Cruise
One of the promises of autonomous vehicles is that they will be safer for passengers, occupants of other vehicles, and bystanders, thereby saving thousands of lives lost on the road each year. Swap internal combustion engines for electric batteries, and you’ve eliminated the tailpipe emissions that hasten climate change and blanket cities with a smoggy haze. Now power these self-driving EVs with locally produced renewable energy, and you’ve created a blameless transportation system. That’s essentially what self-driving start-up Cruise has done.
Cruise is the only autonomous vehicle fleet to be powered 100% by renewable energy, according to blog post the company released on Earth Day. The San Francisco-based AV company owned by General Motors logged 831,040 autonomous miles in California last year. All 200 of its self-driving vehicles are electric, and in Q4 of 2019 it began using an energy broker to ensure the power recharging the cars was sourced from renewable energy projects. EVs produces an equivalent of 4,100 pounds of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which used a nation-wide average of energy sources for this calculation. AVs use more energy than human controlled electric vehicles due to the increased vehicle weight from additional sensing equipment, lower aerodynamic drag, and computer processing demand, according to Tracy Cheung, Senior Energy Fleet Manager for Cruise. However, with power coming only from renewable energy projects, Cruise vehicles will have a carbon footprint of zero moving forward.
But achieving carbon neutrality is just the first step—the next is becoming carbon negative.
“We’re learning more about projects that capture methane from landfills and dairy farms and then harness those harmful gases (that would otherwise contribute to global warming) to create carbon negative, renewable electricity,” says Cheung.
Cruise
With millions of cars off the road for all but essential activities, the Bay Area has seen a glimpse of what a significant decrease in vehicle-related carbon reductions can look like. Carbon dioxide emissions decrease by roughly 20% and nitrogen dioxide emissions by roughly 40% since the stay-at-home restrictions placed in California. Even Cruise, which typically uses its fleet of electric AVs to ferry employees around SF, has recently grounded the vehicles during California’s stay-at-home restrictions. However, that status could soon change.
“We are exploring ways to help local charitable organizations and essential businesses with our fleet of self-driving cars,” said a company spokesperson in an email to Forbes.
