Every EV owner has grown painfully aware of factors that take a bite out of driving range: Bone-chilling cold and bun-warming cabins. Hauling heavy loads, or rocking at 80 mph in the fast lane.
Fewer electric fans are aware of the latest, greatest energy suck. Autonomous and semi-autonomous driving systems demand surprising amounts of electricity to collect and transmit data, train AIs, and run ever-more-powerful computers and sensor suites. In fact, taken to their logical endgame—in which every showroom car or taxi could drive itself—autonomous cars might hoover up more energy than all the world’s data centers consumed in 2023, according to an MIT study from that year.
