article thumbnail

MIT study finds Uber & Lyft increase congestion, decrease transit ridership and don’t affect vehicle ownership

Green Car Congress

Researchers at MIT report that the entrance of transportation network companies (TNCs)—specifically Uber and Lyft, which together have a 98% share of the market—in cities led to increased road congestion in terms of both intensity (by 0.9%) and duration (by 4.5%); an 8.9% —Diao et al.

MIT 360
article thumbnail

MIT study finds computational load for widespread autonomous driving could be a huge driver of global carbon emissions

Green Car Congress

Realizing that less attention has been paid to the potential footprint of autonomous vehicles, the MIT researchers built a statistical model to study the problem. This research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the MIT-Accenture Fellowship. Sudhakar, Soumya, Vivienne Sze, and Sertac Karaman.

MIT 218
article thumbnail

MIT/UC Davis professors challenge claims that ethanol production decreased gasoline prices in 2010 and 2011

Green Car Congress

Two professors from MIT and UC Davis have released a paper challenging the recent claims by the Renewable Fuel Association (RFA) and US Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack that ethanol production decreased gasoline prices by $0.89 Christopher Knittel at MIT and Assoc. and statistically insignificant. Click to enlarge.

Davis 334
article thumbnail

MIT team develops new lane-change algorithm for autonomous cars

Green Car Congress

Most existing lane-change algorithms for autonomous cars have one of two drawbacks: Either they rely on detailed statistical models of the driving environment, which are difficult to assemble and too complex to analyze on the fly; or they’re so simple that they can lead to impractically conservative decisions, such as never changing lanes at all.

MIT 186
article thumbnail

MIT researchers build model simulating atmospheric transport of PAHs; how chemicals get to the Arctic

Green Car Congress

MIT researchers have built a model to simulate long-range atmospheric transport of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). GEOS-Chem captures observed seasonal trends with no statistically significant difference between simulated and measured mean annual concentrations.

MIT 218
article thumbnail

MIT researchers developing algorithms to predict more accurately which cars are likeliest to run red lights

Green Car Congress

Researchers at MIT are devising algorithms for more accurately estimating driver behavior at road intersections—i.e., Inferring driver intentions has been the subject of extensive research.More specifically, the modeling of behavior at intersections has been studied using different statistical models.

MIT 273
article thumbnail

Cambridge-MIT Study Attributes ~8,000 Premature Deaths Per Year to Aircraft Cruise Emissions

Green Car Congress

A study by a team from the University of Cambridge (UK) and MIT attributes ~8,000 premature mortalities per year to aircraft cruise emissions. Lead author Steven Barrett from MIT notes that there are many uncertainties, including how accurately the model reflects how air travels vertically from high altitudes to low altitudes.

MIT 239