Study warns autonomous cars could become huge drivers of carbon emissions


By MYBRANDBOOK


Study warns autonomous cars could become huge drivers of carbon emissions

According to a new study, a global fleet of about a billion autonomous vehicles, each driving just for one hour per day, may generate about the same amount of carbon emissions as data centres currently do. The research was published in IEEE Micro, and modelled the potential energy consumption and related carbon emissions if autonomous vehicles are widely adopted.

 

The new study found that in order to keep autonomous vehicle emissions from zooming past current data centre emissions, each vehicle must use less than 1.2 kilowatts of power for computing in over 90 per cent of modelled scenarios. Researchers have called for more efficient hardware to cut emissions from computer operations in self-driving cars.

 

One of the modelled scenarios show where 95 per cent of the global fleet of vehicles go autonomous in 2050, scientists say that the hardware efficiency would need to double faster than every 1.1 years to keep emissions under those levels.

 

“If we just keep the business-as-usual trends in decarbonization and the current rate of hardware efficiency improvements, it doesn’t seem like it is going to be enough to constrain the emissions from computing onboard autonomous vehicles. This has the potential to become an enormous problem,” study co-author Soumya Sudhakar said in a statement.

 

Scientists say there is a need to design more efficient autonomous vehicles that have a smaller carbon footprint from the start to overcome the hurdle.

 

Researchers also modelled the emissions based on the advanced computing hardware and software that will be used in such vehicles.

 

They say each autonomous vehicle needs to consume less than 1.2 kilowatts of energy for computing to prevent emissions from spiraling out of control.

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