The study found that with a mass global takeup of autonomous
vehicles, the powerful onboard computers needed to run them could
generate as many greenhouse gas emissions as all the data centres in
operation today.
These data centres currently produce around 0.14 gigatonnes of
greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the entire output
of Argentina or around 0.3 per cent of global emissions, according
to the researchers. […]
The high emissions are the result of the huge computing workload
placed on each self-driving vehicle. The researchers’ modelling
assumes that the vehicles use a similar algorithm to what is popular
today – a multi-task learning deep neural network, so called because
it can perform many tasks at once.
These neural networks have to process an onslaught of data,
simultaneously analysing the inputs provided by several onboard
cameras with high frame rates to allow the car to drive on its own.