<p>  </p> <p>The transportation sector is witnessing rapid development of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. While an AV can be more energy efficient than a conventional human-driven vehicle, their environmental impacts at the fleet and city level could be either significantly better or worse than the traditional systems, depending on how people use them – adopting AVs as privately-owned AVs (PAV) or centrally-managed shared AVs (SAV) will result in very different fleet size, vehicle-miles-travelled (VMT), and carbon emissions. To understand the environmental impacts of AVs at the city level, it is critical to consider who are likely to adopt which types of AVs, their travel demands, and the associated AV operation. Previous studies evaluating the potential impacts of AVs on the environment are limited by the existing travel demand models, which do not have sociodemographic information linked to the travel demands to support modeling of AV adoption or only generate trip origin and destination at the zonal level that is insufficient to support modeling of shared AV use. Additionally, existing research mainly focused on SAV systems and did not consider the potential competition between SAV and PAV. It is necessary to compare the system performance between the privately-owned AV system and the centrally-managed shared AV system and under the scenarios that both systems co-exist to inform AV system development. Furthermore, although AVs can help reduce fleet size through shared use, each vehicle will be used more intensively due to empty VMT, resulting in acceleration of vehicle replacement and increased need for vehicle production. To fully quantify the environmental impacts of a city’s AV system, it is also important to take a life-cycle perspective, considering not only vehicle use but also upstream vehicle manufacturing and downstream vehicle disposal with fleet replacement. </p> <p>To address these gaps, this work proposed an integrated agent-based model to quantify the environmental impacts of PAV and SAV. The integrated model includes four key components: 1) a travel demand generation model that links high resolution individual and household travel demand with socio-demographics information, 2) an AV adoption model that evaluates individual’s and household’s likelihood to accept AV and preference to use PAV, SAV or conventional vehicle, 3) an AV operation model to simulate the system performance of different AV fleets, and 4) an AV life cycle model that assesses different AV systems’ emissions considering vehicle replacement. Applying the proposed integrated model to a case study of Miami, the results have presented that the existing studies may overestimate AV systems’ environmental benefits, due to lack of travel demand data that can support the proposed integrated modeling, inconsideration of individual and household AV adoption decisions, and/or biased evaluation that does not account for all phases in AV system’s life-cycle. Case study results have showed that SAVs are more environmentally beneficial than PAVs but are less likely to be adopted by travelers and households, due to low cost of PAV use based on existing AV survey findings and current AV pricing knowledge. To promote SAV adoption to gain more positive environmental impacts, it is crucial to optimize SAV’s vehicle and system design to reduce service fee, waiting time, and in-vehicle value of time. The case study also found that due to more frequent vehicle replacement resulted from more intensively vehicle utilization, an AV systems’ environmental benefits from the operation phase can be counterbalanced by the impacts from other life-cycle phases. To achieve a life-cycle emission breakeven point, SAVs and PAVs need to improve fuel efficiency during the operation phase by 5% and 16% or reduce per-vehicle manufacture and disposal emissions by 36% and 5%. The proposed models and findings of this work can inform decision making for SAV operators, policy makers, and transportation planners. </p>

A growing body of international research on urban transport shows that women from all over the world are experiencing safety issues within today’s transport systems. Furthermore, these reports shed light on and discuss how gender bias within the transport sector contributes to this problem. To design future mobility services that everyone will use and enjoy, it is thus important to understand women’s travel needs and to involve a diverse group of users in the development process. With a vision of shaping mobility for a sustainable future NationalElectric Vehicles Sweden (NEVS) is developing a mobility solution consisting of connected, autonomous, and electrified vehicles designed and optimized for shared mobility within city environments. To address this issue in NEVS service this thesis applied an exploitative research approach to examining factors that affect women’s willingness to share rides with others(potential strangers) in a context where there is no driver physically present. The methodology, inspired by the ’Design Thinking’ framework consisted of two main phases:(I) Problem definition and (II) Concept development. To understand women’s safety issues within today’s transport system and frame the design challenge an extensive literature study covering the topics of women’s safety in public transport, technology acceptance, trust, and human-centered design was conducted. To further define user needs and encourage the end-users to take an active role in co-designing solutions for themselves two focus group workshops were held. The initial research and the results from the workshops further formed the basis for the subsequent Concept Development phase. A need for control over the shared travel situation revealed by the participants’ great demand for information led this phase to examine passengers' needs in relation to an In-Vehicle Information System (IVIS). Two prototypes were developed and further tested together with users to evaluate the proposed solutions. The results showed that the anthropomorphic system features used to create a more human-like interaction had a positive impact on the participants’ overall user experience and their perceived safety during a ’shared ride’ scenario. Having a female voice communicating system information made the participants feel less nervous, more comfortable, and more secure compared to when the same information was communicated solely by a visual interface. Other factors that had a major impact on the user experience in general and the perceived security were perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and freedom of choice. The results showed how not understanding how to interact with the vehicle’s physical features had a negative impact on perceived safety while freedom of choice such as being able to book a specific seat in the vehicle is indicated to have a positive impact on people’s willingness to share their journey with a stranger.

The present thesis aims to establish ideas and technical solutions that can have a positive impact on women's perceived safety while traveling in autonomous vehicles, made for sharing with strangers. The method follows the Design Thinking model which contributes to a user-centered design approach. Initial literature research was performed to understand the problem area, which included women's issues in public transportation, the development of autonomous vehicles, the foundation of a trusting behavior and authentication technologies for identifying users. Following ideation workshops with eight potential users of the service contributed with ideas based on the female perspective and their expectations of traveling in a shared mobility alternative. These results provide a foundation that contributes to a specific purpose of the thesis to create and evaluate strategies for authentication of co-passengers due to being advocated by the participants. Two versions of a high-fidelity mobile application prototype were created in Figma with different strategies for how to interact with the service and authentication methods to align with the autonomous vehicle prototype provided by NEVS during the following tests.  The final user tests, with 14 participants, indicate that an identification method should be included in the service, especially during the night. Six of seven female participants appreciate a combination of Bank ID while requesting a ride and facial recognition when boarding the vehicle. However, the results of the male participants vary to a larger extent. The results do not indicate where the identification technology should be implemented, in the private phone or the vehicle doors. To create a solution available to a larger target group, the mobile application need to adopt and provide option alternatives regarding identification methods due to individual differences and previous experiences which lays a foundation for the users' ability to contribute to a trusting behavior. Furthermore, an onboarding process for the first-time user is proposed to prepare the user and describe how the service could be used and what is expected by them.

The paper proposes the management of bus disruption (e.g. fleet failure) and maintain a resilient transportation system through a synergy between shared autonomous vehicles and the existing public transport system based on the organizational structure and demand characteristics. The methodology is applied to the region of Rennes (France) and its surroundings.

Transport is one of the basic needs of a functioning society. Unfortunately, transport also pollutes our cities and release greenhouses gases. Driverless technology is a technology predicted to disrupt the future transport system, and perhaps change how we travel from private cars to shared vehicles. This study focuses on the aspect of privately owned versus shared driverless vehicles, to create more knowledge of how the future transport system will look. A utility-based demand model is used to find the demand for private and shared transport when driverless vehicles are available. The utility of different transport options is estimated by looking at earlier studies about the performance of driverless cars, driverless buses and shared driverless taxis, which is used as input for the utility model. The results indicate that driverless technology will not be a catalyst that makes transport go from private to shared. While driverless buses can improve public transport, and shared driverless taxis outcompete current taxis, driverless technology will also improve private vehicles. The results in this study imply that the sustainability improvements earlier reports have predicted with a high use of shared driverless transportation might not materialise unless efforts are done to increase use of shared transportation. / Transport är ett av de grundläggande behoven för ett välfungerande samhälle. På samma gång släpper transporter ut både växthusgaser och skadliga partiklar. Självkörande teknik är något som förväntas revolutionera framtidens transportsystem, förhoppningen är att de ska förändra hur folk reser från privata bilar till delade transporter. Denna studie fokuserar på den förhoppningen. Kommer framtidens transporter ske i privata självkörande fordon eller delade självkörande fordon och vad i sin tur betyder det för framtidens transportsystem? Med en nyttobaserad efterfråge- och bilinnehavsmodell modelleras efterfrågan av självkörande delade taxis, självkörande bussar och självkörande privatbilar. Resultaten indikerar att självkörande teknik inte nödvändigtvis kommer vara en katalysator som får människor att sluta äga och använda privatbilar. Självkörande bussar kan göra kollektivtrafiken bättre, och självkörande delade taxibilar kommer troligtvis användas mer än dagens taxis. Men självkörande privatbilar kommer också ha många fördelar, och de som äger dem kommer dessutom troligtvis köra längre sträckor än dagens bilister. Resultatet av denna rapport indikerar därför att de stora förväntningarna som finns på självkörande teknik gällande delade transporter kan vara felaktiga, om inte andra åtgärder också görs för att öka delning. Att delningen inte ökar gör också att de hållbarhetsförbättringar som vissa tidigare rapporter förutspått inte nödvändigtvis kommer ske.