About This Project

The self-driving vehicle is no longer a fantasy. My master's research focused on forecasting the Americans' adoption of privately-owned self-driving vehicles. However, I believe that the autonomy will first hit the market in the form of on-demand self-driving taxis (e.g., autonomous Uber). This project tests the hypothesis that this technological revolution will encourage people to be completely dependent on self-driving taxis, giving up to vehicle ownership.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

We have recently conducted three studies (study areas: Austin, Texas, and the entire USA) to quantify public's willingness to pay for self-driving vehicles. (All studies are published in top international journals; see Austin perspective, for example). Given a low willingness to pay and high prices of the self-driving technologies, automation is less likely to come in the form privately-owned vehicles. However, increasing usage of ridesharing (e.g., Uber) and carsharing (e.g., Zipcar) services in the last decade indicates that the self-driving vehicles can be disruptive in the shared mobility industry. This study explores the public's opinion about their willingness to shift toward shared self-driving vehicles.

What is the significance of this project?

Policy experts are speculating about the changes in travel behaviour in the self-driving era, but these are only speculations and may not prepare the nation for this revolution. We need to answer the questions like "If the purchase price of vehicles are increased by 10% and wait time of shared self-driving vehicles is increased by 5 minutes, what proportion of the population will choose the private and shared travel modes in a self-driving market?" Such questions cannot be answered without knowing public's choices under different wait time scenarios. Therefore, there is a pressing need to conduct choice experiments, where we understand the opinion of a sample in the different scenarios, estimate economic models, and draw the quantitative conclusions about the population.

What are the goals of the project?

We will survey people and will ask about their choices in hypothetical situations. These situations will be designed to understand that how the purchase price of private vehicles and characteristics of shared vehicles (wait time, emission savings, and trip fare) affect the traveler's choice between shared and private vehicles. This study will identify the proportion and characteristics of the current car users, who are willing to leave their private vehicles, and transit users who are ready to shift entirely on the fleet of shared self-driving vehicles under different scenarios (e.g., different vehicle prices, different trip cost of the shared services). Government can directly use our forecasts for transportation planning.