Which power source (electric or gas) is better suited for self-driving technology?

Gas. Gas/Diesel (Internal Combustion Engine Technology (“ICE”) is the only power source that can facilitate rapid self drive adoption.
[1a] The early use of self driving technology will be long distance interstate travel. The most ‘valuable’ early use of Self Driving Vehicles (“SDVs”) are in the trucking/goods transportation. A key to successful SDV highway transport is distance. It will be easier and more economical to enlarge gas/diesel gas tanks than to build out charging stations. It will be easier to simply have a truck travel 2,000 to 3,000 miles without fuel issues. Electric isn’t going to do this job.
Note, once driver hours are not an issue, trucks could travel at lower speeds and significantly boost fuel economy.
[1b] Another early use for SDVs will be taxi/rideshare replacement. As a business the goal will be to have the SDV on the road for as many hours as possible. An ICE SDV fits the bill best for a long duty cycle. Hundreds of miles on a gas fill plus only minutes to ‘recharge’ to full capacity. An electric SDV might not last a taxi shift and the recharge takes time…30 to 60 minutes out of the revenue cycle every time. The lesser cost ICE SDV alternative has the range and operational efficiency.
[1c] Consumers are also going to want to travel without stopping…the ability to distance travel while sleeping (city to city or city to beach) is a simple example of why high ‘distance’ driving will be preferred. And for some time this is going to be ICE territory. Range anxiety is real and will have an effect on consumer choice in the early years of SDV purchases.
[2] Conversion of existing manufacturing to SDV tech will be difficult. Simultaneous conversion of gas to some other form of energy will make this difficult task likely impossible.
Adding SDV technology to the existing ICE platform leaves in place all the manufacturing processes and engineering resources that are proven and reliable with respect to the transport platform. Adding in to known technology is much easier than doing everything new.
[3] The transition to SDV tech will be capital intensive. Most vehicle manufacturers are not rich with Google/Apple like balance sheets. Vehicle manufacturers cannot afford a simultaneous expense of SDV and platform conversion to electric.
[4] The Tesla battery factory will double the world's supply of li-on batteries. And will meet the needs of only a few hundred thousand vehicles. These factories cost billions and take years to build. SDV tech will be adopted faster if it doesn’t have to wait years for these factories to create the billions of batteries needed.
[5] The downstream maintenance structure for ICE is in place. Not so for electric. For business vehicles (freight transport and consumer rentals) this is very important. Big trucks today often have annual duty cycles in the 5o,ooo to 70,000 mile range. Without drivers, this could double. If so maintenance will be more frequent and more important. The existing infrastructure is best suited for this.
Gas. Gas/Diesel is the only power source that can facilitate rapid self drive adoption.

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This post originally appeared on Quora.com on June 12, 2016 ( https://goo.gl/KvKQ5z ).

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