NITI Aayog, the Government of India’s official think tank, with support from RMI and RMI India, has launched a campaign to transform last-mile deliveries and eliminate pollution through consumer engagement. Based on the Sanskrit word for zero, Shoonya will create a verification and branding system for electric delivery vehicles and... Read more →

The number of electric vehicle miles traveled (eVMT) has been increasing each year since the introduction of the first mass market plug-in vehicles in late 2010. Beginning in 2014, annual all-electric vehicle eVMT has exceeded that of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the US, reaching a new high of nearly... Read more →

Crash avoidance features and teen-specific vehicle technologies have the potential to prevent or mitigate up to three-quarters of fatal crashes involving teen drivers, according to a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). We know these technologies don’t stop 100 percent of the crashes they’re designed to... Read more →

The US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released the Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Quarter of 2021. NHTSA estimates that 8,730 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the first three months of 2021, a 10.5% increase from the 7,900... Read more →

Volkswagen is now offering car subscriptions for the ID.3 and ID.4 EVs in Germany with the launch of the Volkswagen AutoAbo subscription model. Customers can take out a monthly subscription, starting at €499 for the ID.3. This will enable us to achieve a key milestone in our Business Model 2.0.... Read more →

Brand loyalty among US consumers for new vehicles dropped to a six-year low in June, according to new analysis from IHS Markit. Analysis of new vehicle registration data through June indicates that the overall brand loyalty rate of 51% in the US market is the lowest since August 2015. This... Read more →

While most electric vehicle (EV) owners primarily charge their vehicles at home, public charging is a significant part of the EV ownership experience. Owners’ ability to recharge their vehicle’s battery is a key factor in the broader adoption of EVs, particularly among those who can’t install a private home charger... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. Among the variables included in my ongoing monthly monitoring of key transportation indexes is revenue passenger miles for domestic flying. That monitoring has shown a huge pandemic-related drop in flying during the spring of 2020 and a gradual rebound later in 2020 and in... Read more →

Advocacy group Coltura has published a report that finds converting the biggest users of gasoline to EVs in the next ten years is critical to reaching climate goals and that present EV policies are poorly suited to accomplishing that conversion. The report, “Gasoline Superusers,” presents the data available on drivers... Read more →

In an open-access study published in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society, Francesco Orsi, of the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning Group, Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands, suggests that widespread adoption of electric vehicles may have a negative impact on land use. Electric vehicles (EVs) are widely regarded as... Read more →

The Transportation Services Index (TSI), created by the US Department of Transportation (DOT), Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), measures the volume of freight and passengers moved monthly by the for-hire transportation sector in the United States. BTS produces three indexes: a freight index, a passenger index, and a combined index.... Read more →

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected both consumer and commercial transportation, but global oil demand will probably continue to grow through 2030, according to a new study. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies analyzed four scenarios to understand how... Read more →

In the UK, 100% renewable energy supplier Pure Planet and bp launched a new digital service that allows households and drivers of gasoline, diesel and electric cars to see accurately the financial cost and the emissions of their personal energy use. The new service is free to all Pure Planet... Read more →

Mayor Eric Garcetti launched the second phase of the Metro NextGen Bus Plan, a strategy to boost ridership through faster, more reliable, and more frequent service as riders return to the system. The second phase of the NextGen Bus Plan brings hundreds of new bus trips on weekdays and weekends,... Read more →

A Henry Ford Health System study published in The Laryngoscope shows that head and neck injuries caused by use of e-scooters have been on the rise since rideshare systems were introduced to the public in late 2017. Kathleen Yaremchuk, M.D., Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck... Read more →

According to a new study by researchers from Delft University of Technology, in the context of current recharging time, Dutch EV drivers in general prefer not to participate in “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) contracts, while the opposite is true in the context of fast recharging. With regard to specific V2G contract attributes,... Read more →

New research from IHS Markit shows that the average age of light vehicles in operation (VIO) in the US has risen to 12.1 years this year, increasing by nearly 2 months during 2020 and elevated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in average age will further drive vehicle maintenance opportunities... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. Among the variables included in my ongoing monthly monitoring of key transportation indexes is revenue passenger miles for domestic flying. That monitoring has shown a huge pandemic-related drop in flying during the spring of 2020 and a gradual rebound later in 2020 and in... Read more →

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) statistical projection of traffic fatalities for 2020 shows that an estimated 38,680 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. This represents an estimated increase of about 7.2% as compared to the 36,096 fatalities reported in 2019. Preliminary data from the Federal Highway Administration... Read more →

Twenty-four percent of opportunity charging sessions start when the battery is already more than 80% charged, according to a report released by ViriCiti, a provider of electric fleet and infrastructure management solutions. ViriCiti connects to more than 1,200 charger sockets (plugin & pantograph) across the world and has registered almost... Read more →

A new paper by an MIT team and colleagues in Singapore, China, Italy and Denmark, drawing on global data, finds that people visit places more frequently when they have to travel shorter distances to get there. By examining cellphone data on four continents, the researchers were able to arrive at... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. As shown in my ongoing monitoring of monthly changes in key transportation indexes, the amount of driving (adjusted for population) during the pandemic decreased substantially. This brief post examines the relationship between driving and GDP during the pandemic. The raw data for the analysis... Read more →

According to the ITF Transport Outlook 2021, the biennial flagship report of the International Transport Forum, a sister organization of the OECD, global transport activity will more than double by 2050, and traffic emissions will rise by 16% compared to 2015 even if existing commitments to decarbonize transport are fully... Read more →

Using naturalistic driving data and machine learning techniques, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed highly accurate algorithms for detecting mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers. Naturalistic driving data refer to data captured through... Read more →

Discontinuance is the term applied to the abandoning of a new technology by someone who was once an adopter or user. A new study by Scott Hardman and Gil Tal at the University of California, Davis has found that discontinuance occurs at a rate of 21% for California plug-in hybrid... Read more →

Fuel tankering in commercial aviation is the practice of overfueling with less expensive fuel purchased at one airport to avoid purchasing more expensive fuel at another—in other words, flying with extra fuel on board to save money. Calculating the benefit of tankering is highly flight-specific; extra fuel increases the takeoff... Read more →

In response to strong demand for electric vehicles, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) expects rebate funds for the statewide Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) to be exhausted within 30 days. Electric vehicles (EVs) account for nearly 8% of all light-duty vehicles sold in California. More than 145,000 EVs were... Read more →

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) has published findings and data from its inaugural study counting the number of people biking and walking on Los Angeles streets. The count, which took place at 63 intersections over several weekends in 2019, reveals trends in active transportation while observing the demographics... Read more →

When winter storms threaten to make travel dangerous, people often turn to salt, spreading it liberally over highways, streets and sidewalks to melt snow and ice. But a new study led by Sujay Kaushal of the University of Maryland warns that introducing salt into the environment—whether it's for de-icing roads,... Read more →

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts an increase in demand for petroleum products during the 2021 summer driving season as the impacts of COVID-19 diminish in the United States. EIA’s annual Summer Fuels Outlook, released today with EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), expects a 15% increase in US highway... Read more →

Year-on-year gasoline sales in the United States have moved into positive territory for the first time on the one-year anniversary of the first major declines that resulted from COVID-induced stay at home orders. However, demand still trails pre-pandemic levels by a considerable margin, according to the latest data from Oil... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research This analysis examined truck traffic as the percentage of all traffic on interstate highways in the individual states and the District of Columbia. The calculations combined the percentages of vehicle distances traveled by single-unit trucks and combination trucks (but not light trucks) published by... Read more →

Drivers are using adaptive cruise control (ACC) as a tool for speeding, possibly undermining the feature’s potential safety benefits, according to a new study by researchers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) with colleagues from MIT. Drivers are substantially more likely to speed when using ACC or partial... Read more →

A recent collaborative study led by researchers from the University of Maryland (UMD) College of Agriculture and Natural Resources found that consumers tend to buy something less fuel efficient than they normally would for their second car after buying an eco-friendly vehicle. While this sounds like an all-too-logical conclusion, the... Read more →

As a direct result of the state’s Clean Cars 4 All program, more than 10,000 Californians have now scrapped old, dirty cars and replaced them with cleaner alternatives such as new and used zero-emission, plug-in hybrid, or hybrid cars. There is strong consumer demand for Clean Cars 4 All (CC4A)... Read more →

Arity, a mobility data and analytics company, is teaming up with Ford Motor Company to enable any participating insurer to deliver simple and secure usage-based insurance (UBI) programs to eligible connected Ford and Lincoln vehicle owners. Usage-based insurance programs give drivers access to personalized driving data directly from the vehicle... Read more →

The recent announcement by GM that it aspires to phase out sales of oil-powered light vehicles (LVs) by 2035 (earlier post)—part of a broader proposal to make the automaker a net-zero-carbon company—is a prominent signpost that oil demand from LVs has already peaked, according to a new analysis by Jim... Read more →

New data suggests that electric vehicles may not be an easy future substitute for the gasoline-powered fleet, as EVs currently travel less than half as much as the US fleet average. A team from the University of Chicago, University of California, Davis, and UC Berkeley combined billions of hourly electricity... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. The current pandemic has not affected the different modes of mobility to the same degree. As is evident from my ongoing monthly monitoring of key transportation indexes, flying, riding the train, and taking public transit have all been influenced much more than driving. This... Read more →

Almost half of global consumers (46%) are considering purchasing a car in the next 12 months, an increase from 35% in April 2020. This reflects a continuous shift in consumer preference towards personal mobility, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, as car ownership today is seen as a safeguard against the... Read more →

A new study from researchers at MIT uncovers the kinds of infrastructure improvements that would make the biggest difference in increasing the number of electric cars on the road, a key step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. The researchers found that installing charging stations on residential streets, rather... Read more →

Among the early adopters who own an EV, 82% say they “definitely will” consider purchasing another in the future, according to the inaugural J.D. Power US Electric Vehicle Experience (EVX) Ownership Study. However, satisfaction with the current ownership experience is a key influencer for whether owners will purchase the same... Read more →

Researchers at Toyota Research Institute (TRI) are conducting research with Stanford’s Dynamic Design Lab into how to bring together the instincts of professional drift drivers and automated driving technology. Thee goal is to design a new level of active safety technology and share it broadly so that Toyota and other... Read more →

Volta, a builder of commerce-centric electric vehicle (EV) charging networks, announced an oversubscribed Series D financing of $125 million. Goldman Sachs acted as exclusive placement agent to the company in connection with the financing. Volta builds and operates an EV charging network with the highest utilization in the United States.... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. This analysis examines distances driven per vehicle in different vehicle classes in 2019 (the last year before the pandemic) and compares them with the corresponding values in 2009. The raw data were, for each vehicle class, the total vehicle distance traveled and the number... Read more →

The Continental Mobility Study 2020 shows that enthusiasm for electric cars is strong in China, while reservations still need to be overcome in Germany, France, the US and Japan. The study also shows that acceptance of electric mobility has increased in all five countries surveyed in recent years. The Continental... Read more →

When ridesourcing companies Uber and Lyft show up in urban areas, vehicle registrations per capita increase by 0.7% on average, increasing even more in car-dependent cities, according to a new study led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. In an open-access paper in the journal iScience, the team estimates the... Read more →

By applying statistical geometry to analyzing urban road networks, KAUST researchers have advanced understanding of how wireless charging roads might influence driver behavior and city planning in a future where electric vehicles (EVs) dominate the car market. (Stochastic geometry is a branch of applied probability particularly adapted to the study... Read more →

Global aviation data firm Cirium released its new Airline Insights Review 2020 which reveals the deep impact on aviation of worldwide travel restrictions to curb COVID-19. The report shows that the pandemic and its consequences wiped out 21 years of global passenger traffic growth in a matter of months, reducing... Read more →

2021 will kickstart a decade of growing Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption, which will see EV sales move from a rounding error of total new vehicle shipments to more than a quarter of new vehicles shipping in 2030, according to global tech market advisory firm ABI Research. In its new whitepaper,... Read more →