CEEM Seminar | Kara Kockelman | UT Austin
Realistic Robotaxi Operations: Insights on Fleet Sizing & Geofencing, Ride-Pooling & Pricing, SAVs as Transit & Smart-Charging, Competition & Service Types
Shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) or “robotaxis” may reshape travel behaviors by providing flexible, on-demand rides without requiring vehicle ownership. Fleet owner decisions of fleet size and fares, service areas and vehicle maintenance affect how efficiently such systems will perform and serve variable travel demand. This presentation pools insights from thousands of SAV simulations to illuminate how such variables affect vehicle use and traveler wait times, empty travel and profits, plus much more. SAVs may complement public transit through first- and last-mile connections or replace buses altogether. Charging station siting and sizing, charging schedules, and grid conditions also affect fleet operations. Detailed simulations of the 6-county Austin region and other US contexts provide valuable insights on robotaxi outcomes under different assumptions and operating strategies. Such results can help transportation engineers, planners, and policymakers anticipate the opportunities and trade-offs associated with increasingly automated, shared, and electrified mobility.
Kara Kockelman
Kara Kockelman is a registered professional engineer and holds a PhD, MS, and BS in civil engineering, a master’s in city planning, and a minor in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She has been a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Austin for 28 years, and is Associate Site Director of the NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Efficient Vehicles and Sustainable Transportation Systems. She has received an NSF CAREER Award, Google Research Award, MIT Technology Review Top 100 Innovators Award, UC Berkeley Medal, Vulog’s Top 20 of 2020 Influential Women in Mobility, and various ASCE, NARSC, TRF, and WTS awards. She has served as President of the North American Regional Science Association, chairs UT Austin’s Faculty Women’s Association, and sits on various editorial boards, as well as the Eno Center for Transportation’s Advisory Board and International Association of Travel Behavior Research’s Board. She is among the top 0.1% of all cited researchers in engineering, and was a 2025 MIT Mobility Fellow and Peace Corps Volunteer (in the Andes of Ecuador, managing potable water projects). She has authored over 240 journal articles (and two books), and her primary research interests include planning for shared and autonomous vehicle systems, the statistical modeling of urban systems, energy and climate issues, the economic impacts of transport policy, and crash occurrence and consequences.