Why All AVs Should Be EVs

All-electric and self-driving vehicles have the potential to make the world a better place. But when it comes to the vehicles and hardware you might see on public roads, not all AVs are created equal.

At GM, our vision of a future with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion has guided the development of our self-driving test vehicles and our belief that all fully autonomous vehicles should be electric vehicles.

The Big Picture: The personal automobile powered by an internal combustion engine ushered in a decades-long era of personal freedom and collective prosperity. But with that freedom came a number of challenges in the form of pollution, congestion and accidents. For example, according to the World Health Organization, more than 1.3 million people die each year in traffic accidents across the globe. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 94 percent of crashes are caused by human error. Advanced technologies such as all-electric autonomous cars are poised to alleviate these challenges.                                                              

Why it Matters: All-electric autonomous vehicles have many advantages over their gasoline- or hybrid-powered counterparts:

• Cleaner Environment: By 2040, it is estimated that there will be 40 cities with populations exceeding 10 million. All-electric shared autonomous vehicles will be ideal for dense cities that need solutions for congestion and noise pollution.
• Stable Power: The advanced sensing and computing hardware on an autonomous vehicle needs a lot of electric power. Compared to an internal combustion engine, an all-electric battery pack acts as a more stable power source that can enable higher-powered AV components.
• Low Latency: Whether you’re a human driver or an AV navigating public roads, reaction time matters. By the nature of their design, electric propulsion systems have lower latency and more consistent response when accelerating. As a result, when compared to internal combustion counterparts, an all-electric AV will have a lower delay between the time it decides to make and the time it completes a maneuver.

The Bottom Line: Electric vehicles allow for simpler integration of the advanced technologies required for the cleanest and safest operation of autonomous vehicles. That’s why we believe that in the long term, building all-electric vehicles with autonomous capabilities integrated from the beginning (rather than through retrofits) is the most efficient way to unlock the tremendous potential societal benefits of self-driving cars.