by On a popular video, Youtuber GCP Gray claims that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will solve traffic jams. While the basic logic underlying his claim is accurate, it couldn’t be further from the truth because it totally ignores externalities. just like that ridiculously inaccurate article 2016 that states that we will only need 15-25% of our current number of cars once AV technology is widely adopted.
GCP Gray’s claim is essentially that AVs can react faster than humans and communicate with each other, and therefore can travel on roads more efficiently. This is true, but there are some problems with this that it ignores, some are described in a answer video by Youtuber Adam Algo. There is one important issue in particular that GCP Gray and many others who predict the future of AVs do not consider: the Jevon Paradox.
What is Jevons paradox?
The Jevons Paradox is a phenomenon that was initially described by the economist William Jevons in the mid-19th century, while studying coal consumption in England. Essentially, it states that when the efficiency of resource consumption increases, so does the overall resource usage.
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This initially seems counter-intuitive to most people, but it actually follows the laws of supply and demand, which makes it a true paradox (something that seems false, but is nonetheless true). In the case of Jevons, he found that as technologies that used coal as a fuel increased fuel efficiency, the demand for coal increased; so much so that overall coal consumption continued to increase despite technologies continually improving the amount of useful work that could be generated from the same coal input.
Energy efficiency increases demand
The Jevons Paradox presents itself in countless ways in our society. For example, as the energy efficiency of refrigerators improves, the cost of cooling decreases, thus increasing demand.
In the US, the amount of electricity used for cooling has increased as this energy efficiency has improved. More people bought refrigerators and now have several refrigerators (27% of urban households and 40% of rural households have more than one refrigerator). This also happened with energy for light bulbs, gasoline for cars, computing power for computers, using raw materials like copper and many other things.
In other words, as the cost of using something goes down, it is used more.
Easy car use means more mileage
Jervons Paradox it doesn’t just apply to monetary costs; also applies to opportunity costs. Although there are many people that are limited by the costs associated with driving (buy a carkeeping it gasoline), There’s a lot of people for whom the opportunity cost to drive is the most limiting factor. After all, would you travel in a car more if you no longer need to drive the car? Furthermore, for most people who can’t buy a carthey will be able to pay for occasional trips in autonomous taxis.
When someone can do whatever they want in their car while driving them to their destination, they are more comfortable spending more time in the car. Imagine being able to work, watch TV shows, sleep or eat while your car takes you to work. We would all accept longer trips.
The AVs would also advertise a series of people-free trips: pick up your groceries while you stay at home, drop your pet off at the vet, pick up meds for you, drop the kids off at school or soccer practice, and then head home.
Imagine being able to go to sleep in your car and wake up the next day at a vacation destination or at a relative’s house in another state, having the car drive you to your destination while you sleep comfortably in the bed inside. AVs significantly lower the opportunity cost of travel and therefore lead to more travel. Think of how much more van residents and RV retirees would travel if they could do whatever they wanted inside their self-driving RV. Or how many more people would live that lifestyle.
Autonomous vehicles mean more vehicles on the road
AVs will also make taxis cheaper, leading to more taxis on the streets. and shipping things get cheaper, leading to an increase in consumption. It all takes for more and more vehicles huddled in our limited street space. This will be especially pronounced in dense urban areas. areas and in popular tourist sites (there are already infamous lines of cars to get into places like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite; with AVs, traveling to these places by road would become impossible).
In the GCP Gray videohe shows cars traveling all at the same pace of speed on a straight road. But even AVs have to slow down around corners and stop to let people in and out. What will New York City be like? look when overtaken by autonomous vehicles?
AVs are an amazing, revolutionary technology that will provide many benefits: how to provide freedom of mobility For people with disabilities, children and the elderly, reducing transport costs, and probably being safer than human driving.
But the downsides will be a tragedy of the commons. I’m not looking forward to this revolutionary technology and I can only hope that we make our cities without car before.
