HS 261 - The Environmental Impact of the Driver-Less Car with Margo Oge

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Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Margot o' Gay to the show. She is Vice Chee of the board of Delta Wing Technologies, former director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the Environmental Protection Agency. She's author of a new book entitled Driving the Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars. Margo, welcome. How are you?

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm doing wonderful.

It's good to have you on. Give our listeners a sense of geography. Where are you located?

So I'm located in McLean, Virginia, about a mile and a half from the CIA and seven miles to Washington D.C. okay, good stuff.

So the CIA is right there.

Right there. Good, good stuff. Well, okay, so I have been fascinated and I have talked many, many times on prior episodes of many of my podcasts about autonomous vehicles, about self driving cars. I think this is potentially a lot more of a game changer than people might think. I mean, if energy costs stay low and of course self driving cars could make, you know, cars use a lot less energy and a lot less fuel. It dramatically increases efficiency, but the mobility is going to skyrocket. I mean, this is an amazing, amazing thing on par with some of the greatest technologies of the past that have changed the world. What are your thoughts?

Well, it's probably one of the most disruptive technologies that we're seeing for mobility. So, you know, if you, if you go back, I think it was a movie, 1976 movie. The Imperial Earth. It's an Arthur C. Clarke movie.

Say that title again. I didn't catch it with your accent.

Imperial Earth.

Imperial Earth, okay. Arthur C. Clarke. Yeah. Science fiction. Okay.

1976, I believe. Arthur C. Clarke. And he's coming from another planet and somebody is driving him. And he looks around and he says.

Are people driving? And his horse, the earthly horse, says, absolutely not. That was Ben and if anybody's crazy enough to drive themselves, they will go to jail soon. So that tells you how people in the 70s looked at us driving.

It's interesting because one of my friends recently posted on Facebook, he said he just had a thought that his eight month old child may never actually learn how to drive a car. There may be no need.

It's probably true. So let's look at what's going on. Clearly Google has initiated the efforts and they're doing a lot of work in this area. But every major automotive company is working on autonomous cars. And even today some of the cars are semi autonomous. They have some autonomous activities. But for example, the Nissan CEO is quoted to say that by 2018 all cars will have, all the older models will have some sort of autonomous offering fully autonomous cars. And I think it's very consistent with the way that we communicate and we work and we live today. We're all kind of connected. So if you combine the connected driverless vehicles with car sharing, with electrified powertrains, lightweight materials like what we have with the Delta Wing technology race car, you're going to have significant benefits. You're going to have benefits as far as fuel. You're going to use less fuel, you're going to have less accidents obviously and you're going to have probably more productivity because people are not going to be stuck on traffic.

Which something that's happening today across the planet on all major urban environments. And from my aspect, one of the reasons that I think driverless cars are going to be very important is because it's going to be one technology that we didn't look. When we were developing the first climate action activity for cars, we really did not look at driverless cars as a strategy to reduce fuel consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Yeah, I sort of wonder, you know, it's like inflation and deflation almost because when, you know, if the price and the ease of mobility declines a lot, we may ultimately, you know, it's sort of like the zero sum game concept. And then, you know, it trickles, it comes down to trickle back, you know, trickle down economics and that kind of stuff almost because you know, we might increase it, we might increase consumption a lot, increase mobility. So the net effect might be actually more fuel consumption, but the, the minor effect, the micro effect will be significant increases in fuel consumption or I mean not, not increases, I mean increases in economy I should say, because the cars, once they're networked together, I mean the whole concept of the stop and go traffic problem really becomes minimized as Algorithm algorithms control traffic patterns. And, you know, so much energy is wasted in braking, obviously. And that's one of the things the electric or hybrid cars have taken advantage of, obviously.

So when you buy a car and you drive it on the road, very often you'll say, gee, you know, I'm not getting the fuel economy. So depend, you know, the fuel economy on the label, the epa, you know, mileage values, and depending how you're driving or where you're driving, you know, I mean, I. I have to admit, I'm an aggressive driver. So the stop and go in aggressive driving impacts fuel economy as much as 30%. So having an autonomous car where we individuals are not driving it, you're going to reduce the emissions significantly.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so tell us about the Delta Wing car. Is that a carbon fiber car? Is that why it's so light?

So the race car is. Yes, it's a carbon fiber car. But the most important element of the vehicle is not just the lightweight materials, but it's the structure of the vehicle. It's very aerodynamic. So between the aerodynamic features of the vehicle and the lightweight materials that used to build it, it offers significant fuel economy advantages that can help companies existing OEMs meeting their 2025 fuel economy standards, which are going to be an average 54.5 miles per gallon. 2025.

Okay, so 54 miles per gallon, you said, right?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, you know, a car like that, I mean, I'm looking at the Delta Wing vehicle, and it's a race car, obviously, it's, you know, low to the ground. It wouldn't have any room in it. I mean, that wouldn't be a car a consumer would be willing to use unless the government mandated it as a proletariat car. So, so what would be the. What would be the passenger version of that?

No, no, the passenger version basically will have similar aerodynam features. The vision that we have right now is to have the car made out of aluminum, and it's going to have enough space, even put a battery pack. If an OEM wants to make it into electric car or a fuel cell car or a hybrid, where you have a small engine, internal combustion engine, and an electric motor. And a technical analysis that we have done for the street car now, not for the race car, you will be getting close to 58 miles per gallon equivalent, which is, you know, what's going to be required in 2025.

Without an electric engine. So you can imagine how much more fuel efficient this vehicle will be if you have a hybrid or you have an electric powertrain.

Yeah, I want to get into the electric issue for a moment and really dissect that one with you. But first let's talk about self driving cars. Cars regardless of how they're powered. So there's a company that I think might be the first to market. I'm not sure their website is getcruise.com and I, I believe that cruise is spelled the regular way. It might be C R U Z or some special way. I'm gonna look it up right now. No, it's C-R-U-I-E.com getcruise.com and I believe they're in the San Francisco area and you can go on the waiting list. And they, I believe they're saying that this self driving car kit which they've tested on Audis sells for like $11,000. I mean that's really reasonable. Are they really going to make it? They say this will come out this year.

Is that true, Jason? I cannot comment but I can tell you for a fact that I believe the first.

Driver'S car will be the Google car. That's my prediction in 2017. In 2017.

Oh gosh, two more years. I don't like waiting that long. OK, so you think it'll be the little, and it'll be that little ugly Google car that'll be the first one you think?

Well, I would not call it ugly.

It's terrible.

It will be a Google car.

Okay, okay, so, so, so you think that'll be the first to market and, and not get cruise. Not a kit but a whole car that comes that way. And who's closest? Right now I believe it's the Hyundai Genesis. If I'm not mistaken, that seems to be the closest thing to an autonomous car. Now that pretty much will drive itself on the highway.

Yeah, the Hyundai Genesis. Mercedes has a number of models, Nissan has a number of models, BMW. You know, the driverless car is much closer to what we think. And if you have 90% driverless car operations, in my mind it's almost autonomous, you know, where the driver is going to have to interfere whenever the driver wants to interfere. So it's much closer than what we thought, you know, even three years ago.

Okay, so let's explain to the listeners what a 90% self driving car is. Now to me that means that you have laser guided cruise control that will come to a complete stop. So you know, if you're on the highway you won't rear end another car. And it will the Hyundai Genesis Claims. And if, if our listeners want to check out a video, I think it's called Ghost Drive, they did a commercial for it which is pretty amazing to watch the Ghost Drive where all the, all the drivers are driving along the road and they jump out of the cars onto a passing truck and they're stunt drivers, obviously, and then the cars drive themselves. It's, it's amazing. And so they say that the car will obviously stop and go on the highway, you know, and it will also make gentle turns. That's the way they describe it. What is a 90% driverless car? Is that what it is?

Well, you know, on a highway that's exactly what it is. Now you're going to have more potential interference with the driver when you're in the city. And you have many more potential opportunities for the driver to get involved than highway. Because highway, even today you can put it on automatic cruise and it takes you there, you know, without much interference.

Right. But you still, you still need to steer. And the old version of cruise control will not stop the car. So that could be more dangerous. But you know, I have often wondered about, like the Hyundai Genesis, how it will drive itself on the highway. Pretty much, what if a deer or a coyote or something runs into the road? Will the laser guidance system see that? Will it see? What if there's an object in the road that fell off a truck before? Will it go around it? I mean, what does it do then?

That's the whole issue of connector. It has to see it. It has to see the objects that it didn't expect them to be there. So certain information will come from existing GPS or new GPS systems. But you have to have sufficient.

Capability in the vehicle to see the unexpected.

I mean, driving in city conditions is much more complex. I could just imagine the amount of data that the machine would have to process. It must just go up by a factor of 10 in the city because you've got cyclists, pedestrians, you know, whoa. The complexity is dramatically increased. Right?

Absolutely. Yeah.

And the self driving car that Google has been working on for years, you know, that has really been driving around the Silicon Valley area where they've mapped so much detail there that they haven't mapped around the rest of the country. And when I say that I'm talking about the height of curbs, I'm talking about, you know, driveways, an incredible amount of detail that is really not mapped in the rest of the country or the world. Right.

That's why I personally believe that Google is ahead of the game of everybody else. And you mentioned the carbine being ugly in smoke. Clearly this vehicle may not be the vehicle that we're going to see on the road. You know, it cost about 25 miles an hour. And the basic purpose of this vehicle is to design all the potential inputs that a car will need, not just on highway, but also on urban driving to be completely driverless.

I've heard that the Google kit that they've used on the Prius quite a bit is about $75,000. Do you know the numbers on that?

No, I don't actually. I interview Ron Medford who was working, a colleague of mine who was working here in the government for the Department of Transportation and he's now the safety director for Google. You know, they're very, they're not willing to share a lot of information. But according to Ron in the interview I had with him, his view is that the Google driverless car will be probably one of the most dramatic change revolution that we're going to see in cars beyond, you know, catalytic converters or seat belts or anything that we have seen.

Oh yeah, yeah, most definitely. Having worked in the government, you know, there's got to be a lot of talk about how will they legislate this, you know, if the self driving car crashes, whose responsibility is it? You know, how do insurance companies deal with this complexity and then what are you allowed to do? I'm sure this will be an iterative process of course, as time goes on, but you know, are you allowed to go to sleep in your car? Can you text? Can you use your laptop? Can you, can you make love? You know, I mean, what are you allowed to do? Can you drink?

Okay, Jason, you love driving, you love driverless cars, obviously. So I mean, you know, clearly I see two major issues and both government and the private sector is working. One is the issue who is accountable, who's responsible? So there is an accident, who's responsible? That's a very important issue. The second issue that is also very important, the whole issue of hacking the system. And we have seen Tesla being hacked. So how do we deal with this? Two major issues, but in my view they are not issues that we have not dealt before with many other public policies in the country. And they are not so challenging that it's going to stop the vehicles of being on the road. A number of states, I think six, seven states already have given.

The go ahead for companies to test out driverless cars on their own. So it's coming. But can I talk to you a little bit about my book?

Sure, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I thought we were talking about some of the stuff covered in the book.

Sorry, part of the book, maybe a little bit more about the book. So.

As you said, I have been with the government for 32 years, working. I'm one of these extraordinary, lucky people that woke up every morning and I knew that I was making a difference because I was working on a number of environmental issues. And for the past 18 years, I was director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality, where we took actions, you know, many actions, together with the car industry, we work with oil industry, with airplanes, with tractor trailers, to reduce the emissions from everything that moves and pollutes. But the last four years in the government, I was involved with the first action that the government took to address climate change from the transportation sector. And the transportation sector is one third of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country. And very few people know that, despite the inaction of the last three decades, in 2010 and 2012, we took actions to improve the fuel economy and reduce the carbon footprint of new vehicles. So if you recently bought a car, there is a very high likelihood that the car that you bought is both more fuel efficient and cleaner than the car that you bought five years ago. And you're saving money at the pump. And by 2025, the average new car will get double the fuel economy. As we said earlier, 54.5 miles per gallon will emit half the carbon pollution and would save, on an average, the consumer, $8,000 of fuel cost over the life of the vehicle. So driving the future is really the journey that we took from the 50s and 60s, when Los Angeles and other parts of the country look like Beijing looks today. And I don't know if you've been in Beijing, but you cannot breathe.

I've read the articles.

Yeah, it's awful. And this is what us looked like in the 50s and 60s. So it's the journey. How did we go about making cars so clean today? Cars are 99% cleaner and at the same time.

Growing the economy. We have more people on the road, and we drive more cars on the road to 2010 and 2012, when we took access to reduce the emissions, the carbon emissions from cars, which is the first climate action that the country has taken. So it's the journey of that. So we're talking about the science, the law, innovation, technology, politics. Nothing in Washington happens without politics, people. And then the historic agreement between government and industry.

This is the first that I know of where the government and industry sat together, said, okay, we're going to work together, and we're going to have this agreement where car companies are going to move forward and they're going to innovate for cleaner, more fuel efficient cars, vehicles. So that's the first part of Driving the Future. The second part of the book is where I describe the megatrends. And that's where some of the issues of connected vehicles and autonomous cars come in play, which I call the social trends, which is the connected living and working.

And that is really going to be a big driver, where our cars are going to be more like cell phones. We're not going to just use them to drive us from point A to point Z. But also other mega trends, like what's going on across the planet. US is not the only one that is acting to improve the efficiency and the carbon footprint of cars. 75% of cars sold across the planet today have some form of fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emission standards. And all this will converge in 2025. And the other big mega trend is the mega cities. You know, back in the 50s, we had only one.

Megacity, 10 million people, which was New York City. Today we have 26 of these cities.

In three years from now, we're going to have 37. So these mega cities need to reduce pollution and congestion. And that's again where you're going to see some of these megatrends influencing the car of the future beyond 2025.

So what about the cost of all this? I mean, with all of these enhancements, of course, a lot of it has caused industry just to innovate, which is wonderful, and bring the cost down. But you know, some of these enhancements, I mean, you know, when you put a regulatory burden on the automakers, I mean, the cost goes up, right?

It goes up. But the beauty about this, you know, when you put a catalytic converter on a car to reduce the emissions, the cost goes up. And the benefits are public health benefits. I mean, you breathe cleaner air. We have less, you know, fewer people going to hospitals. Fewer people die prematurely because of cancer.

Let's get them to stop smoking too.

Yeah, okay, stop smoking too. But when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint of cars, it comes along with improving fuel efficiency, because the less oil you burn, the less carbon you pollute. So just to give you an example, in 2025, the cars will be more expensive. We estimated about $1,800 per car to double the fuel efficiency, but the net benefit of the car. So you're going to pay more money to buy the car, but just on fuel savings alone. If you keep the car for 10 years, you will be saving $8,000.

And not only that, the country is going to be saving $1.4 trillion.

Of cars built from 2012 to 2025 on fuel savings. So this is money that we don't have to, you know, go out and buy gasoline and diesel, but money that we can buy, you know, go to a movie, buy, I don't know, an additional game or pizza, whatever.

So I've got to ask you, you know, what do you think about, you know, when we talk about the powertrain issue, for example, what are your thoughts on the Tesla? You know, is that really in the stage where it's still more of an experiment? I mean, I've read a few articles that say that the Tesla is more of a polluter than a typical internal combustion car when you take into account the entire equation. You know, I don't know how people think electricity is non polluting. It has to be produced somewhere, 60% of it comes from coal. So, you know, I jokingly say the Tesla is the, the first coal powered car.

Well, that's a good point because you have to, you know, you have to account for the energy sources of the car. But regardless. So if you drive a Tesla in California, most of the energy comes from.

Renewable, but a lot of it's nuclear in California.

Yeah, but so you have no pollution, really. So regardless where you drive the Tesla, even if you drive it in Colorado, which is all coal, you're going to get better fuel, you're going to get lower carbon emissions than driving a gasoline car or a Prius car. I mean, that's the case if you drive it in New York City, if you drive it in parts of the country, that coal is not as a big player, you're going to then get greater. So I think the message is if you drive an electric car like Tesla, you're doing well to the planet, you're reducing the greenhouse gas emissions. Now, as far as, is it an experiment? I don't think so. I think early on in the process the traditional car manufacturers thought this is just going to pass, this is going to be another frisker. It's not going to be successful, but I think Tesla is successful. He has been able to create a vehicle that not only the customers love, but it's an envy of the competitors. Everybody's competing and Tesla is selling more cars than would have expected two, three years ago. And they're moving to produce a car that's going to be in the mid-30s, which is fantastic. And you see General Motors Trying to do the same with the bolt. So I think Tesla, in my view, is here to stay and it provides. It's a lot of competition for the traditional OEMs.

Okay, very interesting, very interesting. What else would you like people to know?

Well, what I like people to know is that you can have a clean environment, clean air, clean water, we can address climate change and at the same time we can have economic growth. So what I like people to know is that whenever EPA, in my experience, my 32 years experience, whenever EPA went forward with a major regulatory effort to reduce pollution from air or make water cleaner, time after time the industry came forward and said, it cannot happen, you're going to destroy the industry. And time after time we have seen that not only the industry was able to do it very often, they even did it better and earlier. And look at cars. Cars are even cleaner today than what the government requires. So we're dealing with probably the biggest challenge that our planet is facing, our economy is facing and national security is facing, which is climate change. And there are things that we can do and we must do to address the impacts of climate change. And.

This first wonderful program, historic program we did for cars is an indication that we can do it for other sectors. We can reduce the carbon footprint from coal burning power plants.

So, Margo, give out your website and tell people where they can find the book.

You can find the book driving the Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars at your local bookstores. Hopefully the libraries are carrying it. You can order it on Amazon today. And thank you, thank you so much, Jason, for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. And good luck with the driverless car, the kids that you're looking for.

I can hardly wait. I can hardly wait. You know, one of the things I should just mention in closing here is that one of the big deals, we didn't talk about this, but feel free to comment on it now. So I'm, you know, sorry for the last minute question here, but you know, my thesis is that the whole, you know, I have a real estate investment company and I invest significantly in real estate. And the whole game of real estate forever has been, you know the old saying. The three cardinal rules of real estate, Margot, are location, location and location. And I really think that the driverless car is, long as energy costs stay reasonable, is a game changer. I think it will put pressure on those three cardinal rules. And here's why, if you think about it, you know, I grew up in Southern California. I grew up in Los Angeles, then lived in Orange county as an adult. Very expensive real estate markets. Obviously. Now I live in Phoenix, a lower priced real estate market. And if you can go to bed at midnight and wake up at 7am you can go to bed in Phoenix, wake up at 7am in LA or Newport beach or San Diego. You know, do you really need to live there? You know, I mean, I'm not saying it changes everything. I just believe it puts pressure on it.

It does, it does. But also, don't forget that a lot of the services that we're going to be getting will be on demand and share vehicles. But Jason, they're calling me. They're calling me for my other. I'm sorry, they're calling me for my other. Unfortunately, my not unfortunately, my other interview. But wonderful talking to you. Thank you so much.

Likewise. Thank you Margo.

Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.

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