News

EV challenges remain but battery life is not one of them. There are lots of great reasons to drive electric. The modern plug-in electric vehicle (EV) is quiet, saves on fuel costs, requires little maintenance, and comes with thousands of dollars in purchase incentives. Downsides still exist, though.

This electric, automated shuttle from SAIC Innovation Center is looping around UC Davis West Village now until June. Through June 1, San Jose-based Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation’s (SAIC) Innovation Center is demonstrating its automated, all-electric shuttle around a defined loop of the solar-panel-lined West Village community as part of an agreement between the auto company and UC Davis. 

By Chelsea Whyte

Uber and Lyft drivers are on strike to demand regulated fares and livable wages, in the lead-up to Uber’s initial public offering on the stock exchange on 10 May. Now there is some more bad news for these services: they haven’t lived up to claims of reducing traffic congestion.

The availability of ridehailing services, such as those provided by Uberand Lyft in the U.S. market, as well as the share of trips made by these services, are continuously growing. Yet, the factors affecting the frequency of use of these services are not well understood.

Tara Goddard's seminar on vulnerable road user safety and AV/partial AV at ITS-Davis includes the trolley problem, media critique, tech skepticism, and why we drivers are mostly horrible.

Tara Goddard is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Texas A&M. 

View the webinar here

Automated vehicles (AVs) can be a revolutionary safety technology, but they will still sometimes crash in novel or challenging circumstances. This webinar begins with a simple question: when AVs crash, who must pay for the damage they cause? The problem is that neither state nor federal law currently provides a straightforward, definitive answer to that question. Considering these vehicles are already testing on public roads, it is likely that there will be crash victims in the near future.

By Daniel Sperling and Scott Hardman

Dr. Austin Brown is Executive Director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy at the University of California, Davis. In this role, he builds strong connections between the research and policy communities at the local, state, and national levels with a focus on clean energy and sustainable transportation.

The share of Americans who have used ride-sharing services more than doubled in the past three years. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018, 36% of adults say they have used a ride-hailing service such as Uber or Lyft, compared to 15% in late 2015.

Half of U.S. adults think automated vehicles are more dangerous than traditional vehicles operated by people, while nearly two-thirds said they would not buy a fully autonomous vehicle, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.