the future of mobility. What does it hold?

How will people and goods move about in

the future in the coming months and years? In the next decades and well beyond when
you think about the future of mobility, what comes to mind for you? Do you imagine
super high speed trains
whizzing about urban areas or a personal veto vertical takeoff and landing
plane parked on your own landing pad? Do you imagine autonomous vehicles
shuttling people about as they work or read or sleep behind the wheel? How do you
imagine the future of mobility? No one knows for
sure what the future holds. Of course the most people agree that
the future of mobility will look very different than it does now and some clues
about that future can be
found in the extremely exciting, compelling technologies that are being
developed and deployed right now. That will undoubtedly be
a part of that future and that is what this course is about. Specifically. We're
going to focus on two powerful
categories of new mobility technology, electrification and automation within
each of these broad categories, incredible new technologies
are being produced as we speak, many of them right here at
the University of michigan. One of the goals of this course is to
open the curtain a bit and share with you a peek at some of them now you might
be surprised that a course on emergent mobility technology is being taught by
a social scientist and not an engineer but don't worry you'll be hearing from
plenty of engineers throughout this course as well as experts working in many
areas of transportation and mobility. But our focus is not on the nuts and
bolts, details of the technologies per se. It's about how they will affect people
and communities and societies and
ultimately the planet. We'll spend a lot of time hearing
from educators across the social sciences about the technology's
social implications. Can these technologies produce safer, more
sustainable and more equitable outcomes? Who will benefit and
who will pay the costs? What role can government,
the private sector civil society and people like you play to ensure safer, more
sustainable and more equitable outcomes. So let me start with the punchline
what I see as the most important point of this whole course, electrification and
automation technologies carry the potential to greatly
improve quality of life for billions of people around the world. But these benefits
are not guaranteed. They may give people greater
access to jobs and housing and amenities more safely and at lower cost. They may
reduce our dependence
on fossil fuels and massively cut greenhouse gas emissions,
but they may not. Yes, we already have cars that
largely drive themselves. But when you ask them,
most people won't even consider riding in a driverless vehicle
due to safety concerns. We have super cool electric cars but most often they are
just too costly for
most families to purchase. We're deploying sensors and communication
devices in our road infrastructure so that cars can communicate
with one another. But what does that mean for privacy? What happens to car
batteries
once they're used up? Will they end up in
giant toxic trash heaps? Or will we find ways to recycle and
reuse the materials? The bottom line is that while
the possible benefits of new mobility technology are great,
they are not guaranteed. People will need to make difficult
decisions about how and where to invest resources in new transportation,
technology and infrastructure, whether to provide financial incentives
for adopting new technologies and to whom, how to regulate the use of electrified
and
autonomous vehicles and so much more. In this course, we'll work
through many of these dualities, these tradeoffs so
that by the end of the course, you will better understand the scope and
interconnectedness of this exciting and rapidly evolving space and
be prepared to think about what's next? How can I be a part of
the future of mobility? So let's get to it. Shall we?