Researchers have claimed that self-driving cars will play a crucial role in future to reduce carbon emissions. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say that autonomous electric taxis provide a brilliant way to reduce the rate of global warming.

“The analysis found that the per-mile greenhouse gas emissions of an electric vehicle deployed as a self-driving, or autonomous, taxi in 2030 would be 63% to 82% lower than a projected 2030 hybrid vehicle driven as a privately owned car and 90% lower than a 2014 gasoline-powered private vehicle”, they said.

They say that it is very important to understand that car’s size should be based on the requirement of customers. Matching customers with the right size taxi will alone result into reducing 50% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The researchers said that it is needless provide oversize cars to customers who don’t need them as such cars majorly serve the purpose of transporting a bunch of useless metal and plastic around town.

The super efficient motor of a battery-electric vehicle will contribute to a big portion of the GHG dropkick. Besides, self-driving cars are capable of driving closely behind other autonomous cars to reduce wind resistance (‘platooning’), optimally routing trips and enabling smoother acceleration and braking.

Self-driving cars are the future and automakers are making every effort to turn them into reality as soon as possible to address the problem of emissions cuts to mitigate global warming. The Berkley National Laboratory report has been published by Nature Climate Change in an article titled, “Autonomous taxis could greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions of U.S. light-duty vehicles”.