Substituting individual mobility by mobility on demand using autonomous vehicles - a sustainable assessment simulation of Berlin and Stuttgart

Our current mobility paradigm increasingly faces economic, ecological, and social limits in urban areas. The aim of this paper is to analyse if a fleet of shared autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs) can meet these challenges while satisfying the current requirements of privately-owned internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). Therefore, analytical models have been developed to simulate and investigate the impacts of mobility behaviour in Berlin and Stuttgart (Germany). The collected data were used to calculate the fleet size, the energy consumption, the emission of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and the carbon footprint of different shared AEVs in comparison with privately owned ICEVs. The approach shows that the system of a shared AEV fleet could lower externalities (accident avoidance, traffic jams, free spaces, parking costs and lifetime losses) in cities and generate cost benefits for customers.