Earth 2050 - Driven by Design

The cost of traffic, it's time. It's obviously money.
It's fuel wasted.
It's an emotional toll, it's a frustration.
If there's technology that would allow me to spend less time in a car,
spend less money on gas,
and spend more time at home, I'd be all for that.
Utilizing the roads more intelligently
is a much more efficient approach to the time-lag,
and the inability to have supply keep up with traffic demand.
If you took a satellite picture of the highway,
you can see that there is actually a lot of open space,
and if we had the technology for cars to drive more closely but safely,
then you could increase the utilization of the road network.
Maps in the future are going to be able
to help people get places either more safely or more efficiently.
Today, it just helps you get from point A to point B,
but what if I want to get someplace and use the least amount of fuel possible?
So information that is gonna help people
achieve the more efficient or the safer route
is more detailed information about the road
than a lot of people realize that it's possible to collect today.
Probably within two to three years, you're gonna see 3-D maps
that are gonna integrate the traffic information into your routing
to help you understand "If I've got five different routes to take,
"which one is the most efficient today, given the way the stoplights are running,
"given the way traffic is running..."
All of those factors are going to be taken into consideration
to make sure I've got the best route.
Autonomous vehicle technology has a tremendous potential
to improve efficiency of our road infrastructure.
The 3-D mapping technology can enable an autonomously driven car
to really predict what it's gonna see,
and that will greatly ease the process of autonomous driving.
We have an automated system, so now for instance,
if I take my feet off the acceleration pedal and turn the system on,
the velocity is automatically governed
by getting information from the vehicle ahead through its wireless system.
We want these vehicles to maintain a short relative distance,
so we can reduce the fuel consumption
by utilizing the air drag reduction by 10 percent.
You will be able to save approximately 8,000 euros per year.
When we look toward the future,
the systems will make it more efficient and less costly for you,
and also make your life easier
because you're spending less time on the roads.
The city begins to talk, begins to tell you where is there congestion,
what's going on in different areas of town?
Suddenly, the car becomes a part of a much bigger ecosystem.
We can look at how cars interact with other cars,
how a car interacts with infrastructure,
and us, the drivers,
can start to make smart decisions about how to move around.
Suddenly, mobility becomes a whole other thing.