanded, the contribution of CAVs to social cohesion is still rather small – at least in the logics of the labour market and welfare systems etc. Furthermore, driverless services are only helpful for those people with disabilities who can manage the entry and exit of CAVs without personal assistance. In this context, however, no reference is made to the “digital divide”, because CAVs and new mobility services will be primarily or exclusively handled digitally, which also excludes people from current and future mobility services² (Banerjee, Jittrapirom, and Dangschat 2021; Dangschat 2019, 2021).

The advantages and disadvantages of CAVs are usually discussed in rather general terms and not in an appropriately differentiated manner. In order to assess the potential effects of CAVs in their social and socio-spatial diversity, four aspects need to be considered (Dangschat 2019, 21; 2020, 107; Dangschat and Stickler 2020, 57–58; Mitteregger et al. 2020, 4):

1. The level of automation: A six-level scale of automation is applied in the international context (SAE International 2018, 19).³ This reaches from no automation (SAE 0) to full-automation (SAE 5). Right now, new cars include technologies of SAE 2 and first elements of SAE 3; fully SAE 3 or SAE 4 vehicles are used in test environments. Most studies assume fully automated operation, but this is still a long way off (Shladover 2016).

2. This leads to a differentiation according to the environment in which the vehicle is operating (Operational Design Domain – ODD). Depending on the complexity of the driving environment, vehicles may sooner or later become “automated” (first on highways and multi-lane motorways, most lastly probably in the centre of historic European cities; Soteropoulos et al. 2019 use their “drivability approach” to assume that CAVs may never operate there).

3. The integration of CAVs into the urban mobility system, which, in addition to vehicles and infrastructures, also includes various new mobility services (Mobility as a Service – MaaS), which should be implemented by local interests and not be handed over to companies in the Silicon Valley or in China (Jittrapiron et al. 2018).

4. Finally, a distinction is made according to the type of vehicles used (use cases): These are, on the one hand, special vehicles (in mining, on industrial sites, in agriculture, or for example drones – that are not further considered in this article), on the other hand, privately and collectively owned vehicles, delivery services, micro-mobility vehicles and, last but not least, public transport vehicles (shuttles, light-rails, trams, buses, etc.).

Summarizing current research in this field (Dangschat 2017, 2018, 2019; Freudendal-Pedersen, Kesselring, and Servou 2019; Milakis, van Arem, and van Wee 2017; Pangbourne et al. 2020; Schippl, Truffer, and Fleischer 2022; Shladover 2018; Wadud, MacKenzie, and Leiby 2016), CAVs will probably result in safer and more efficient road transport. However, traffic management on high-speed infrastructures might provoke resistance from certain social groups. A number of scenario and modelling studies point out that traffic tends to increase rather than decrease as a result of automation (Schippl, Truffer, and Fleischer 2022; Soteropoulos et al. 2020; Soteropoulos, Berger, and Ciari 2019): Due to the higher comfort of cars, which will further intensify the competition with public transport, an expanded group of motorized-mobile people (younger people can already drive, older people can still drive) and further distances caused by a subjective revaluation of travel time (Kolarova et al. 2018).

As the automation of car usage perpetuates the social habit of using private cars as exclusively private space, private car usage “contradicts most tenets of sustainability, anti-congestion policies of cities and a socially just way of re-organizing mobility and space” (Sayman 2021, 7).

In addition to expanding car travel, connected and automated shuttle buses, people movers and e-scooters will put pressure on walking and cycling modes of travel and infrastructures. This could further complicate sustainable mobility transitions in favour of “active” modes of travel (walking, cycling) and public transport. The increased driving comfort and seamless infotainment as well as the subjectively reduced travel time might make peripheral living and working locations more attractive – this contradicts actual goals of sustainable spatial development (Dangschat 2019, 2021).

Regarding the spatial impacts of CAVs, it is assumed that spaces can either be used differently or can be redeveloped. However, these assumptions focus exclusively on the direct effects of CAVs like social and/or physical impacts, but do not address the underlying causes and the interests. An adequate analysis, however, requires a multi-level approach that addresses political and economic power structures at the global level as well as the socio-spatially selective behaviour of social groups at the local level (Dangschat 2023; Dangschat and Stickler 2020). It is relevant to reflect on the interaction of hierarchical levels in politics, economics and science (Brenner 2019) and to analyse the discourses of CAVs referring to the concepts of “policy transfer” and “policy mobilities” (see 4.1 below; Brenner 1998; Evans and Davies 1999; Künkel 2015; McCann and Ward 2012, 2013).

3. CAVs as the ‘Trojan Horse’ of automobility

The automotive industry faces multiple challenges: First, climate change requires limiting global warming. Corresponding political decisions (e. g. UN climate agreement of December 2015 in Paris or European Green Deal) lead to gradually tightened emission targets for vehicle fleets – however without resounding success, which ended for example in Germany in the so called “Diesel Gate”. Achieving the climate targets requires, above all, a shift to post-fossil technologies, which is, however, being undertaken ambivalently by politicians in Europe. On the one hand, the interests of the automotive industry are carefully considered in current political strategies at the EU level, and on the other hand, the purchase of a battery-powered electric or hybrid vehicle is massively financially supported.

Global competition on the world markets became intensified due to new players in India and China. Moreover, the main growth markets are located in the emerging economies still registering a low level of motorization. European and US-manufacturers have little influence on the regulation of these market segments, but still have to embed their products in international trends of the world market. In case of China and their strong shift to electric vehicles these trends are also proving beneficial, at least regarding lower CO₂ emissions.

Second, the deployment of CAVs requires significant research investment, especially in software engineering (Shladover 2016), which leads to fusions of automotive manufacturers and the IT-industry at least in research and development activities. The third challenge is that among certain social milieus in cities of North America and Western Europe owning a car has become much less attractive – it is more important to ensure flexible, trendy and low-priced access to mobility. However, these trends in the sharing-economy do not challenge the current structures in the system of automobility. Thus, the “iconic automobile industry” (Urry 2004) faces the challenge of a “re-branding” of the car: from “polluting, dangerous, space-consuming and old-fashioned” to “smart, clean, safe and shared” (Canzler and Knie 2016; Cass and Manderscheid 2018; Featherstone, Thrift, and Urry 2005; Geels et al. 2012; Manderscheid 2012, 2014b, 2020; Sovacool and Axsen 2018; Stickler 2020a). By the assessment of self-driving capacities of the technologies (particularly for Tesla cars) the image of the car is tried to reverse from the problem-causer to the problem-solver by over-optimising trust in technologies of automation (“autonowashing”; Dixon 2020) – a new “structural story” is invented (Freudendal-Pedersen 2005, 2007) and linked to “vehicular ideas” of an automated and connected future (Peck 2012).

Authors like Ritz (2018) argue that the mobility turn will be based on “autonomous cars” and advertising campaigns of the automotive industry focus no longer on horsepower, valves or drag coefficient, not even about gas consumption and emission values (as an indicator of a “clean” car) or other benefits of electric vehicles, but primarily on emotional stories about a technically-based sense of urbanity and/or the endless expanse of distant landscapes – linked with concepts of “freedom”, “innovation”, “new mobility” and “progress through technology”. In the advertising messages, moreover, no “social life” is represented in the cities – it is mostly at night, almost no one is in the streets, social differences are not considered and urban social problems are completely faded out.

Through claims by corporate and government actors, “scientific fact and imaginative fiction are blurred for the purpose of propelling society toward a future in which, for the sake of utilitarian values such as efficiency and safety, humans may no longer need to drive” (Forlano 2019, 2812). To reach this goal, the traditional “freedom of driving” or the “joy of driving” must be redefined for CAVs. The “disenfranchisement from the driver to the passenger” must be replaced with a new symbolic framing of vehicles as cool, agile, urban or as sophisticated chill-out lounges, with permanent infotainment and the possibility of beaming oneself out of the everyday life via Augmented Reality. All these developments serve to strengthen the system of automobility and keep down the emerging criticism against the car.

As general digital transformation raises a lot of scepticism and fear in Europe, presenting connected and automated driving (CAD) as unavoidable can be used to shed a positive light on new technologies and help to push new technological infrastructures forward. The deployment of CAVs necessitates a stable 5 G communication network. Once established, professional worlds, but also everyday life will change more rapidly, especially due to new forms of communication, media consumption and work. This will increase the energy demand massively as result of streaming activities or digital meetings.

Regarding CAVs only as technologies to address the problems of automobility, obscures the view of the interests in the background. The heterogeneous IT-industries – from global corporations to start-ups – have a vested interest in the quantity and quality of mobility data generated individually and on-trip in real time. New business models are emerging in the internet-based economy, grounding on algorithms, artificial intelligence, “deep learning” and the Internet of Things (Banerjee, Jittrapirom, and Dangschat 2021). These interests are main drivers for establishing CAD as a new transport technology.

4. Not technological feasibility is relevant, but politics and planning

The discussion about CAVs is still dominated by technological arguments (Dangschat 2019; Milakis, van Arem, and van Wee 2017; Stickler 2020b). Ethical issues, governance strategies and regulations as well as low acceptance within (European) societies are usually perceived as hindering elements that are to overcome. Practical planning considerations focus on questions of how to design intersections to facilitate safer and more efficient traffic flows. Transport planners also assume that different modes of transport need to be separated and CAVs should operate on protected lanes (road cross-sections of up to 60 m width are necessary in order to arrange specialized lanes next to each other and place multimodal transport hubs in public space).

Rupprecht et al. (2018) ask the rhetorical question of whether European cities should be adapted to the needs of CAVs – as was the case with the car-oriented city in the U.S.A. and Europe in the second half of the 20^th century – or whether CAVs should only be deployed in case they support more sustainable transport. These issues are also strengthened in EU-research policy by developing planning cycles that integrate CAVs in Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) (Backhaus, Rupprecht, and Daniel 2019; Dangschat 2023). However, it is not considered, whether this approach can transform the deeply embedded automobility in our Western societies. The Brundtland Report about sustainable development stated as early as 1987 that the existing economic order and modern lifestyles need to be questioned in order to create a sustainable future (UN 1987, Chapter 2, point 2 and 3).⁴

Geels highlights the various interactions of technological transfer and societal change in a three-level model and also applicates this model in the field of mobility transitions (Geels 2012; Geels et al. 2012; Kanger et al. 2018).⁵ With his model, however, he does not explicitly address power constellations or even stabilizations of automobility, neither in his socio-technical regime nor in his “landscape developments”.

In order to contextualize the power relations in the discourse on CAVs, an automated car should not be understood as a “value-free” technology, but as social construction (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987), new narrative or a new technological system (Hughes 1987) that embeds itself in the regime or dispositive of automobility (Endres, Manderscheid, and Mincke 2016; Freudendal-Pedersen et al. 2017; Manderscheid 2012, 2013, 2014a, 2014b; Mincke 2016). Therefore, it is necessary to analyse (new) policies on automobility, paying particular attention to “structural stories” (Freudendal-Pedersen 2005, 2007) and their impact in different contexts (for a policy transfer perspective see Dangschat 2023; Künkel 2015; McCann and Ward 2012).

“Autonomobility” (Cass and Manderscheid 2018) as an alternative regime of mobility based on imaginaries of a radical environmentally sustainable and socially just mobility regimes – envisioned by Dennis and Urry (2009, 149–151) as “local sustainability” – will only be possible, if politics and planning institutions do not primarily concentrate on technological feasibility, short time-oriented job security or economical goals (Brand and Wissen 2017, 125–146), but on autonomy, justice (Sheller 2018) collective mobility, a broader systemic approach including social and cultural sciences (Cohen et al. 2020), creative design methods, and innovative ways of user involvement (Forlano and Mathew 2014; Paddeu and Aditjandra 2020; Sanders 2002; Sloane et al. 2020; Spinuzzi 2005).

The need for a transport and mobility change against the background of dramatic climate change needs to overcome the solely trust in innovative pathways of technology as problem solver in favour of disruptive mind map changes of decision makers (who are following sustainability progress incrementally) within the industries, politics, planning administration and not at last of the scientific community.

However, the ideal recipe for implementing such a mode of mobility does not yet exist⁶ Due to strong interest constellations within the system of automobility it must be questioned that the implementation of CAVs will overcome this. Negotiating the “how” of implementation will be a contested process and consequently determine the “if”. Therefore, it is crucial which actors can participate in current policy processes and to what extent.

In the following section, we address those discursive elements that are mainly still outside the dominant discourse on CAVs, but which should be given greater consideration in order to move towards a more sustainable and equitable mobility regime. These positions refer to the claims of socio-ecological movements and scientific discourses as articulated within degrowth and post-growth movements (Brokow-Loga and Eckardt 2020; D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2014; Haas 2018). We also refer to scenarios developed in participatory processes with various stakeholders in the research project “AVENUE21 – Automated Driving: Developments of Urban Europe” (Mitteregger et al. 2020, 101–144) and in the evidence-based research project “SAfIP – System Scenarios of Automated Driving in Passenger Mobility in Austria” (Soteropoulos et al. 2019). As technologies of CAVs will be pushed within the competitive global market, the way of how it will be launched is still an open question and a political and scientific challenge: It needs to change the mind sets of the “normative-cognitive institutions” (Schippl, Truffer, and Fleischer 2022).

5. Shapes of socio-ecological transformations – the neglected discursive elements in the debate on automation and connectivity

CAVs can be seen as highly ambivalent technologies that can have both, positive or negative effects. This leads us to the normative question of how CAVs in particular and future mobility regimes in general should be developed. The deployment of CAVs requires appropriate governance strategies in order to contribute to a sustainable mobility regime. Governance strategies must also tackle dimensions beyond technological solutions, especially since there is reasonable doubt that different interest groups and their lobbying activities in politics and planning will at best come to step-by-step “compromise solutions”.

If CAVs should have transformative effects, then the whole system of automobility needs to be contested and addressed in socio-political terms. Therefore, we point to different aspects that can be understood as starting points for socio-ecological transformations of mobility.

5.1. Decoding the context of CAVs with policy mobilities approaches

Within critical urban and regional planning research, the approach of urban-policy-mobilities research (UPM) has gained acceptance in the past few years. This approach refers to the debate over network society, the discussion of Second Modernity, the mobilities turn, actor-network and assemblage theory (Künkel 2015; McCann and Ward 2012). The focus of analysis shifts from organizational structures to discourses and power relations, tracing how ideas, concepts and strategies have evolved across scales and over time (Peck and Theodore 2010). UPM research goes beyond a descriptive analysis of how structures operate to the question of “how, why, where and with what effects policies are mobilised, circulated, learned, reformulated and reassembled“ (McCann and Ward 2012, 326). Furthermore, the approach deals with the questions of how strategies are enforced by system builders or other actors, which arguments dominate, and how global policy discourses trickle down to other scales (Brenner 2019). The wide-ranging social significance of digitalization in general and CAVs in particular requires future studies on the socio-technical transformation of mobility using the approaches of UPM.

5.2. Re-thinking automation and connectivity

Through the glasses of critical researchers, most of the “environment repair strategies” of transitions to sustainable futures are taken place within the logics of global competition, economic growth and linear logic of technology developments. These are not far reaching enough for the transport and mobility turn needed to fight climate change. On the contrary these strategies produce the image, that environmental and societal problems can be solved by technological progress and therefore they are “greenwashing” existing political decisions, industrial innovations and modernisation processes. This critical point is relevant insofar, as narratives from technologists’ side mainly exaggerate by their storytelling the imaging of safe CAVs, what Dixon (2020) calls “autonowashing”. The ascription of CAVs as “clean”, “energy saving” or “social cohesive” can be subordinated also under this term.

From the point of view of social science we need to critically reflect on (exclusively) technology-centred approaches to the future of mobility (Cohen et al. 2020; Milakis and Müller 2021). Regarding the challenges of a necessary transformation of the (auto)mobile system, the question of whether CAVs are needed at all for a socio-ecological transformation should be considered. CAVs could not only increase energy consumption by additional digital devices and data processing of connectivity, but could also increase the number and length of trips and the number of cars in the streets (Milakis, van Arem, and van Wee 2017; Soteropoulos et al. 2019) and an impact on the “mobility culture” (Sayman 2021). Moreover, the digitalisation of transport systems in general and the automatization and connectivity in particular needs to draw more interest to digital divide as technology-driven form of socio and socio-spatial inequalities, what is missing so far in the discourse about CAVs.

Furthermore, the infrastructural requirements for CAVs and investments in infrastructure are controversially discussed, and it is not clearly defined who has to bear the costs (Liu et al. 2019, Mitteregger et al. 2020). For using CAVs in the sense of sustainable mobility transitions, it may not be necessary to roll out the large-scale solutions and applications on high-speed transport infrastructures (motorways). Rather small-scale applications are required in order to supplement public transport systems.

A successful sustainably mobility transition must strengthen active forms of mobility – first and foremost pedestrian and bicycle infrastructures as well as public transport. Only if automation technologies support these modes of transport, they can contribute to a meaningful transition of the whole transport sector.

5.3. Changing values and norms of mobilities

Automobiles and their associated infrastructures are deeply embedded in our Western societies and automobile cultures seem to be relatively stable (Manderscheid 2014b; Sheller and Urry 2016; Urry 2004). Under recent constellations of interests CAVs as a new socio-technical system will definitely not challenge the stability of the automobile culture. Globalisation has created fast corridors allowing comfort, convenience and frictionless movement. Certain modes of transport and infrastructures still convey status and seem to be superior to other forms of mobility. Highly mobile lifestyles are considered socially desirable and consequently cause a large share of CO₂ emissions (Birtchnell and Caletrio 2014). However, these values of mobility are neither socially necessary nor inevitable.

Socio-ecological mobility solutions should focus more on reducing the need for transport and creating new mobility cultures (Sheller and Urry 2000). A growing body of literature discusses the potentials of avoiding transport as far as possible and the qualities of decelerated lifestyles (Haas 2018; mobile lives forum 2014). The COVID-19 crisis has also triggered experiences of reduced transport needs, for example through teleworking and online meetings. We have to reflect on CAVs beyond growth-oriented debates. This means not only considering high-speed infrastructures (motorways, airports) for CAVs, but rather using CAVs in low-speed multimodal transport systems as new modes of public transport.

Collectively shared or public transport services must go along with broader changes of societal values. Nevertheless, automation and connectivity in the transport sector can have a positive effect on this transition, partly due to the general fascination with new technologies (Stickler 2023). Critical social sciences, however, need to overcome the descriptions of potential negative outcomes of technologies in favour of critical analyses of STS about power structures behind. Social scientists have to intervene more directly in narrative productions technologies as social problem solver and of CAVs as problem solver against climate change (Dangschat 2023).

5.4. Participatory planning and experiments

Transport planning is frequently seen as a technocratic and engineering-based exercise (Schwedes 2017). However, studies in the field of planning theory have emphasized the importance of participation and the empowerment of stakeholders in planning processes (Allmendinger 2002; Freudendal-Pedersen et al. 2017; Healey 2003). If CAVs should contribute to a sustainable mobility transition, utopias and storytelling-approaches are possible methods to define the deployment of the technology collectively. In the current discourse on CAVs, participatory and collaborative planning approaches are at the very beginning.

One approach for a broader user involvement is that of participatory design (Forlano and Mathew 2014; Paddeu and Aditjandra 2020; Sanders 2002; Sloane et al. 2020; Spinuzzi 2005). Instead of “designing for” these methods develop an understanding of “designing with” as “co-design” (Sanders and Stappers 2008). Forlano and Matthew (2014) developed a Designing Policy Toolkit using it among others in issues of the transport sector. One crucial learning was that this tool is too consensual (like most participation processes) and need, what Mouffe (2013) calls “agonistic spaces”, where controversies and dilemmas are used as a road map for innovative solutions. This method is very popular within innovative (urban) living labs (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2012).

Participatory approaches, however, are often lacking critiques of dubious participation practise in labs and citizen-science attempts as well as the critical debate about the use of participatory methods in urban planning and urban restructuring: Methods always are socially selective, they too often are used as “participatory-washing” (Sloane et al. 2020) or “particitainment” as a one-fits-all solution (Selle 2011), and become increasingly hijacked by interest pressure and lobby groups. As one example of reflective approach, Bratteteig and Wagner (2014) shed a critical light on power structures in participatory design processes: Who is when and to what degree of decision making integrated in design processes?

User involvement can serve for divergent goals – for attracting existing technologies or first prototypes, or to reflect respective roles in accordance with the need for a mobility turn. To improve the acceptance of CAVs, Sirkin et al. (2016) can be used as example: They used an “embodied design improvisation methodology”, which includes storyboarding, improvisation, video prototyping, Wizard-of-Oz lab studies and field experiments for designing the behaviours and interfaces of autonomous vehicles. They first developed an interface for supporting drivers’ trust in this technology. Moreover, they developed a simulator to explore people’s naturalistic reactions to prototypes, through an autonomous driving interface that communicates impending action through haptic precures. The third element was a Ghost Driver in a field study of how pedestrians negotiate intersections with autonomous vehicles where no driver is visible. Each of studies of this kind suggest design principles to overcome scepticism against a four-wheeled robot.

To generate a counterpoint, Forlano (2019) developed a bundle of speculative design interventions to offer ways of resisting, disrupting, and destabilizing the dominant normative visions of linear technological progress toward an inevitable autonomous future. To overcome the sheer interest of industries, which serves in favour for a minority, wider sets of values beyond productivity, efficiency, innovation and security has to be centred, which represents “everyday lives of citizens” (Forlano and Mathew 2014, 8). To contrast dominant rationale of speed, capital and quantity they developed participative and speculative design methods.

Escobar (2011) argued that real sustainable development needs to overcome traditional values of Western modernity in favour of all kinds of experiences in different worlds – it needs “pluriverse thinking” (Kothari et al. 2019), based on knowledge, predominantly bottom-up experienced in India and South America. One further approach is collective creation and innovative design (Nijs 2019). The authors of the book demonstrate by taking complexity science as its scientific point of reference, how experience design can unlock corporate, public, social and whole system innovation by design.

In this context testing new, collaboratively developed mobility projects requires legal opportunities and spaces for experimentation. Considerable attention must also be paid to involving the local urban political level in the discourse on the future of mobility. What can be learned from transport planning in the past, that once development has started to move in a specific direction, self-reinforcing dynamics and path-dependencies are unfolding. Therefore, new ways of deliberative politics, innovative space and integrative transport planning as much as citizens’ involvement need to strengthen the societal dynamics in sociotechnical regimes to identify potential development trajectories of sustainably automated and connected driving (Schippl, Truffer, and Fleischer 2022; Schwedes and Hoor 2019).

Such participatory approaches require a broader change of governance processes in current transport policy. In this context, forms of local governance should be based on collaboration, characterized by iterative problem-solving (“new localism”; Katz and Novak 2017, 2). The transition towards policy processes of collectives at the local and regional level as well as new agendas of social innovation can thus significantly change the social and socio-spatial setting (Bentham et al. 2013, 4).

In this context, new mobility technologies could be developed bottom-up. However, this does not mean that the local level should be exaggerated and bears the sole responsibility for mobility transitions (Purcell 2006), but is continuously supported by higher political levels and integrated into corresponding strategies (Davoudi and Madanipour 2015; Heeg and Rosol 2007).

5.5. New (digital) communities

CAVs are part and driver of the digital transformation which not only produces new mobility technologies, but also enables new forms of communication and networking. Therefore, the ongoing digitalization in the mobility sector can be related to new digital communication cultures. New information and communication technologies can potentially be used to create new (mobility) communities either on a local level or in digital space (Mitteregger et al. 2020, 120–127). Global networks of the environmental movement such as Transition Towns or Fridays for Future, but also ideas and concepts form the context of degrowth, post-growth (Brokow-Loga and Eckardt 2020; D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2014; Haas 2018) or Buen Vivir (Escobar 2011) can be globally “mobile” and establish corresponding forums of exchange that can lead to concrete projects on a local level.

Transnational cooperation within the environmental movement, potentially strengthened by digital technologies, can support a sense of community and stimulate a social debate about different possible socio-ecological mobile futures and the definition of the “good (mobile) life” (cf. “community-driving approach scenario” in Mitteregger et al. 2020, 120–127 or “local sustainability scenario” in Dennis and Urry 2009, 149–151; Swyngedouw 2010). This could open up opportunities for collaboratively developed new mobility technologies such as CAVs and pave the way for radical concepts of automobile futures in post-growth societies.

6. Summary and conclusions

Ongoing political and scientific discussions about potentially disruptive transformations of transport systems through automation and connectivity is primarily driven by technological feasibility. National or supranational policies and economic interests shape the discussion. In this context, the system of automobility is stabilised and strengthened by redefining the car as smart, safe, clean and socially inclusive. The transition to connected and automated mobility is also presented as the only possible way ahead; not allowing any alternative interpretation. However, the stabilisation of automobility with CAVs adds new layers of social and socio-spatial inequalities (e. g. digital divide and new hierarchies of accessibilities). Furthermore, CAVs can counteract a more sustainable mobility system by challenging compact settlement structures or land-use policy instruments. The deployment of new technologies has always produced winners and losers – and it will be the same with CAVs.

However, there is also transformative potential in automated and connected mobility: especially if it goes hand in hand with changes in mobile lifestyles, sustainable settlement development and equal mobility opportunities, thus initiating a shift towards an “autonomobility”.

First of all, this requires consistent governance strategies which are oriented towards the goals of (radical) sustainability and integrate spatial and transport policy. Secondly, it is necessary to involve local actors in the development and implementation process of CAVs and use the opportunities for social innovation by innovative participation strategies. Thirdly, critical research should not be limited to the impact assessment of new technologies, but deconstruct the interests and power relations in the production and policymaking of CAVs by science and technology studies (STS).

By discussing neglected discursive positions, we would like to inspire further critical research in this field. Therefore, we discourage an essentialist perspective on CAVs that sees automation as inevitable. Rather, we would like to encourage positions that actively shape the discourse beyond the scientific and political mainstream. Critical social science and socio-ecological movements must play an important role in this context and needs to be empowered in the current discussion on CAVs.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge TU Wien Bibliothek for financial support through its Open Access Funding Programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Within the discussion on the advantages of battery-powered electric vehicles, it often is neglected that the environmental hazards of western road transport are transferred to the Global South by neo-extractivism. In countries like the China, Republic of Congo, Peru or Chile, for example, the mining of raw materials, most of which are rare, causes considerable natural and environmental destruction as well as social and health problems due to poor working conditions and the displacement of indigenous and/or poorer populations from their living and working environments.

2. This aspect mostly is discussed as economic or technology barrier, but digital divide goes beyond mere economic outcomes because it depends on knowledge and literacy and not just access to technology (Park 2017).

3. The SAE-standards are expression of engineers’ thinking of linear technological progress for more safety and efficiency and level out socio-cultural and socio-spatial differences worldwide, neglecting social roles of “being a driver”, which are deeply rooted in a modernity based on automobility (Stayton and Stilgoe 2020).

4. 2. “Thus the goals of economic and social development must be defined in terms of sustainability in all countries – developed or developing, market-oriented or centrally planned”.

3. “Development involves a progressive transformation of economy and society”.

5. His model is based on a three-level approach with innovative niches at the micro level, a sociotechnical regime at the meso level (industrial networks/strategic games, techno-scientific knowledge, sectoral policy, markets/user practices, technology, infrastructure, culture/symbolic meaning) and a quite unclear superstructure (landscape developments) at the macro level. This approach, which refers to the research tradition of transition studies, has found great acceptance in the academic world, but it comes along with a number of ambiguities, especially in the social sphere (for a critique, see Dangschat 2023).

6. Since there is a lack of empirical observations on highly and fully automated driving due to technologies that hardly exist and are at best applied in tests, the impacts of connected and automated mobility are discussed within different scenario studies. Scenarios never describe a reality that is certain to occur, but rather serve to imagine different futures (“This is how it could be”.).