The Sustainability Case for Autonomous Vehicles
Basil Seggos is the Chair of the A Better Road Forward Advisory Board and is the former Commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
The conversation over autonomous vehicles has long centered on safety. Rightfully so, with an independent study revealing that autonomous vehicles are involved in 68 percent fewer crashes per mile than human drivers across four major U.S. cities– and 81 percent fewer crashes involving injury. The sustainability case is just as strong. The autonomous vehicles on the road today, including in the robotaxi industry, are overwhelmingly electric. Every autonomous mile driven is a mile free of tailpipe pollutants poisoning our air. New York State has an opportunity to make our roads safer while improving public health.
The state’s climate law requires cutting emissions 85 percent by 2050. Transportation is the largest statewide emissions source, which is why lawmakers mandated that every new passenger car, pickup, and SUV sold to be zero-emission by 2035. Yet, the road to electrification has been slow, hindered by rollbacks in federal incentives and lags in charging infrastructure buildout. Autonomous vehicle policy can shift whole categories of driving onto electric platforms at once.
The for-hire sector shows how hard the conventional path has been to date. New York City's Green Rides Initiative requires high-volume operators to dispatch 100 percent electric or wheelchair-accessible trips by 2030, with a 25 percent benchmark this year, increasing to 40 percent in 2027. The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission reported in February that meeting it will take converting as many as 1,000 vehicles beyond the current pace.
Meanwhile, the cost of vehicle emissions continue to plague New Yorkers, especially those in low-income communities. Fine particulate matter contributes to an estimated 2,000 excess deaths a year in New York City, and more than half of that pollution comes from local sources like traffic congestion. Traffic-related nitrogen dioxide contributes to some 21,000 new childhood asthma cases regionally each year. In the Tremont section of the Bronx, 20 percent of children have been diagnosed with asthma– nearly double the citywide average.
Emissions data on autonomous vehicles is encouraging. As an example, Waymo's all-electric fleet had driven more than 25 million cumulative miles through late 2024, and helped avoid an estimated 6,000 metric tons of CO2. Analysis of the company’s Open Dataset found autonomous vehicle technology installed in a vehicle– whether combustion or electric– will use about 8 percent less fuel and emit roughly 66 percent less pollution than comparable human-driven vehicles, and that’s before factoring in the emission benefits of electric vehicles. And every depot built to support autonomous vehicles is an opportunity to expand charging infrastructure for the general public.
We should be candid about energy: autonomy relies on computing, and computing relies on energy. Americans are rightly having intense conversations about data centers and grid capacity. But there should be no debate about moving away from burning gasoline in the Bronx, the South End of Albany, Downtown Buffalo, or dozens of other low income communities.
The Empire State enacted the nation’s strongest climate law in 2019. The law sent signals to industry that the state would embrace innovation in order to meet its ambitious emissions reductions targets. Advancements in autonomous vehicle technologies have now delivered an opportunity to cut vehicle emissions while boosting safety on our streets. This is something all New Yorkers can support.
