Abstract
There is rapidly growing interest in autonomous electric vehicles due to their potential in improving safety, accessibility, and environmental outcomes. However, their market penetration rate is dependent on costs. Use of autonomous electric vehicles for shared-use mobility may improve their cost competitiveness. So far, most of the research has focused on the cost impact of autonomy on taxis and ridesourcing services. Singapore is planning for island-wide deployment of autonomous vehicles for both scheduled and on-demand services as part of their transit system in the year 2030. TUMCREATE developed an autonomous electric vehicle concept, a microtransit vehicle with 30-passenger capacity, which can complement the existing bus transit system. This study aims to determine the cost of autonomous electric microtransit vehicles and compare them to those of buses. A total cost of ownership (TCO) approach was used to compare the lifecycle costs. It was shown that although the acquisition costs of autonomous electric vehicles are higher than those of their conventional counterparts, they can reduce the TCO per passenger-km up to 75% and 60% compared to their conventional counterparts and buses, respectively.
Highlights
Current road-based public transportation systems around the world are dominated by fuel-powered non-automated vehicles
There is a reduction in the acquisition costs of the Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV), Electric Vehicle (EV), and Autonomous Electric Vehicle (AEV) by 8%, 21%, and 39%, respectively, by the year 2030
The further price drop in the EV can be attributed to the reduction in battery size for the given driving requirements, while for the AEV, it can be attributed to the reductions in autonomous driving technology prices
Summary
Current road-based public transportation systems around the world are dominated by fuel-powered non-automated vehicles. The possibility of improved safety [1,2,3] and accessibility [4] offered by autonomous vehicles (AVs) as well as improved air quality and noise levels through electrification of the power system are expected to enable a shift in current mobility trends, including public, private, and freight transportation. Recent studies have shown that the deployment of AVs in urban areas may reduce the number of private cars by approximately 80% [5]. This is only possible by using AVs for shared-use mobility [6]. The AV sizes varying between a passenger car and a bus allows them serve as either fixed or on-demand microtransit services complementing the high capacity transit systems or as autonomous ridesourcing services [7,8,9,10]
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