Our Work

Personal Mobility

Personal transport is being disrupted every day by new business models (Uber, Lyft), changing attitudes of young people to car ownership, population growth in urban areas and the possibility of autonomous vehicles.

Approaches to transportation taken 50 years ago seem outdated and out of sync with our modern needs. But whether any of these disruptions contribute to resolving problems like air emissions, congestion, and high personal transport costs remains to be seen. And with transportation contributing 27 per cent to Canada’s GHG emissions, there is an opportunity to direct this disruption towards less carbon-intensive approaches. Ideally, the future of personal mobility will see less traffic, less accidents, more convenience and, if done right, less emissions.

The Accelerator is working to define the pathways that can speed up the electrification of personal vehicles—as part of integrated transport solutions—and influencing the longer-term deployment of autonomous vehicles. Exploring these pathways can also open new economic opportunities in future vehicle and battery manufacturing potential that draw on Canada’s comparative advantage.

Latest

To meet climate goals, we can’t leave autonomous vehicles on autopilot

Blog, Personal Mobility

Autonomous vehicles have come to play a major role in many visions of the transportation future, with car companies, tech companies, and policymakers all proposing their own versions of a self-driving future.

Report: Thinking about the future of autonomous vehicles

Personal Mobility, Report

This report explores whether we should support the rapid introduction of autonomous vehicles in the hope that they will unlock changes in the mobility system that facilitate more low-carbon travel or be more cautious on the ground that they might make things worse.