Robin Chase 談 Zipcar 和她下一個大計劃

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講者：Robin Chase
2007年3月演講，2008年1月在TED上線
MyOOPS開放式課程
譯者：劉契良
編輯：洪曉慧
簡繁轉換：陳盈
後製：劉契良
字幕影片後製：謝旻均
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Robin Chase 談 Zipcar 和她下一個大計劃
今天我要談兩件事，第一件是為何我們必需要，以市場導向的收費來影響需求，並運用無線科技巨幅降低運輸業的碳排放量；第二是有極大的機會，如果我們選擇正確的無線科技，不但可以創造經濟成長的新動力，也可巨幅降低其他行業的二氧化碳排放量。
我感到很惶恐，我們必需在10到15年的時間內，降低80%的二氧化碳排放量，以避開災難性的後果，我很震驚，自己站在這裡跟您們談這些，什麼是災難性的後果？氣溫每上升三度，就會導致50%的物種滅絕，這不是電影，這是現實人生。
我真的很擔心，因為人們一談到車（那是我還蠻瞭解的事物），傳媒、政客，還有在場的人都會想說：「我們只要開省油的車就好了」，如果從今天起，往後十年內，直到這個機會之窗關閉為止，那些省油車只能降低我們對石化能源4%的需求，那是不夠的。
接下來我要談些比較令人愉悅的事，有些方式可以達成戲劇性的轉變，七年前我創立名為ZipCar的公司，它實際上是汽車共享的典型實踐，ZipCar的作法是將車輛停在都會稠密區的各個角落，讓會員可以時或日為單位來預約用車，而不需使用自己的車，使用ZipCar的人感覺如何？他們只在有使用時才需付費，沒有用車時根本不用付錢，而且還可以選擇一台最適合旅程所需的車輛，例如：有位女士預約了一輛MiniMia，她一天都過的很順利，你也可以選一輛BMW去見客戶，或是開Toyota Element去衝浪。
更了不起的是，這是車輛擁有權的最高展現，因為你將不只在全球7個城市擁有整個車隊的車，隨時可供差遣，而且永遠都不必擔心保養或維修，或相關的麻煩事，這就像是你一直所夢想，但媽媽卻說你不可能擁有的那輛車，我給你所有好康，卻沒有任何壞處。
這對社會的影響又如何呢？結果是目前ZipCar擁有十萬名會員，他們可以任意使用停在三千個停車處的三千輛車子，不同於一般城市居民每年平均開一萬兩千哩的車程，會員們每年只開五百哩，他們開心嗎？公司從成立以來每年以兩倍或更大的規模成長，人們崇敬這間公司，但是更好的是他們更喜歡這樣。
為何能夠從每年一萬兩千哩的車程降為五百哩？他們表示，開車每小時要花8到10塊美金，一天要花65塊，如果只是想買冰淇淋吃，誰會願意花那8塊錢？或是就不買了？也許我做其他事時再順道買冰淇淋就好了，由此可知，人們對於價格非常敏感。
我要再次強調是ZipCar的成功少不了科技的幫忙，少了科技，這一切只是空談，像是在30秒內租到車，預約一部車、取車，然後開車上路，作為一個服務供應商，如果交易成本太高的話，我無法只租你一小時的車，所以，如果少了無線科技，這個概念根本就無法成真。
另一個例子，我的公司GoLoco將在三週內設立，主要業務是將共乘以汽車共享的概念來實現，而且能服務到全美所有民眾，今日，75%的旅程是單人上路，但目前也有12%的旅程是以共乘方式來進行，我想我們能應用社交網路及線上付款系統，完全改變人們對共乘的看法，而且讓每趟旅程都更有效率。
我所看到的未來是，人們會認為與他人共乘是每天最棒的社交活動，就像你是如何前來參加TED演講？你是和其他的TED與會者一起來的，棒呆了！你根本不想要開自己的車獨自赴會，你如何購買食物？你是和鄰居一起去的，多棒的社交時光，這將會徹底改變我們對旅行的看法，而且可以提高我們行動的自由度，今天要去哪？會有誰相伴？這些都將成為你所期待和感受的事。
對社會的貢獻將是單人上路的車輛比例，可從之前所提的75%降到50%，停車場的需求也因此降低，塞車和二氧化碳的排放也將獲得改善，最重要的當然是這一切都是靠無線科技，還有，人們願意共乘的主因是開車的成本太高，美國人平均花在車子上的費用佔收入的19%，大家都急著要降低這項花費，但至今尚未有解決的方法。
最後一個範例是收塞車費，倫敦執行的最漂亮，每個開車上堵塞道路的人都必需要額外付費，倫敦在開始收塞車費的當天，一夜之間塞車率馬上下降25%，而收塞車費的政策連續施行了四年，人民喜歡這種結果嗎？倫敦市長Ken Livingston已經又獲連任了，所以，我們可以再次看到價格左右人民減少開車習慣的意願，1970年以來，我們的開車哩程數已上升了三倍，從1982年起也已上升了兩倍，可見舊系統的約束力已大幅鬆弛，但只要有正確的收費，我們絕對能改善這種現況。
全球各主要城市都在討論收塞車費，我要再次強調，無線科技能達成效果，不需在倫敦廣設收費站，然後無止盡地開關閘門，收塞車費是一項科技和心理的試驗，主要用於道路使用收費，而道路使用收費未來將是無可避免的，因為今日我們付出維修費，還有燃料稅用以養護我們的道路，但因為汽車愈來愈省油，所以這部份的稅收勢必減少，所以我們必需改對實際開車哩程徵稅。
無論收塞車費的結果如何，那些科技將會伴隨著道路使用收費發生，我們為何會用車過度？因為開車的費用過低，所以才會被過度消費，我們就需要適切地反應市場，這樣的話，你將會開始決定開車的哩程數，選擇行程，還有居住與工作的地點，無線科技可讓這個即時迴圈變成可能。
以下我要談談第二件事，即我們將何時開始收塞車費？道路使用收費快要上路了，但確切時間呢？我們要再等10到15年嗎？或者往後兩年內，我們就終將擁有這樣的政治意念來落實？我必需再次強調，這個政策工具將使我們的用車習慣一夕之間改變。
我們將使用何種無線科技呢？對於這點，我有一個大願景，有一項工具可以幫助我們連結數位落差、反應緊急事故、讓交通順暢、提供經濟成長的新動力，並巨幅降低所有行業的二氧化碳排放量。
這就像電影《畢業生》，你還記得那時刻嗎？假設你們是年輕帥小子，我當精明的商人，對白如下：
「我要告訴你們一件事，只有一件」
「是，老大，請說」？
「你有在聽嗎」？「有的」。
「分散式點對點自動組態無線網路」
（笑聲）
這些又稱之為網狀網路，因其為網狀系統，每台裝置都能延展該網路，你們可能之前都曾聽聞過，以下我舉幾個例子說明，你接下來也會聽到Alan Kay 談到這些，筆電在孩子開機後，就會開始和教室裡的每個孩子進行通訊，甚至是整個學校及村落，而通訊系統的成本多少？每個月，零元！
另一個例子是在紐奧良，攝錄機是網狀啟動的，所以他們可以監控法語區市中心的犯罪活動，當颶風來襲時，唯一還能運作的通訊系統是網狀網路，志工飛到當地架設了大量的裝備，隨後12個月裡，網狀網路是紐奧良地區唯一可用的無線網路。
另一個實例發生在英國普茨茅斯，他們在300輛公車上架設網狀網路，這些公車可以和時尚的車站進行通訊，乘客可以在車站就清楚知道欲搭公車現在確切位置，何時抵達，進而購買正確班次的車票，這都多虧了網狀網路，每月的通訊成本：零！
網狀網路的美感在於你可以擁有非常廉價的裝備，而無任何固定的通訊成本負擔，規模可大可小，可以隨時增設，像在卡崔娜颶風肆虐時，我們可以不斷地減設，只要還有一些裝備在，我們就能維持通訊，它們很頑強，其附加資訊是建立在極優的分散設計上，至於什麼是致命傷呢？沒有人在華府遊說讓這項措施落實，也沒有人在其所居住的城市中建置這類的無線網路，只因這不需花一毛錢的通訊費。
我所講述的範例都是網狀網路的個案，網路規模必需要大才有利可圖，要如何創造一個大規模的網路呢？你們準備好了嗎？還是電影「畢業生」，這次你們繼續當愛耍帥的小伙子，但我將化身為性感尤物，以下是電影的台詞：「妳在哪裡做」？「他的車上」，只要你牢記這個概念－（笑聲）－
你們期待我，Robin Chase，會出現在哪？想像一下，如果將網狀網路配備裝置到全美的每輛車上，我們就能擁有連結東西兩岸的免費無線通訊系統，我只是要你們多想想這些，將來這個系統又為何會誕生？因為假設我們將收塞車費，還有道路通行費，燃料稅將變成道路使用收費，這些事都將會發生。
我們又會使用何種無線科技呢？也許應該要用較好的一種。什麼時候才要執行呢？也許我們不應再等10到15年的時間，現在就應該要動起來，我希望能發起無線網際網路州際無線網狀系統，而且要將這套系統向所有的人開放，持開放式的標準。
現今我們正在運輸業中設置這些無線配備，在場的你們也許擁有FastPass或是EasyLane，那只是封閉網路中的單一用途設備，意義何在？我們傳輸的僅是，少許的資料位元，就像我們在做道路管控與收費時一樣，我們擁有極大的超額產能，我們可以提供最低價的方式，開通東西兩岸的無線網路。
我們可以擁有堅實的全國通訊系統，我們有可以為所有產業創造效能的新工具，想像一下，當從某處傳輸到某處的資訊成本幾近於零的情況，你該如何善用這項工具，我們可以創造出一個經濟動力引擎，資訊本應免費，存取資訊也是，我們要向人們收費的是排碳量。
我認為這個工具比「州際公路法」更有力，而且它對改變世界經濟的重要性和電氣化相同，若要我說，我認為除了開放式的標準外，還應有開放源碼版本，開放源碼版本意謂著，如果加以善用，全世界都可以很快地用到這套工具。
回顧我之前的一個論點，想像一下如果在拉哥斯巴士上，每位乘客都是網狀網路的一部份，今晨當我前往參加Larry Brilliant（他的網路極優）的TED演講大獎時，如果有一套開放源碼的網狀通訊裝置，加入上述的網路中讓一切開始運作，而我們就能參與其中，但這一切都有賴有人先分享出一小部份的免費資源，我們就能創造出數十億的額外價值，但這一特別的小部份通訊必需是開放源碼。
讓我們攜手主控這場夢魘吧，立即實施燃料稅，以這套無線網狀網路取代全國的道路收費站，要求網狀網路向大眾開放源碼，持開放標準，當然，記得要使用網狀網路。
謝謝。
（掌聲）
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文

About this talk

Robin Chase founded Zipcar, the world’s biggest car-sharing business. That was one of her smaller ideas. Here she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a mesh network vast as the Interstate.

About Robin Chase

With Zipcar, Robin Chase turned the concept of car-sharing -- and carbon-saving while you're at it -- into a reality and even a full-blown trend. Nowadays, the MIT-trained entrepreneur is… Full bio and more links

Transcript

So I'm going to talk about two stories today. One is how we need to use market-based pricing to affect demand and use wireless technologies to dramatically reduce our emissions in the transportation sector. And the other is that there is an incredible opportunity, if we choose the right wireless technologies, how we can generate a new engine for economic growth and dramatically reduce C02 in the other sectors.

I'm really scared. We need to reduce C02 emissions in ten to fifteen years by 80 percent in order to avert catastrophic effects. And I'm astounded that I'm standing here to tell you that. What are catastrophic effects? A three-degree centigrade climate change rise that will result in 50 percent species extinction. It's not a movie. This is real life. And I'm really worried, because when people talk about cars -- which I know something about -- the press, and politicians, and people in this room are all thinking, "Let's use fuel-efficient cars." If we started today, 10 years from now, at the end of this window of opportunity, those fuel-efficient cars will reduce our fossil fuel needs by four percent. That is not enough.

But now I'll talk about some more pleasant things. Here are some ways that we can make some dramatic changes. So ZipCar is a company that I founded seven years ago, but it's an example of something called carsharing. What ZipCar does is we park cars throughout dense urban areas for members to reserve by the hour and by the day, instead of using their own car. How does it feel to be a person using a ZipCar? It means that I pay only for what I need. All these hours for a car sitting idle, I'm not paying for it. It means that I can choose a car exactly for that particular trip. So here's a woman that reserved MiniMia, and she had her day. I can take a BMW when I'm seeing clients. I can drive my Toyota Element when I'm going to go on that surfing trip.

And the other remarkable thing is that I think it's the highest status of car ownership. Not only do I have a fleet of cars available to me in seven cities around the world that I can have at my beck and call, but heaven forbid that I would ever maintain or deal with the repair or have anything to do with it. It's like the car that you always wanted, that your mom said that you couldn't have. I get all the good stuff and none of the bad.

So what is the social result of this? The social result is that today's ZipCar has 100,000 members driving 3,000 cars parked in 3,000 parking spaces. Instead of driving 12,000 miles a year, which is what the average city dweller does, they drive 500 miles a year. Are they happy? The company has been doubling in size every since I founded it, or greater. People adore the company and it's better, you know? They like it. So how is it that people went from the 12,000 miles a year to 500 miles? It's because they said, it's 8 to 10 dollars an hour and 65 dollars a day. If I'm going to go buy some ice cream, do I really want to spend 8 dollars to go buy the ice cream? Or maybe I'll do without? Maybe I would have bought the ice cream when I did some other errand. So people really respond very quickly to it, to prices.

And the last point I want to make is, ZipCar would never be possible without technology. It required that it was completely trivial, that it takes 30 seconds to rent -- to reserve a car, go get it, drive it. And for me, as a service provider, I would never be able to provide you a car for an hour if the transaction cost was anything. So without these wireless technologies, this as a concept could never happen.

So here's another example. This company is GoLoco. I'm launching it in three weeks. And I hope to do for ridesharing what I did for carsharing. This will apply for people across all of America. Today 75 percent of the trips are single-occupancy vehicles. Yet 12 percent of trips to work are currently carpool. And I think that we can apply social networks and online-payment systems to completely change how people feel about ridesharing and make that trip much more efficient.

And so when I think about the future, people will be thinking that sharing the ride with someone is this incredibly great social event out of their day. You know, how did you get to TED? You went with other TEDsters. How fabulous. Why would you ever want to go by yourself in your own car? How did you go food shopping? You went with your neighbor, what a great social time. You know it's going to really transform how we feel about travel. And it will also, I think, enhance our freedom of mobility. Where can I go today and who can I do it with? Those are the types of things that you will look at and feel.

And the social benefits. The rate of single-occupancy vehicles is, I told you, 75 percent; I think we can get that down to 50 percent. The demand for parking, of course, is down, congestion, and the CO2 emissions. One last piece about this, of course, is that it is enabled by wireless technologies. And it's the cost of driving that's making people want to be able to do this. The average American spends 19 percent of their income on their car. And there's a pressure for them to reduce that cost, yet they have no outlet today.

So the last example of this is congestion pricing, very famously done in London, when you charge a premium for people to drive on congested roads. In London, the day they turned the congestion pricing on, there was a 25 percent decrease in congestion overnight. And that's persisted for the four years in which they've been doing congestion pricing. And again, do people like the outcome? Ken Livingston was reelected. So again, we can see that price plays an enormous role in peoples' willingness to reduce their driving behavior. We've tripled the miles we drive since 1970 and doubled them since 1982. There's a huge slack in that system. With the right pricing we can undo that.

Congestion pricing is being discussed in every major city around the world and is -- again -- wirelessly enabled. You weren't going to put tollbooths around the city of London and open and shut those gates. And what congestion pricing is, is that it's a technology trial and a psychological trial for something called road pricing. And road pricing is where we're all going to have to go. Because today we pay for our maintenance and wear and tear on our roads with gas taxes. And as we get our cars more fuel-efficient, that's going to be reducing the amount of revenue you get off of those gas taxes, so we need to charge people by the mile that they drive. Whatever happens with congestion pricing is that those technologies will be happening with road pricing.

Why do we travel too much? Car traveling is underpriced and therefore over-consumed. We need to put this better market feedback. And if we have it, you'll decide how many miles to drive, what mode of travel, where to live and work. And wireless technologies make this real-time loop possible.

So I want to move now to the second part of my story, which is, when are we going to start doing this congestion pricing? Road pricing is coming. When are we going to do it? Are we going to wait ten to 15 years for this to happen? Or are we going to finally have this political will to make it happen in the next two years? Because I'm going to say, that's going to be the tool to turn our usage overnight.

And what kind of wireless technology are we going to use? This is my big vision. There is a tool that can help us bridge the digital divide, respond to emergencies, get traffic moving, provide a new engine for economic growth and dramatically reduce CO2 emissions in every sector. And this is a moment from "The Graduate." Do you remember this moment? You guys are going to be the handsome young guy, and I'm going to be the wise businessman. "I want to say one word to you, just one word." "Yes, sir?" "Are you listening?" "Yes I am." "Ad-hoc peer-to-peer self-configuring wireless networks." (Laughter) These are also called mesh networks. And in a mesh, every device contributes to, and expands, the network, and I think you might have heard a little bit about it before.

I'm going to give you some examples. You'll be hearing later today from Alan Kay. These laptops, when a child opens them up, they communicate with every single child in the classroom, within that school, within that village. And what is the cost of that communication system? Zero dollars a month. Here's another example. In New Orleans, video cameras were mesh-enabled so they could monitor crime in the downtown French Quarter. When the hurricane happened, the only communication system standing was the mesh network. Volunteers flew in and added a whole bunch of devices. And for the next 12 months, mesh networks were the only wireless that was happening in New Orleans.

Another example is in Portsmouth, UK. They mesh-enabled 300 buses. And they can speak to these smart terminals you can look at the terminal and be able to see precisely where your bus is on the street, and when it's coming, and you can buy your tickets in real time. Again, all mesh-enabled. Monthly communication cost: zero. So the beauty of mesh networks: You can have these very low-cost devices. Zero ongoing communication costs. Highly scalable. You can just keep adding them, and as in Katrina, you can keep subtracting them; as long as there's some, we can still communicate. They're resilient. Their redundancy is built into this fabulous decentralized design.

What are the incredible weaknesses? There isn't anybody in Washington lobbying to make it happen, or in those municipalities, to build out their cities with these wireless networks, because there's zero ongoing communications cost. So the examples that I gave you are these islands of mesh networks, and networks are interesting only as they are big.

How do we create a big network? Are you guys ready again -- "The Graduate"? This time you will still play the handsome young thing, but I'll be the sexy woman. These are the next two lines in the movie. "Where did you do it?" "In his car." So you know, when you stick this idea -- (Laughter) -- where would we expect me, Robin Chase, to be thinking is, imagine if we were to put a mesh-network device in every single car acrosss America. We could have a coast-to-coast free wireless communication system. I guess I just want you to think about that.

And why's this going to happen? Because we're going to do congestion pricing; we are going to do road tolls; gas taxes are going to become road pricing. These things are going to happen. What is the wireless technology we're going to use? Maybe we should use a good one. When are we going to do it? Maybe we shouldn't wait for the ten to 15 years for this to happen. We should pull it forward.

So I'd like us to launch the wireless Internet interstate wireless mesh system. And require that this network be accessible to everyone, with open standards. Right now in the transportation sector, we're creating these wireless devices. I guess you guys might have FastPass here, or EasyLane, that are single-purpose devices in these closed networks. What is the point? We're transferring just, like, a few little data bits when we're doing road controlling, road pricing. We have this incredible excess capacity. So we can provide the lowest-cost means of going wireless coast-to-coast. We can have resilient nationwide communication systems. We have a new tool for creating efficiencies in all sectors. Imagine what happens when the cost of getting information from anywhere to anywhere is close to zero. What you can do with that tool. We can create an economic engine. Information should be free, and access to information should be free, and we should be charging people for carbon.

I think this is a more powerful tool than the Interstate Highway Act, and I think this is as important and world-changing to our economy as electrification. And if I had my druthers, we would have an open-source version in addition to open standards. And this open-source version means that it could be -- if we did a brilliant job of it -- it could be used around the world very quickly. So going back to one of my earlier thoughts. Imagine if every one of these buses in Lagos were part of the mesh network. When I went this morning to Larry Brilliant's TEDTalk prize -- his fabulous networks -- imagine if there was an open-source mesh communications device that can be put into these networks, to make all that happen. And we can be doing it, if we could get over the fact that someone is -- with this little slice of things is going to be for free, and we could make billions of dollars on top of it. But this one particular slice of communications needs to be open source.

So let's take control of this nightmare. Implement a gas tax immediately. Transition across the nation to road-tolling with this wireless mesh. Require that the mesh be open to all, with open standards. And of course use mesh networks. Thank you. (Applause)

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