Category: Blog

With more than half of the global population living in cities, space shortage is becoming an increasingly urgent problem for urban planners and developers. The two major challenges that impact urban residents the most are housing shortage and parking space shortage.

Housing shortage can be partially resolved by utilizing vertical space. Indeed, the number of skyscrapers built for residential use is quickly overtaking that of office buildings in major cities across the world from Toronto and Vancouver to Sydney and Melbourne. Yet even doing so is not enough to cool down the housing shortage as non-resident investors drive up demand.

In this blog, we focus on discussing the second challenge. In fact, parking space shortage and traffic congestion are much more difficult to deal with than housing shortage. As one can imagine, building upwards is not an option because it would be ridiculously expensive and inefficient to have a 30-storey parkade. Also, most cities do not have enough public funding to build elevated highways and tunnels at a large scale.

Like it or not, this urban movement is set to continue as the UN projects global urban population to reach 68% by 2050. Just as urban researchers are seeking new creative ways to solve space shortage, an unexpected potential solution has gained popularity both in theory and in practice — autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars are expected to solve urban space shortage in three different ways: 1) by reducing the need for parking space, 2) by reducing traffic congestion, and 3) by increasing vehicle occupancy rate.

How Do Autonomous Vehicles Reduce the Need for Parking Space?

The idea is to have cars park themselves in the parking lot so that drivers can get off the car at the entrance and let the car do the rest of the job, just like having an automated valet parking system. So how and why does this system reduce the need for parking space?

First of all, each single parking slot for autonomous vehicles can be made much smaller than a conventional parking slot. This is because a conventional parking slot has to leave enough space for the car doors to open on both sides so that passengers can get off. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, the driver and passengers can get off the car ahead of time before the car enters the slot, so that no extra space is needed on the sides of the car.

Another reason is a reduction in the need for driveways. In a conventional parking lot, the driveways take up about half of the total land area (see Figure 1a). Civil engineering researchers at the University of Toronto have shown through their work that autonomous vehicles could potentially decrease the need for parking space by an average of 62% and a maximum of 87% (Nourinehjad, Bahrami, and Roorda 2018)*. The reason is that instead of having a driveway between every two rows of parked vehicles, a parking lot that is fully dedicated to autonomous vehicles only needs a driveway between every four rows of parked vehicles. In other words, there can be up to four rows of vehicles parked together without any driveways in between (see Figure 1b). When a “landlocked” vehicle needs to get out, the vehicle in front of it would automatically move out to free its way.

Figure 1. a) Conventional Parking Lot vs. b) Autonomous Vehicle Parking Lot
(Nourinehjad, Bahrami, and Roorda 2018)*

Nourinejad, M., Bahrami, S., & Roorda, M. J. (2018). Designing parking facilities for autonomous vehicles. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 109, 110-127.

How Do Autonomous Vehicles Reduce Traffic Congestion?

A common misconception is that autonomous vehicles are nothing more than cars with sensors that detect surrounding environments. In reality, SAE Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles are much more sophisticated than that. These vehicles are able to communicate with other vehicles on the road, with pedestrians and cyclists, with traffic lights, and with the entire transportation infrastructure, all through the internet. All the communications are enabled by V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology embedded into the vehicles, and end up forming a massive smart transportation network. This brings us to the question: how does V2X technology reduce traffic congestion?

Surprisingly, the main cause of traffic congestion is not having too many cars on the road, but the delays caused by each driver’s reaction time. When a traffic light turns green, for example, it takes a second or two for the driver at the front row to notice the signal change and another 0.5 second before pressing the pedal, the driver behind starts pressing the pedal 0.5 second after the first car moves forward, and this 0.5 second delay stacks up for every car behind, accumulating to a significant latency — this is assuming that everyone pays full attention to the road. (We all know that one bad driver who is just too busy on their phone to pay attention to the signal change.)

With V2X technology, all cars waiting in line would be notified of the signal change with near-zero latency, so that all cars can start accelerating at the same time and move forward at the same speed. This would significantly reduce traffic jams. A research team from the Delft University of Technology discovered through their virtual experiment that under a particular traffic jam which lasted an average of 41.7 minutes with an average speed of 11.7 km/h, if only 10% of all vehicles had V2X technology, the average lasting time would be reduced to 3.6 minutes with the average speed increased to 41 km/h. This huge improvement is made possible by all vehicles being able to accelerate and brake at the same time (Wang, Daamen, Hoogendoorn, and Bart van Arem 2015)*.

* Wang, M., Daamen, W., Hoogendoorn, S. P., & van Arem, B. (2015). Cooperative Car-Following Control: Distributed Algorithm and Impact on Moving Jam Features. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 17(5), 1459-1471.

How Do Autonomous Vehicles Increase Occupancy Rate?

According to the National Household Travel Survey conducted by the US Department of Transportation, the average occupancy rate of vehicles on American roads dropped from 1.59 in 1995 to 1.54 in 2007. This means that not only are we having more cars on the road, each car is carrying less people, with a majority of cars on the road occupied by only one person. This low occupancy rate is largely due to the inconvenience of the public transit system of North American cities.

As SAE Level-5 autonomous vehicles start to go into their testing phase, traditional car manufacturers are starting to seek potential in the ridesharing market. Take General Motors’ subsidiary firm Cruise for example, the company recently developed Origin, a line of electric shuttle vans that are specifically designed for ridesharing. Without any driver’s seat and steering wheel, the vehicle is expected to travel fully autonomously on designated city streets, making ridesharing much easier and comfortable. As autonomous ridesharing becomes increasingly convenient to use, vehicle occupancy rates in cities are expected to increase, reducing the burden of city roads.

AUTOCRYPT’s Role in Autonomous Driving

AUTOCRYPT is a total cybersecurity solutions provider for automobiles, providing all the security software components that are necessary (and soon mandatory) to keep autonomous vehicles safe on the road. With two decades of experience in authentication and data encryption technologies, AUTOCRYPT’s solutions ensure the legitimacy of all parties involved in V2X communications and the integrity of all data being transmitted. Recognized as the best automotive cybersecurity product/service by the prestigious TU-Automotive Awards, and one of the top 5 global market leaders for V2X cybersecurity by Markets and Markets, AUTOCRYPT is the foundation for the future of autonomous driving, ridesharing, and everything mobility.

Watch this video to see a brief introduction of AUTOCRYPT.

To learn more details about AUTOCRYPT’s solutions and services, click here.

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For the last two decades, the automotive industry has been focusing on disruptive technology and innovative productions. The advent of electric cars in early 2000 has provided more opportunities for new companies to challenge the industry – and Tesla has proven that it’s possible. While the existing manufacturing companies remained faithful to the internal combustion engine or by upgrading their models, Tesla has challenged the industry by producing its own all-electric car.

Run by Elon Musk, one of the world’s most powerful people, Tesla is now one of the top 10 most valuable American companies by market cap. Although the market paused for thought a few times, there’s no doubt that Tesla is becoming one of the most influential companies in the EV and autonomous driving industry.

According to Motor Trend, Tesla Model S beat Chevy, Toyota, and Cadillac for the ultimate car of the year honors in 2020 and according to Motor1.com tests, it has the lowest energy consumption of all BEVs. However, its cars are more expensive than traditional or hybrid cars (yes, the battery technology is very expensive!) and the company hasn’t been able to keep up with the high demands of production fueled by the green energy movement.

But it seems like Tesla isn’t the only startup disrupting the automotive industry after all. As hurdles are much lower than they’ve been in the past few decades, it’s been encouraging many electronics and IT giants to eye the EV industry with their innovative challenger electric cars. For instance, Sony has showcased their first Vision-S prototype, a full-fledged contempt car, in Las Vegas this January. Later on, Foxconn Technology Group and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV also discussed creating a JV to manufacture electric cars in China.

Lordstown Motors is developing a pickup truck called Endurance, intended for commercial fleets and it has been using some of the equipment that was used to make the Chevrolet Cruze. Lucid Motors’ CEO Peter Rawlinson was the Chief Engineer for Tesla before he left the company in 2012. Founded in 2007, their new car will have a range of more than 400 miles and be able to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under 2.5 seconds. Faraday Future is another LA-based startup that builds luxury sedans designed for autonomous driving. Canoo, another Californian startup, is planning to offer electric vehicles next year by subscription starting in LA and gradually expanding the service throughout the United States.

Then there are startups from China such as Byton, with a mid-size electric SUV that has a 48-inch horizontal screen running the entire width of the dashboard. NIO is based in Shanghai and is one of the few companies that are building and selling electric cars. Byton is another startup founded by a former BMW executive in China and this company is accelerating to begin volume production in Nanjing starting next year.

Another Chinese IT giant Huawei, on the other hand, is well known for its consumer electronics and information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, rather than electric car manufacturing, across the globe. But with the Chinese government and policy on its side, Huawei has started to scramble to march into the EV market. Since the Mobile World Congress 2018 event, Huawei launched its Intent-Driven Network (IDN) solution which helps evolve networks from SDNs towards autonomous driving networks. Moreover, they have also been developing autonomous driving networks in wireless network scenarios as well as aiming to simplify sites, architectures, along with protocols to build simplified networks.

Huawei has also been expanding its business and exploring autonomous driving networks and technologies with operators, proposing different levels of driving automation. They’re currently in the work of developing vehicles and infrastructure ends by rolling out products like the roadside unit, EI-based intelligent twins, and OceanConnect intelligent transportation platform. Although the company has announced that it won’t build cars but will just help automotive manufacturers like BYD to build better cars equipped with 5G that run on Huawei’s smart car system based on Harmony OS, the company’s investment in the automotive industry is still highly watched.

Almost Self-Driving Cars in 2020

Tesla stated that it will sell its self-driving computer chips and will be able to make its vehicles completely autonomous by the end of this year. Cadillac, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota are also making every effort to build fully autonomous cars. While the era of full self-driving cars hasn’t yet arrived, we should prioritize security technologies that make autonomous driving feasible without any external threats or interventions.

As experts predict there will be more than 125 million autonomous cars on the road by 2030, the actual concerns about autonomous driving-related to companies taking proper cybersecurity measures have been raised. Of course, protecting the vehicle itself is the utmost priority, but for now, companies are trying to build safer charging environments as the public has already seen attackers causing damage to electronic charging stations, which is the fundamental infrastructure needed to support EV operations.

AutoCrypt, Safeguarding the Fundamental Infrastructure

Many experts in the industry have been predicting the vehicles will become a rolling internet device, a smartphone on 4 wheels, which will become much more than just a means of transportation. Additionally, according to McKinsey, the automotive-related software market will double in value to USD 469 billion over the next 10 years. This means that your vehicle will not only become convenient, smart, and optimized but also a rolling data center, and securing the storage and data is the biggest legal challenge the EV manufacturers are currently facing.

Additionally, the current technology implemented at stations is mostly out-of-date open charge point protocol based on HTTPS which doesn’t encrypt data when safeguarding electric vehicle charging is the key to secure mobility. As driving an electric car is much more than just charging the battery, we need to make sure that our credentials and data are kept and exchanged safely through a reliable V2G security solution.

AutoCrypt PnC protects both the electric vehicle and its supply equipment (EVSE) during the Plug&Charge (PnC) process, which uses PKI technology. The solution verifies the identities of both the vehicle and the charger, ensuring safe exchange of information.

To learn more about AUTOCRYPT’s security solutions, click here.

It is no secret that the era of the autonomous vehicle is already here. With Tesla premiering the beta mode of their Full-Self Driving mode, and other manufacturers following suit with developments in autonomous technology, the number of connected and autonomous vehicles on the road will only continue to increase. However, that means that it is only a matter of time before the autonomous capabilities move on from the road to other methods of transportation. In fact, autonomous ships may not be very far behind from self-driving vehicles.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) establishes the international standards when it comes to maritime traffic. The IMO defines ships that operate without human interaction as MASS, or Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships. They are also referred to as Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), meaning that they are vehicles that travel on water, or smart ships, in the sense that they have capabilities to be able to travel on their own.

Although MASS or USV may be unfamiliar acronyms, autonomous ships and autonomous vehicles have more in common than you would think. Here are some commonalities between USVs and AVs.

Level / Degree Up

Just like a car has an autonomous driving level, decided by the SAE (see our blog post on different levels here), autonomous ships are also classified by levels of autonomy. However, the IMO officially defines the four levels (called “degrees”) from Degree one, where the system aids the seafarer’s decisions and navigation, all the way to Degree four where fully autonomous navigation occurs without seafarer or remote control.

Industry Consortiums

As a new(er) technology, autonomous vehicles have several organizations and projects that prioritize regulations and international standard compliance for testing, safety and continued development of the technology. It should therefore not come as a surprise that autonomous ships also have consortiums and researchers dedicated to continuing to define and develop the technologies. In 2016, a largely industry-led group called the Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks (MUNIN) published a detailed report which summarized three years of key findings regarding MASS.

Security First

As autonomous driving technology continues to advance and the deadline for WP.29 regulations approaches, a trending topic in the industry is security. For a car to drive autonomously on the road, it must connect in real-time to other vehicles, traffic lights, roadside units, and devices. If there is a vulnerability or a breach in this connectivity, true autonomous driving is not possible as it endangers the driver, passenger, and everyone around the vehicle. There is no reason why the same issue would not arise out at sea.

While there may not be a vessel right behind or next to a ship, sea vessels have other complex issues to figure out like weather conditions, route of nearby vessels, fuel capabilities, and load capacities to maintain. If there is a breach, there is the risk of danger to passengers, crew, as well as the sensitive products that may be in the middle of being transported. Hackers do not discriminate and will take a chance to infiltrate anything that seems of financial value or notoriety.

Why Autonomous Ships?

As the world becomes more interconnected, transport of goods will only increase. To optimize transport and minimize risk, it makes sense to develop autonomous ships – USVs can significantly reduce ship management costs as manpower and fuel account for over 80% of operational costs. Having unmanned autonomous vehicles will not only reduce costs but free up space. Minimizing amenities like food, water, and allowing additional cargo or fuel to be loaded will be groundbreaking.

Companies around the world have been taking notice. In 2018, Rolls-Royce and Finferries, a Finnish shipping company (state-owned), demonstrated the world’s first fully autonomous ferry in Turku, Finland. In South Korea, SK Telecom and Samsung developed an autonomous test ship. The 3.3-meter-long ship was equipped with 5G-based LiDAR, cloud-based IoT platform, as well as a real-time video monitoring solution. Korea’s government is also on board as the peninsula’s location is prime for maritime trade. The Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy as well as the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries formed a working project for autonomous ships and is expected to invest over 160 billion won up to 2025.

However, as we have already seen with the rise of autonomous vehicles, another commonality is that new, trending technologies tend to become new and lucrative targets for hackers. Much like the WP.29 regulations by the UNECE, it may not be long before we begin to see similar regulations for other methods of transportation, and ship manufacturers and seafarers may need to begin preparation sooner rather than later. While technology continues to develop, roadmaps for regulatory reform and systems and standards for autonomous sailing personnel and cybersecurity.

It is essential to prioritize security from the beginning – that is one commonality of which we can be absolutely certain.