The Real Game-Changer For Autonomous Vehicles Isn’t What You Think It Is – CleanTechnica

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I recently came across an interesting social media post about a possible use of autonomous vehicles:

Are we nearing the end of checked bags and rental cars for domestic travel?

Imagine packing your autonomous car and sending it to your destination the night before you fly pic.twitter.com/KvmL6yhasn

— Barrett Linburg (@DallasAptGP) November 3, 2024

The idea of sending your car ahead with luggage while you personally fly there is a good one in many ways. After all, it could save you some money on not only checking as much luggage as you want, but also needing to rent a car or take Ubers/Taxis when you get there. But I think this is a case of failed imagination, because if you’re going to take your car and your luggage there, why not take the next step and eliminate the flight altogether?

Do Flights Really Save Time?

Some of us love road trips and some of us don’t. For me, it’s worth spending an extra day or 5 driving to a destination. But, for many people, the speed of a flight is either more pleasant or a requirement. Wasting a lot of time between your door and the destination can really add up if you’re a frequent traveler, so you need to get there faster.

There is one flaw in this thinking, though: the time you actually spend taking a flight. It’s not like you immediately board a plane, fly straight to your destination, and then get off the plane. You have to take a cab/Uber or drive to the airport and get parking. Then, you have to be there for an hour or two to give time to get through security. Then, there are often delays before the flight leaves. Then, after the flight, you have to deal with getting off, going to baggage claim, and then getting a ride or rental car to get to your actual destination. A flight that theoretically takes only 3 hours could end up taking most of a day.

Because you can’t really plan to do anything on the day you arrive (due to possible delays), you have to give up a whole day in your schedule for a longer flight. Before that day, you’re sleeping. After it, you’re sleeping again. All-in-all, there’s a roughly 36-hour window in which you could travel without really interrupting your schedule that much.

What You Could Do In 36 Hours

Looking at A Better Route Planner, a modest electric RV with the battery pack and drive system of a Silverado EV and an efficiency of 1 mile per kilowatt-hour (on level ground at 65 MPH) would be able to drive from Phoenix to Portland in 39 hours. Let’s unpack this scenario a little bit more.

First off, you’d either board your own autonomous RV or call for one and board it with your luggage. As it takes off, you’d have dinner. You could cook it yourself, have it pre-packed when you leave, or have the vehicle stop to pick some up. You eat dinner at a modest table, and then sit on the bed and kick back to watch TV and/or surf the internet just like you might at home after a long day at work. The RV can be equipped with satellite internet to provide continuous connection for vital work or just for play even if it drives through low- or no-signal areas.

As it starts to get late, you get in the bed and go to sleep pretty much like you do at home. Just like at home (hopefully), you get a nice 8 hours of sleep on a comfortable mattress. If it’s your RV, it’s a mattress you’re used to sleeping on and it’s your own blanket and pillows, meaning you can get sleep just like you do at home (minus some noise and the occasional bump).

The next day, you get up, shower, get dressed, have breakfast just like you do at home, and then sit at the table and work just like you would at home or at the office. If you had flown, you’d be rushing through the process of getting ready, and then spending hours at the airport unable to really get much work done, followed by a noisy and distracting flight. Here in the robo-RV, you’ve got a quiet environment for the most part and no distractions, enabling you to do a whole day of good work.

Unlike at home, you can see beautiful scenery going by out the window (if you choose to pull the curtains back). At every charging stop, you can get out for a few minutes and walk around in a new town. If you choose to, you can tell the vehicle to stop at fun places for good breaks.

At the end of the day, you do what you did the night before. You eat, relax, sleep, and get up refreshed instead of worrying about making a flight or sleeping in a strange bed in a hotel you’ve never been to. You get ready in time for your arrival and then get out ready to do whatever it was you were going to do in that city.

If you’re staying for multiple days, no problem. The RV goes and parks somewhere cheap or free while you do what you do, and then picks you up when you’re ready to get some sleep. When it’s time to head home, you do the same thing in reverse, getting good rest and getting a generally better experience than you’d get going through all the hell involved in taking a flight.

More importantly, you can do all of this on clean electricity instead of burning fossil fuels. Taking families along for such trips can be easier. It can also just be a lot more fun to see things between here and there, and not from 30,000 feet up.

Challenges

While the technology for an electric RV is already here, and could cost a lot less than a private jet or charter flights, there are still some things that need to be figured out. Having an actual autonomous vehicle you can sleep in while it drives is the biggest one. Once that’s ready, the vehicle needs to be able to charge without waking you up to plug it in. Then, manufacturers need to come up with a way to safely sleep without wearing a five-point harness to bed.

But, once these challenges are solved, the airlines and private jet companies are going to have new competition!

Featured image by THOR industries, showing a hybrid camper the company is working on.