WASHINGTON — Conventional wisdom in the auto industry has suggested that futuristic self-driving cars and trucks would also feature electric powertrains. Or at least, that was the wisdom.

"AVs will be EVs," former General Motors Co. top economist Elaine Buckberg said during a panel discussion at January's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"All the developers of autonomous vehicles expect them to be EVs because the computational load is very high," she explained. "You'd be destroying your fuel efficiency if you tried to put autonomous vehicle technology on an internal combustion engine or gas-powered car."

That viewpoint, she said in a later interview, has been a strongly held belief for many in the industry, including GM during her time with the automaker. Fuel considerations aside, engineering experts said, the mechanical and electrical architecture of battery-powered vehicles also helps enable improved safety features.

But Buckberg's outlook on ties between the two hot-button technologies has changed even in the weeks since her remarks, thanks to policy changes by the Trump administration and GOP allies in Washington. "You've got a regulatory environment that's changing," the economist said shortly before President Donald Trump's Feb. 12 move to eliminate the legal basis for federal climate pollutant regulations.

She added: "If you took away or eased up all fuel economy and greenhouse gas rules, which the administration's trying to do, then maybe you could get away with an AV that's running off gasoline, that's using gasoline to generate electricity."

That type of product shift would align with a Trump administration that has spent a year dismantling federal support for what it called a Biden-era "EV mandate" while also pushing forward-looking roadway standards for a future filled with self-driving cars.

"America must lead the way in transportation innovation. If we don’t, our adversaries will fill the void,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a September statement about AV technology. “The rules of the road need to be updated to fit the realities of the 21st century.”

The DOT leader has said that creating comprehensive federal rules for AV developers is part of an "innovation agenda" at this agency. That agenda does not mention electric vehicles, a technology area many in the auto industry fear has become dominated by Chinese automakers.

Duffy, during a January visit to a Jeep plant in Ohio, said the Trump administration's policy changes are not "a war on EVs at all," but rather an effort to promote consumer choice and stop the federal government from encouraging electric powertrains while "penalizing" the production of internal combustion engine vehicles.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, commenting more specifically on the ties between AVs and EVs, recognized engineering realities but emphasized its openness to all technologies.

"For some automated vehicles, electric vehicle platforms may be best. For others (e.g., commercial trucking), the need for extended operational range makes gas power a better choice. Mixed powertrains that combine electric and gas power, such as plug-in hybrids or Extended Range Electric Vehicles (EREVs), could also work well in some cases," NHTSA said in a statement.

The agency added: "The power required for sensing, computing, and cooling equipment in today’s automated vehicles is substantial, regardless of the platform choice. Generating sufficient power will either reduce fuel efficiency for gas-powered vehicles or reduce range for electric vehicles.

"NHTSA supports AV developers being able to decide which platform best suits their needs."

Why (most) AVs are EVs

Edwin Olson, CEO of Ann Arbor-based autonomous vehicle startup May Mobility, explained why most cars and trucks with advanced self-driving capabilities have at least partially electric powertrains.

"If you go off and buy a traditional, non-hybrid internal combustion engine, you've got all the power in the world," he said in an interview. Olson previously held AV-related roles at Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan.

"But all you've got is a little alternator that provides, like, 12 volts across the rest of the vehicle," he added. "You've got all this power here, but it's actually pretty hard to tap into it because the electrical architecture is not really up to it."

That is a problem, according to Olson, when you have "all of these really high-power things" on an autonomous vehicle that detect surroundings and process traffic information in real time.

Scott Moura, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, added several more reasons that AVs tend to be EVs. "The main reason is that the primary motivation for automated vehicles is safety. Number one," he said in an interview.

"Number two is safety. Number three is safety," Moura said. "And safety is very much about precision control. Electric motors are way easier and higher performing and have precision control, and that's so critical for vehicles."

Moura, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and serves as the acting director of Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies, extolled the simplicity and performance virtues of electric motors over gas-powered ones.

"An internal combustion engine is really kind of a Rubik's Cube type of device," he said. "You're injecting this mix of fuel and air, you're trying to find that perfect mix to compress it, then you light it with a spark plug at the exact right time, and you get an explosion. Then you have this linear motion, and you have to convert it to a rotational motion."

"With an electric motor, generally, the current that you put in it is just proportional to the torque. It's ridiculously more simple," Moura added. The professor said he teaches a course on powertrains and needs about eight weeks to cover internal combustion engines, but only two for electric motors.

He pointed to a recent demonstration by Out of Spec Studios, an automotive content creator, of Tesla Inc.'s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) capabilities as an example of how the precision torque control on EVs pairs well with autonomous driving.

Two Out of Spec testers drove a Tesla Model 3 on a closed track in a recent video to see how the vehicle — and its FSD mode — would perform in recent icy conditions. Moura said it was "shocking" how well the vehicle stayed on track and avoided spinning out.

"And what you realize is the key isn't this FSD software so much, but it's the fact that it's an electric car with electric motors, with super precise sensing of the wheel slip and super precise control of torque on the wheels," the professor said.

Beyond safety performance, Moura also said that electric powertrains made sense for AVs because both technologies are useful in fleet vehicles, like delivery trucks, that cover short distances in urban environments. "That's really advantageous to bring down the operating costs. Just pure money," he said.

Moura also cited the emissions and air quality advantages of EVs over gas-powered cars as a reason that developers of AV technology should lean into electric powertrains.

"When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, recess was often canceled because of poor air quality, before we had really implemented the restrictions on tailpipe emissions," he said. "Reducing local air pollution so kids can have a recess, I think, is another good reason."

Why 'dino juice' can still power AVs

Though other robotaxi companies like Waymo and Zoox have gone all-electric, May Mobility has taken a different approach. The Michigan company, which has financial and strategic backing from Toyota, has developed its AV tech for deployment on the automaker's Sienna gas-powered hybrid minivan and its all-electric e-Palette.

"Sort of an unofficial motto of the company is to be informed contrarians. Don't be afraid to do something differently than what everybody else does," said Olson, the CEO.

"I think we're perfectly happy in a hybrid world or an EV world. We can be successful in both of those," he added. His company recently partnered with Lyft to begin offering rideshare services on its self-driving Sienna models in Atlanta, though there is still a safety driver present in the vehicle for now.

"What you get in a hybrid is kind of the best of both worlds. You get a machine with a combustion engine, which has massive capacity for power, and a vehicle with a fairly robust electrical system for delivering and distributing electrical power," Olson said.

He acknowledged that the world is likely to move toward fully electric vehicles in the future but pushed back on some of Moura's comments about their superiority for safety and fleet applications.

On safety, Olson agreed that EVs do tend to have better precision controls: "I have a hard time arguing with it. I don't think it's wrong, but I think the impact is in the noise. The vast majority of accidents are not caused or even exacerbated by a lack of vehicle performance. Most cars, given an ICE, can accelerate fast enough, can brake hard enough to avoid almost everything."

On fleet applications, Olson said the practical adoption barriers for EVs — at least in the short term — would hamper his business.

"If you buy an EV yourself, you can charge it at home. It's not that much power. But when you start talking about a fleet of EVs that need to be turned around and charged quickly, every minute that they're not on the road is money that you're not generating revenue. And you're talking, like, substation kinds of EV charging infrastructure. It's very expensive. It takes a long time to deploy," he explained.

"I think that, today, a hybrid is nearly an optimal fleet vehicle because they're low-cost. Everybody knows how to maintain them. They don't require any expensive infrastructure. You can turn them around in a few minutes on dino juice," Olson said, referring to fossil fuels.

He also pushed back on concerns from Buckberg, the former GM economist, that autonomous driving systems would destroy fuel economy in gas-powered vehicles. Olson conceded that AV hardware is “power hungry” but said that matters less in vehicles where refueling time and total driving range — rather than energy efficiency — are more important for day-to-day operations.

Yes, he explained, ICE vehicles are less energy efficient than EVs. However, gasoline’s high energy density as a fuel source means the power demands of autonomous systems eat into a smaller share of total range in ICE vehicles than they do in battery-electric ones.

Moura, of UC-Berkeley, acknowledged that fact and suggested that EREVs — extended range electric vehicles that use on-board gas generators to feed energy into electric powertrains, which provide the precision he favors — should be "part of the tool set" as AV technology progresses.

Approach from automakers

The landscape for autonomous driving technology is different for consumer automakers, which have scaled back some bets on AVs, than for robotaxi businesses. GM, for example, halted funding for its robotaxi arm, Cruise, in late 2024, citing a goal of "implementing this technology in a pragmatic and capital-efficient manner."

For them and other U.S. automakers, AV tech has taken the form of driver-assist features that are available across different powertrains and still require hands on the wheel or eyes on the road. Those features are known as Level 2 self-driving capabilities, according to standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

GM, further explaining its AV strategy, said it is focused on steadily expanding its driver-assist features and pointed out that its Super Cruise system is now available on 23 models. The company said it plans on continuing to advance toward full vehicle autonomy and will evaluate all powertrains as it does.

Asked about its AV plans, crosstown rival Ford said it similarly plans to pursue multiple powertrains but will focus on EVs for its next steps. "Ford’s future-state L3 autonomy technology will be applicable to both gas and electric powertrains, but the first vehicles with this capability will be those on our Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) platform," spokesperson Amy Mast said in an email.

Toyota, the second-largest new vehicle seller in the United States last year behind GM, was more resolute in describing its AV approach than its Detroit competitors. The company has been a leader on hybrid powertrains but a purposeful laggard on full EVs while it awaits stronger consumer adoption of the newer technology, among other reasons.

"As for autonomous vehicle systems on ICE cars, the simple answer is 'no,'" the company said in an email. "One of the big advantages to electrified vehicles and all-electric vehicles is that they offer more readily available power (not reliant solely on whether the engine is on or not) due to their larger on-board batteries."

The message continued: "We've been saying for over 10 years that one advantage to moving customers to an electrified powertrain is the fact that they will have access to better safety technologies due to the higher power requirements of those types of systems (sensors, ECUs, computers, monitors, etc.)."

Chrysler parent company Stellantis NV did not provide a comment on which powertrains would be prioritized in its AV plans. The company recently pulled back plans to launch a Level 3 (hands-free and eyes-off) driving platform in its vehicles, citing limited market demand for the technology.

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