University of California Institute of Transportation Studies

Driverless vehicles are likely to profoundly affect transportation patterns and ultimately reshape cities. Their deployment creates substantial risk to vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and greenhouse gas (GHG) containment, but also substantial opportunity. Driverless technology could be deployed along very divergent pathways, and at this early stage, policy has the opportunity to affect which path is taken. Because California is at the epicenter of driverless technology development, such policy could influence deployment pathways nationally or even globally. Given transportation’s large share of GHG emissions, California’s influence could conceivably tip national, or even global, GHG emissions trajectories sufficiently to enable or prevent attainment of science-based climate goals.