Fireworks About ACES As Key Acronym For The Future Of Mobility And Self-Driving Cars

It seems like acronyms abound in all fields of endeavor, and sometimes remain arcane and known only to specialists in that domain, but occasionally manage to breakout of their bubble and become widely used and accepted (notable examples would be MRI and EKG, originally used by medical experts and eventually widely accepted by the general public).

Here’s an acronym in the self-driving driverless cars niche that you ought to know, namely “ACES” which stands for Autonomous, Connected, Electric, and Shared.

Memorize it.

Put it into your vocabulary.

It is emerging as the megatrend potent combination, converging together the four biggest disruptions altering mobility and transportation, and arguably a signpost of a transformative wave impacting all of society.

What ACES Means For You

Each of the letters of the ACES acronym are indicative of a mega-trend in of itself, so let’s consider what each word or phrase means.

Autonomous refers to the advent of self-driving driverless autonomous vehicles, especially self-driving driverless cars. The current crop of such cars are primarily semi-autonomous, generally requiring that a human driver be present and ready to co-share the driving task. Getting to the vaunted Level 5, a true driverless car requiring no human driving interventions, offers the hope for vastly enhancing our mobility. You can command your true driverless car at any time of the day, any day of the week, using it to transport you, or run an errand, and you don’t need to drive it and you don’t need to get someone to drive it for you.

Connected refers to the electronic connectedness or connecting of cars, allowing cars to both send out and receive electronic messages and information. There is V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) electronic communications, along with V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) that connects vehicles and the roadway system such as traffic lights indicating red or bridges saying they are closed, and V2P (vehicle-to-pedestrians) allowing cars and those pesky pedestrians to electronically alert each other. It is easiest to refer to all of those V’s as V2X, wherein X is a variable and you can plug-in any letter you like. There is also OTA, Over-The-Air, which refers to being able to download data and software updates into a car from the cloud, along with uploading data from a car into the cloud.

Electric refers to the electrification of vehicles, or simply stated the emergence of Electric Vehicles (EV). Just the letter E is used in ACES, otherwise you’d have ACEVS if you jammed the “EV” into the acronym, which does not roll-off the tongue easily. Besides the obvious ecological reasons used to support the advent of EV’s, in the case of autonomous cars there is a particular benefit of using an EV, namely the driverless car’s craving for electrical power (due to the abundance of sensors and processors). Using an EV is ready-made for electrically fueling the autonomous capability.

Shared refers to the likelihood that the shift toward ridesharing will continue to grow. Studies suggest that the Gen Z and the latest generations are tending away from owning cars and prefer instead to ride in a car that’s driven for them. Right now, the ridesharing driving is mainly human based. But how many humans will want to perform ridesharing and might there be a limit that will reduce supply, thus increase the cost to get human drivers, and begin to shove ridesharing (already a loss leader) into worsened shape? Presumably, autonomous cars will solve that dilemma, along with enabling the mobility marginalized.

It’s A Synergistic Heaven

That’s a quick explanation of the ACES elements.

Each element is able to stand on its own, meaning that they individually are going to emerge and alter our world.

In addition, there is a synergy that magnetically is drawing them together, each feeding off of the other.

Here’s how that works.

Autonomous leverages connectedness to boost what a driverless car can do, communicating with other cars and the roadway and pedestrians, which then is powered by the electric prowess and battery of the self-driving car, which enables ridesharing by taking the human driver out of the vehicle. Ridesharing becomes more viable.

That’s how these seemingly siloed areas have come together as a fruitful amalgamation.

More Names Than You Can Count

The ACES acronym is not alone.

Some prefer to use CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric) as the acronym, but I think the ACES is catchier and likely to prevail.

There is a contingent that insists on SAEV (Shared, Autonomous, Electric Vehicles), but this omits connectedness, plus it is a somewhat unpronounceable moniker.

The automotive industry already has a standard known as Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard, which is another ACES acronym, but I think that the broader ACES will overtake this rather narrower version of such a handy ACES signature. Then there is NASA’s Advanced Control Evolvable System, another ACES, and there is a driverless car industry verbiage about wanting to have an Autonomous Connected Efficient Safe (ACES) car.

The multitude of ACES makes sense because it is a catchy way to describe something, rather than an oddball collection of letters that no one can remember or speak aloud intelligently.

Conclusion

I believe that the “real” ACES, Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared, will increasingly be used and ultimately proclaimed as the proper way to refer to the mega-trend’s conjunction underway.

You’ve now learned the secret password that gets you into the dialogue about what the mobility future holds. No need to hide the password, instead you are welcome to use it, impressing friends and colleagues, along with perhaps helping to propel the advent of ACES for us all.

Time to launch those fireworks and sparklers to celebrate the ACES coming into our future.