COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	Dear
C00004 ENDMK
C⊗;
Dear


	The \F1American Association for the Advancement of Science\F0 holds
a series of symposia each year in connection with its annual meeting.  The
next meeting will be in New York City on January 26-30.  In connection with
this meeting, Rhodes Stephenson of Jet Propulsion Laboratory and I are
organizing a symposium entitled \F1THE FUTURE OF CARS - ENVIRONMENT AND
ENERGY\F0.  Here is a draft of the announcement.


	We would like to invite you to take part in the fourth session -
the long term future of the automobile.  The phrase \F1long term\F0
is intended to free the participant to consider any changes in the
transportation system that are realizable not excluding any that can't
be reached in fixed time.

				Sincerely yours
COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	\\M0BASL30\M1BASI30\.
C00006 ENDMK
C⊗;
\\M0BASL30;\M1BASI30;\.









\F0\CTHE FUTURE OF CARS - ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMICS


\J	The automobile gives  most Americans the freedom to  go where
they want  whenever they want to go and carry  along a closet full of
whatever they want to carry.   This freedom is so highly valued  that
almost all of  us accept risks that have killed  more people than all
our  wars.  We spend perhaps 20% of our  GNP on cars,  gas and roads,
and we have suffered considerable air pollution  and aesthetic damage
on behalf  of this freedom.   Other countries have  been following us
along the automobile path as fast as their economies permit.

	The social  costs of  the automobile  have been  increasingly
emphasized lately,  and it has even been  suggested that we must give
up  much of our  mobility in order  to have a  better environment and
consume less energy.   The facts are  not all in yet,   and we  still
don't know what  long term trade-offs are  available between mobility
on  the one  hand and  environmental and  energy costs on  the other.
Besides that,   we don't  know what trade-off  point the public  will
choose once the alternatives are  known.  In the short term, however,
the automobile will not change much,  and the problem is how to  make
it work better.

	This  symposium is  for the  presentation  and discussion  of
studies relevant to  these questions.  The first session concentrates
on the effects of various options that are available in the immediate
time frame between the present and 1980. The second session discusses
alternative  engines and  their effect in  the 1980-2000 intermediate
time frame. Both energy and environmental quality are considered. The
third  session  is  dedicated  to  short term  public  policy  issues
including whether the  Clean Air Act  should be modified.   The  last
session concerns  the long  term future  of the automobile  including
where  the energy is  to come  from after the  oil is gone,   whether
individual  transportation must  or  should  be  given  up  for  mass
transportation and communication, or whether, on the other hand,  the
individual freedom given by the automobile can and should be enhanced
and how this might be done.\.
COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	1. The virtues of cars not posessed by other means of transportation.
C00008 ENDMK
C⊗;
1. The virtues of cars not posessed by other means of transportation.

2. We can continue indefinitely to have cars except in Manhattan and
probably even there.

3. How cars can be made to serve better.

4. What might be better yet.

	There has been much denunciation of the role of the automobile
in American life, and when I first thought of organizing a session
on the long term future of the automobile, I thought that this
denunciation had given rise to a controversy that in turn had
given rise to strongly held reasonably comprehensive views of what
the future of the automobile ought to be.  As far as I have been
able to determine, this was a mistake.  Neither the autombile
companies nor the environmental organizations, nor the Department
of Transportation, nor the Environmental Protection Agency nor
the academic community has developed any comprehensive views on the
subject.  At least none were produced by a literature search
and a rather determined search for speakers for this symposium.
From this I have concluded that most of the talk is just posturing
and that almost everyone expects things to continue more or less
as they are now - at least until some catastrophe occurs
that may or may not be related to the automobile.

	This has encouraged me to express a comprehensive view
even though only one part of it - the computer part - has
anything really new in it.
This view has several components:

	1. The virtues of the automobile as compared to any
existing or presently planned form of public transportation
are so great that we should plan for its continuance until
it can be replaced by a transportation system (quite possibly
also individual) that has these virtues in an even greater
degree.

	2. Most of the agitation and legislation concerning
the automobile in the last five years has been misguided -
mainly the expression of intellectual fads.  Nevertheless,
we can afford the waste that the legislation has caused so
far, and some aspects of the legislation - if not the
spirit that gave rise to it - are worthwhile.
In short, the 1950s understood the automobile better than the 1970s.
How things got worse is worthy of study; the scientific
community is not without its share of the responsibility.
Besides this, many of the legal and bureaucratic measures that
have been taken without the informed consent of the governed
and are tyrannical in any sense of the word.


	4. In order to keep the automobile with its present
virtues only the energy problem has to be solved - i.e. none
of the other problems actually require action, although some
action may be helpful.  The energy problem for vehicles is
substantial and requires action beyond that required for the
general energy problem.

	5. The automobile can be made a more useful tool than
it is now, but most of the improvements require a degree of
artificial intelligence (my field) that won't come easily or
quickly, but will come eventually.

	This paper is devoted to elaborating these five points.


THE VIRTUES OF THE AUTOMOBILE

	Much of this section is belaboring the obvious, i.e.
bringing to the top of the reader's mind things that he has
probably thought of at one time or another.
COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	\F2Advantages of cars over any form of public transportation\F0
C00003 ENDMK
C⊗;
\F2Advantages of cars over any form of public transportation\F0


	1. Flexibility. - This flexibility has several forms which
are distinguished by their time scales.

	On a time scale of seconds, a driver can change his destination
and make a U-turn.

	
COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002		The automobile is here to stay for the forseeable future.
C00006 ENDMK
C⊗;
	The automobile is here to stay for the forseeable future.
It has advantages over any other proposed feasible means of transportation,
and we can continue to afford its energy and material costs.  Its use is
near saturation so that the rapid exponential growth in highway and
parking requirements will level off.
In the mechanical dimension, the automobile has limited possibilities for
improvement with technology based on present science.  Of course, different
tradeoffs of parameters available for modification can be made such as
meeting the present desire for greater energy economy.

	However, the possibilities in the control dimension offered by
modern electronics have not even been tapped as yet.  Improvements in
control can improve the speed-safety tradeoff, can assure that the
energy efficiency allowed by the mechanical system is actually realized,
and, in the long run, can provide automatically driven cars that can
be sent on errands, can drive safely at much higher speeds, and can
carry people too young, too old, too drunk, or otherwise incapacitated for
driving.

	The main advantages of the automobile of public transportation
are flexibility, privacy, transportation of goods, and cost.  The flexibility
ranges over wide time scales.  On the one hand, a driver can make a U-turn
if he changes his mind, and at the other extreme, when requirements cause
a new town or industrial plant to be created, it can be served moderately
well by the existing network of roads, and new ones can be created later.
Privacy and the ability to transport a groceries, children, camping equipment,
and small furniture.

	Many of the proposals for taking advantage of the energy crisis in
order to replace automobiles by public transportation seem to me to have
the character of a small minority attempting to enforce values which it
not even that minority sincerely holds on the vast majority by basically
fraudulent methods, e.g. by preventing the energy crisis from being solved
or by exaggerating the environmental consequences of continuing the way we
are.
For example, Russell Train has said
\F1"We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and a
great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we ought to
be making anyway for other reasons." - Science\F0, 7 June 1974.
The changes Train advocates cannot be made in any permanent way without
the consent of the voters; I don't think the consent will be forthcoming
for what he seems to have in mind.