Autonomous Vehicles in Global Semi-Peripheries

• In Event: Autonomous Vehicles - II: Visions and Imaginaries for Autonomous Systems

Abstract

While in the USA, in particular in California, autonomous vehicles are seen as a viable and even a desired option, the European debate is much more careful. In particular in the US discourse on the transformation of the transport system, automated driving comes together in a package with new concepts of ownership and electric engine. As Daniel Sperling, the author of the book “Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future” (2018) points out, the currently emerging innovations may lead societies to a mobility dream as well as to a mobility nightmare. While the first one would bring about a better, cheaper and more equal access to transportation, lower carbon emissions and congestion, the second could result in exclusion of certain groups of people from using the automated, less polluting vehicles, privileged road lanes – a mobility revolution of the privileged. However, in semi-peripheries of the global economic systems, in Central and Eastern Europe, revolution in transportation has so far been mainly seen as electric mobility. The paper compares discourses on transition in transportation in Californian regulation, in the European Union’s documents and in the CEE countries state documents to outline the main visions, imaginaries and narratives focusing on concepts of autonomous driving, electro mobility, alternative ownership options, and the relations between them. The paper is a result of a preliminary research and aims to become a starting point for asking more specific questions about differences in paths of change in transportation systems in different regions of the world.

Author

• Aleksandra Lis, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu