http://SmartDrivingCar.com/7.19-Inclusive-050519
19th edition of the 7th
year of SmartDrivingCars
A. Krok, May 2, "You can't please all the
people all the time, but Volkswagen wants to
make sure that when it moves into the next
era of mobility, it won't leave any groups
behind.
Volkswagen this week unveiled its Inclusive
Mobility Initiative, which sees the
automaker working directly with outside
groups to ensure that its future vehicles
are capable of catering to people with
disabilities..." Read
more Hmmmm...This
is fantastic and may well be in line
with the focus we've taken with the
upcoming 3rd
Annual
Princeton SmartDrivingCar
Summit 10 days from
now. Our focus is on all people
who have been marginalized by the
unnecessary/non-inclusive/exclusive
designs of our current forms of
mobility, . These designs are
especially irresponsible when one no
longer needs a person to drive... to
keep the car from crashing while on its
way from where people are to where the
want to go. What an enormous
opportunity to be of service to so many
that for what ever reason don't want or
can't perform that task. Yes, there are
situations in which a professional is
required. At times, we all need we all
need that the help of a professional.
But for all of those situations in which
a professional is not needed, we have an
enormous opportunity to be so much more
inclusive by removing the other
unnecessary exclusivities that have
consciously or unconsciously crept into
our cars and transit systems. Our
mobility systems no longer need to be
big and hold many people to make them
affordable, no driver needs to be paid.
They no longer need to be constrained to
only go between the few places than many
want to go between at only certain
times. They can readily serve where
only a few, even one, want to go between
at whatever time. The skill set needed
to use and be served diminishes to the
skill set needed by the easiest to use
elevator. And so on...
Be sure to look
VW's Inclusive Mobility Initiative.
Hopefully it encompasses and levels
the mobility field for the people
that its cars have marginalized for 100
years. Alain
April 26, F. Fishkin, "VW unveils an Inclusive Mobility Initiative to help make future transportation better for all...a major theme of the upcoming Smart Driving Car Summit at Princeton. The University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin tackle that...plus the latest of Uber, Tesla and more in Episode 102 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" Just say "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" . Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay ... Alain
D. Shepardson. April 26, "Toyota Motor Corp said on Friday it was halting plans to install Dedicated Short-Range Communications technology on U.S. vehicles aimed at letting cars and trucks communicate with one another to avoid collisions. Automakers have been divided over whether to proceed with the DSRC system or use a 4G- or 5G-based system in the United States. Toyota’s announcement is a major blow to advocates of DSRC....
On Friday, it said in a letter to the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) that
“unfortunately we have not seen significant
production commitments from other
automakers.”... " Read
more Hmmmm...
The final nail in the DSRC coffin? Alain
F. Manjoo, May 1, "In 2010, I received an
email from an ecstatic employee at a start-up
called UberCab. “What our tiny company is
doing for San Francisco right now is huge,” he
told me. The employee’s joy was contagious.
Back then, as a naïve, baby tech pundit, I was
prone to spinning out elaborate visions of
tech-abetted progress, and the more I learned
about UberCab’s bold idea, the more deeply I
swooned.
Car ownership is a financial and environmental
blight. Cars are one of the most expensive
products we buy, but they barely get any use
(most cars spend most of the day parked).
UberCab — which shortened its name to Uber —
was using technology to push a radical new
urban vision, and it quickly became a poster
child for Silicon Valley’s messianic vision.
Allowing strangers to share their cars sounded
crazy, but if it took off, Uber might reduce
the need for car ownership and increase the
utilization of each car. It could make
transportation cheaper and far more
environmentally friendly, and it might create
sustainable jobs for many drivers....
There’s a lesson here: If Uber is really the
best that Silicon Valley can do, America
desperately needs to find a better way to fund
groundbreaking new ideas...." Read
more Hmmmm...
Sobering. Alain
R. Mitchell, May 1, "The Tesla Model 3
remained the bestselling electric car in the
United States last month by far, according to
estimates from website Inside EVs. Tesla sold
10,050 Model 3s in April, the website said;
the runner-up, the Toyota Prius Prime, notched
only 1,399 sales.
But Model 3 sales were flat compared with
March. That presents another challenge for
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who pledged
that sales would get a significant boost this
quarter. Tesla reports quarterly figures, not
monthly ones, but Inside EVs’ estimates have
proved fairly accurate.
The 10,050 Model 3s it said Tesla delivered
last month was a big jump from April 2018,
when the car was hitting the market amid
production problems and 3,750 were delivered.
But last month’s deliveries were down from
10,175 in March...." Read
more Hmmmm...
Is AutoPliot the biggest difference
between Teslas and all other EVs? You get
the possible implications. Alain
R. Water, May 4, "...Elon Musk does not mince words when rejecting the technologies that other companies are relying on to control their driverless cars. “The two main crutches that should not be used — and, in retrospect, will be obviously false and foolish — are Lidar and HD maps. Mark my words,” the Tesla chief executive said recently...
The “crutches” that Mr Musk complained about involve two of the most common ways for autonomous vehicles to understand the world around them.... Read more Hmmmm... Not much new here but a good description of the issue. I would add that it is usually very easy to see where you should drive in snow because of the tracks made by the cars ahead of you. Of course, if you are the very first, then it is tough, but you should be going slowly anyway and you should wait to follow the snowplows. On a cost-benefit basis, it is very hard to justify HD maps are really hard to justify based on them letting you go a little faster when you are the first one the road after/during a snow fall. Also, after a heavy snow, the HD maps are not HD anymore because your LiDAR can't reliably tell precisely where you are. Snow covered some of your reference points. Knowing where something is precisely is useless; unless, you know precisely where you are. Driving is all about relative position and relative velocity which is why vision works so well. Alain
J. Lannelli, May 1, "The Florida Legislature
today passed a bill legalizing the use of
self-driving cars statewide. The bill also
stipulates that Florida residents will be
allowed to hire self-driving cars through,
ahem, some digital phone apps.
Naturally, Uber — which could save gobs of
money by replacing human drivers with robots —
is quite pleased. The company released a
statement today thanking Florida lawmakers for
their work. The bill now awaits Gov. Ron
DeSantis' signature...
The Senate bill, SB 932, legalizes not only
automated vehicles but also "on-demand
autonomous vehicle networks," defined as a
service that uses "a software application or
other digital means to connect passengers to
fully autonomous vehicles, exclusively or in
addition to other vehicles, for
transportation, including for-hire
transportation and transportation for
compensation."..." Read
more Hmmmm... A
substantial step, not yet signed into
law, but Florida has been moving
toward this point for some time. Uber
should be careful what they wish for.
The App software is the easy part.
Alain
K. Laing, April 29, "...Nathan Kokes, mobility communication manager for Toyota, said the manufacturers behind the newly formed Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium want to see self-driving cars on the road as much as Silicon Valley darlings like Musk. But he said they want to make sure the technology is developed safely....
"Instead of treating the public like guinea
pigs," Friedman continued, "Tesla must clearly
demonstrate a driving automation system that
is substantially safer than what is
available today based on rigorous evidence
that is transparently shared with regulators
and consumers, and validated by independent
third-parties."" Read
more Hmmmm... Is
Friedman implying that Elon doesn't
want to make sure... Whatever... What
Carmakers may well want is
political/regulatory cover in case
something happens. Crashes occur with
conventional cars and it is rarely the
responsibility or fault of the
Carmaker.
Also... Why
"substantially" safer? How is it OK
for someone to continue to sell a
legacy product that is less safe
rather than a new one that could be
sold to them? Alain
G. Cardozo, April 26, "...Aurrigo's director
of autonomous programs (Asia Pacific), Roger
van der Lee, said the opportunity to meet a
demand for mobility services for senior
citizens in a range of retirement living
situations, using driverless technology, was
vital.
"This trial will provide user feedback on the
real-life experience of an autonomous mobility
service and the performance of the pod, which
will contribute to future service and
technical developments," he said. "Our aim is
to improve the quality of life by providing a
mobility service which enables social
interaction in every community where we
operate." Read more
Hmmmm... Nice. Alain
P. Stenquist, May 2, "Driving
while distracted is nothing new, but new
distractions for drivers pop up all the time.
While carmakers and tech companies have worked
to keep drivers from checking their phones,
the most effective safety features may be the
technology that is laying the foundation for
autonomous cars.
This advanced driver-assistance technology can
automatically bring a vehicle to a stop when a
collision is imminent,...
Unless you are going over X mph, where X
is small, then the system is programmed to
be disregarded because its false alarm
rate is too high and brakes would be going
on too often for no valid reason....
Three years ago, four teenagers were driving
home from spring break in Texas when their
Hyundai Elantra suddenly veered ... let's be clear here,
the driver veered the Hyundai...
into the lane of oncoming traffic, where an
18-wheeler slammed into it, killing three of
them ... absolutely
tragic! (If these lane centering systems
really do exist, why hasn't NHTSA required
them in all new cars? Why didn't Hyundai
build them into each car they've made? Why
haven't NHTSA's safety ratings made it
clear to all parents of teenage drivers
that such systems exist and can save their
children? Why didn't Insurance offer
discounts to parents who would include
these features? Such discounts would also
help their bottom line? Why haven't
stockholders demanded that insurance
executives focus on the bottom line,
rather than the top line? Why...? What
happened in the seconds preceding the crash?
The driver glanced at a navigation app on her
cellphone... Read
more Hmmmm...
Wait a minute. The problem is
glancing down, not the reason for
glancing down. Phone navigation
systems are supposed to be mounted
high so that a glance can readily
capture the needed information while
still maintaining peripheral
perception on the road ahead. Where
have OEMs placed radio, heater buttons
& screens?... Down! Where do each
of us glace at our phones to do
whatever?... Down! (so that a cop
can't see the phone that we are
glancing at). Drivers should be
liable for glancing down while
driving. As I've previously written
in SDC, the location of screens is the
source of the problem. The Apple
Play, Android Auto and the like seal
the deal by requiring the use of your
eyes while driving. Alain
L. Eliot, May 3, "...Results
released recently by a study
conducted by the American Automobile
Association (AAA) indicated that 71% of
United States drivers said they would be
afraid to ride in a self-driving car. If you
extrapolate that 71% to the entire estimated
number of licensed drivers in the U.S., it
comes out to about 175,000,000 Americans with
that qualm..." Read
more Hmmmm...
I'm afraid to drive and I'm afraid of
anything that is referenced with a
high threat level. All this
discussion is total gibberish. Except
for one in Texas and a few in Arizona,
there have been zero driverless rides
given to anybody down a public street
operating under normal conditions. So
all of these feelings are responses to
descriptions of an unknown experience
created by people who have not even
themselves experienced a real
driverless car ride. I'm actually
thrilled that 125 million Americans
aren't afraid. That's not a small
market. Again.... Half Baked. Alain
L. Eliot, April 29, "Rack 'Em Up, Driverless Cars Surprisingly Will Be A Boon For Auto Repair Market..." Read more Hmmmm... On the other hand, please don't. Given that we're barely @ the Kitty Hawk stage of Driverless cars, it is completely foolish to debate the implications on the "Auto Repair Market", let alone use an image of guys dropping an internal combustion engine, when the likeliest aspect of Driverless Mobility Machines is that they'll be power by electric motors. Also, Forbes continues to mix terminology between Driverless, Self-driving when they are so different Why not throw in Horse 'n Buggy, (and suggest that they'll be more manure to sweep up) maybe you'll get a few more clicks. C'mon Forbes, what happened to all of the excellent reporting done by Chunka Mui on SmartDrivingCars? So depressing. :-( Alain
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April 26, F. Fishkin, "Tesla shakes up autonomous mobility with a new chip and promises of what's to come. The assessment from Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin in this edition. Plus...Elon Musk on LiDAR, Via makes an Earth Day statement and the latest on the 3rd annual Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit. Less than 3 weeks away!"
April 5, F. Fishkin, "The success of on demand transit company Via is proving that ride sharing systems can work. Public Policy head Andrei Greenawalt joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a wide ranging discussion. Also: Uber, Tesla, Audi, Apple and Nuro are making headlines"
April 5, F. Fishkin, "Here comes congestion pricing in New York City...but what will it mean? Former city Taxi and Limousine Commission head and transportation expert Matthew Daus joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Also...Tesla, VW and even Brexit! All on Episode 98 of Smart Driving Cars."
March 28, F. Fishkin, "The Future Networked Car? From Sweden, The Dispatcher publisher, Michael Sena, joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for the latest edition of Smart Driving Cars. Plus ...the Boeing story has much to do with autonomous vehicles and more. Tune in and subscribe."
March 21, F. Fishkin, "NVIDIA unveils Constellation Drive and more at the company's GPU Technology Conference. NVIDIA's Director of Automotive Danny Shapiro joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a special edition of the Smart Driving Cars podcast!"
Feb. 10, F. Fishkin, ,
"Special edition with Matthew Daus former
Commissioner of NY Taxi & Limousine
commission to discuss NYC's congestion
pricing and efforts to improve mobility for
all in he NY metropolitan region."
Feb. 1, F. Fishkin, ,
"The National Transportation Safety Board
unveils the 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of
Transportation Safety Improvements. Put down
the mobile device, stop speeding and make
new safety technology standard equipment.
NTSB Office of High Safety Project Manager
Dr. Ensar Ecic joins Princeton's Alain
Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin to
discuss. "Alexa,
play the Smart Driving Cars
podcast!" . Ditto with Siri,
and GooglePlay.
Alain"
F. Fishkin, Jan. 18, "Ride Systems and Double Map combine to form Journey ..providing real time transit information. CEO Justin Rees chats with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Also in this episode VayaVision's technology to fuse sensor data for self driving with CEO Ronny Cohen."
F. Fishkin, Jan. 18, "In this episode from CES 2019, Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin welcome guests Michael Fleming, CEO of TORC Robotics, Regulus Cyber CEO Yonatan Zur and Arbe VP Bill Latino. Tune in to the Smart Driving Cars podcast and subscribe!"
F. Fishkin, Sept 6, "The coming new world of driverless cars! In Episode 55 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast former GM VP and adviser to Waymo Larry Burns chats with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin about his new book "Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How it Will Reshape Our World"
T. Lee. April 24, "There's an old joke in the software engineering world, sometimes attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs: "the first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."...
You can think of self-driving car
development as occurring in two stages.
Stage one is focused on developing a
static understanding of the world. Where
is the road? Where are other cars? Are
there any pedestrians or bicycles nearby?
What are the traffic laws in this
particular area?
Once software has mastered this part of
the self-driving task, it should be able
to drive flawlessly between any two points
on empty roads—and it should mostly be
able to avoid running into things even on
crowded roads. This is the level of
autonomy Musk has dubbed "feature
complete." Waymo achieved this level of
autonomy around 2015, while Tesla is
aiming to reach it later this year....
In this second stage, a company also needs to handle a "long tail" of increasingly unusual situations: ...Waymo has spent the last three years in the second stage...
Tesla says that's a 21-fold improvement
over the Nvidia chips the company was
using before. Of course, Nvidia has
produced newer chips since 2016, but Tesla
says that its chips are more powerful than
even Nvidia's current Drive Xavier
chip—144 TOPS compared to 21 TOPS.
But Nvidia argues that's not a fair
comparison. The company says its Xavier
chip delivers 30 TOPS, not 21. More
importantly, Nvidia says it typically
packages the Xavier on a chip with a
powerful GPU chip, yielding 160 TOPS of
computing power. And like Tesla, Nvidia
packages these systems in pairs for
redundancy, producing an overall system
with 320 TOPS of computing power....
Regardless, both companies are working on
next-generation designs, so any advantage
either company achieves is likely to be
fleeting....", Read
more Hmmmm...
An absolute MUST read. Alain
M. Linblom, Aptil 16, "At a time
public-transit across America is losing
customers to private ride-hailing rivals,
Seattle-area governments are paying the Via
transportation network company to shuttle
more people toward Sound Transit trains.
Starting Tuesday, travelers can now download
the Via to Transit app, or call
206-258-7739, to order rides to or from five
light-rail stations in South Seattle and
Tukwila. A black van ought to arrive in 10
to 15 minutes. Trips must begin or end at a
transit station.
Pay the usual King County Metro adult fare
of $2.75, or the student/low-income rate of
$1.50 using an ORCA card, and then get a
free transfer by tapping your card before
boarding the train. Cash and paper transfers
aren’t accepted, just ORCA fare cards or a
Transit Go smartphone-based bus ticket....
J. Torchinsky, April 11, "For the first time ever, yesterday, SpaceX managed to land and recover all three of the Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket boosters that, when combined, form the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. While the idea of vertically landing a rocket after launch for re-use has been around a while, SpaceX was the first to actually do it, and this triple-landing, part of the Arabsat-6A launch, is the first time three boosters from one launch have been recovered...." Read more Hmmmm... If you weren't watching live, then you must watch the video. 2 side landing @ T+7:30+ (also), center@ T+9:40+ See this aerial picture. See also [log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="59" height="17" border="0"> SpaceX Falcon Heavy Sticks Triple Rocket Landing with 1st Commercial Launch.
In the 70's, after putting a man on the moon, we felt empowered that technologically, everything was possible! However, going 3for3 on bull's eye landings on earth is totally mind boggling. Technologically, I'm fully confident we soon can have aTaxis serving the mobility disadvantaged throughout our communitie. But, do we have the the societal/political will to risk even trying. There simply may be too many gatekeepers of the status quo. Alain
M. Daus, Esq, April 1, "Over the weekend, the New York State legislature agreed to pass congestion pricing legislation as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget bill for FY 2020. The legislation was finalized in the early hours today, and the Governor is expected to sign the bill into law immediately. The toll is intended to reduce traffic congestion while raising $15 billion between 2020 and 2024 to fix NYC subways and commuter rails. Starting no sooner than December 31, 2020, motorists will be charged a toll to drive into Manhattan south of 60th street, excluding the FDR Drive and the West Side highway....
Only two categories of vehicles are specifically exempt from the law: emergency vehicles and qualifying vehicles transporting a person with disabilities. The law does not specify what qualifies as a “vehicle transporting a person with disability,” leaving any such determinations to the TBTA. A recent Bloomberg article discusses exemptions for people with disabilities (click here to review full article)..." Read more Hmmmm... Congratulations NYC!!! I've never understood why this isn't called "Value Pricing". Was it the SAE??? or is it just that I don't seem to ever like the semantics used by others? This has been a long time coming and is a tribute to William Vickery, the Canadian-born Columbia University Professor of Economics and Nobel Laureate who tragically passed away shortly after being announced as the winner of the 1996 award in Economics. AlainE. Niedermeyer, March 18, "he single most important moment in the world of self-driving cars was around 10 PM on a Sunday evening, one year ago today. On that fatal evening, Elaine Herzberg stepped out into Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona and was struck and killed by a Volvo XC90 that was testing Uber's self-driving car technology. Herzberg's death has cast a pall over what had been a white hot race to develop world-changing technology that promised to both save lives and create billions in value for the winners, changing public perceptions of autonomous vehicles and internal practices at the firms developing the technology alike. Though this shameful moment won't stop the march toward autonomous vehicles, it does provide an important opportunity to stop and reflect on how it happened and what lessons must be learned to prevent it from happening again.
Lesson #1: This Is Not A Race... (1)
Lesson #2: Culture Matters. (3)
Lesson #3: Humans Are Bad At Overseeing
Imperfect Automation.
(9)
Lesson #4: Vulnerable Road Users Require Extra Care.(5)
Lesson #5: Regulation Beats The
Alternative. (7)
Lesson #6: Legal Liability Must Catch Up
With Technology.
(10)
Lesson #7: Leaders Need To Listen. (8)
Lesson #8: Infrastructure Matters. (6)
Lesson #9: Autonomy Has Opponents. (2)
Lesson #10: Trust Is The Currency Of
Autonomous Drive Technology. (4)
Lesson #xx: Be totally transparent about what happened leading up to the crash. (3.5)
Lesson #yy: Learn about safety from others and help others learn from you (3.6) Read more Hmmmm... Very worth reading. I've provided my own ranking and added a couple of other lessons. What is being disillusioned is the fairy tale / Sunday supplement aspects of this technology, which no one ever believed anyway. What remains substantive is that Safe-driving car technology is being incorporated into new cars and it is beginning to work. Self-driving technology is being championed by OEM, especially Tesla and Volvo and it is being purchased to the satisfaction of OEMs. And Driverless technology is being tried in goods delivery and, at least at Princeton University, is being focused to serve Mobility Disadvantaged communities whose quality-of-life this technology can most enhance. While this technology is in its infancy with little scale or bandwidth, it is prudent that it focus on delivering mobility to those who can most benefit from the technology, rather than try to convert those that are indifferent or disdain. Alain
Press release, March 19, "To ensure
self-driving cars are safely integrated on
New Jersey roads, legislation sponsored by
Assembly Democrats Daniel Benson, Andrew
Zwicker and Pamela Lampitt to establish a
task force to evaluate autonomous vehicles
was signed into law by the Governor
Monday.
“As major auto companies explore
developing semi and fully autonomous cars,
we need to prepare for the day when we’ll
see only self-driving vehicles on our
roadways,” said Benson (Mercer,
Middlesex). “The goal of this task force
will be to assess how we can introduce
autonomous vehicles to our roadways while
keeping drivers safe.”
The new mandate (formerly bill AJR-164)
creates the New Jersey Advanced Autonomous
Vehicle Task Force, comprised of eight
members. The panel will be responsible for
conducting a study of autonomous vehicles
and recommending laws, rules, and
regulations that the state may enact to
safely integrate these vehicles on the
roads..." Read
more Hmmmm....
New Jersey is
now started.
Hooray!! Alain
A. Kornhauser, March 13, "The following testimony was provided to the New Jersey State Assembly’s Transportation and Independent Authorities Committee on Monday, March 11....
What we need, what my ask is, that we create in New Jersey a “welcoming environment” for the research, testing and demonstration of this technology and work to focusing it on improving the mobility of the mobility disadvantaged...
While such a demonstration is not
prohibited in New Jersey, it is not
permitted.
Consequently, this provides excuses and
hurdles to bringing such mobility to our
communities and tarnishes any other
welcoming efforts aimed at enabling New
Jersey to lead instead of follow in what
may well address the fundamental objective
of this hearing." Read
more Hmmmm....Seems
so simple. I
have found it
so incredibly
hard. Alain
Press Release, March 4, "Volvo Cars, as
a worldwide leader in safety, is sending
a strong signal about the dangers of
speeding and will limit the top speed on
all its cars to 180 kph from 2020.
The company’s Vision 2020, which aims for no one to be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020, is one of the most ambitious safety visions in the automotive industry. But realising that technology alone will not get it all the way to zero, Volvo Cars is now broadening its scope to include a focus on driver behaviour...
Apart from limiting top speeds, the
company is also investigating how a
combination of smart speed control and
geofencing technology could
automatically limit speeds around
schools and hospitals in future.... " Read
more Hmmmm....
Bravo
Volvo!!! I
appreciate
this
ground-breaking
initiative by
an OEM. Over
the years
Volvo has
proven that
"Safety"
doesn't sell,
now Volvo is
doubling down
against the
German Speed
Fantasy. Is
Volvo crazy?
I applaud you. Hopefully, this is just the first step Why not 135 kph (~90mph). Or "9 over" with ability to "buy a '24 over'" at an exponentially increasing higher price. Alain
March 1, "Improve people's lives with the world's best transportation. ...44% of rides start or end in low income areas.... Just think what that number could be if the rides were even cheaper and you didn't have to deal with driver apprehensions... . 30.7M Riders, 1.9 M Drivers, $8.1B Bookings, $2.2B Revenue, 1+B Rides, 300+ Markets in US & Canada...
We are laser-focused on revolutionizing transportation and continue to lead the market in innovation. We have established a scaled network of drivers and riders, or users, brought together by our robust technology platform that powers millions of rides and connections every day. We leverage our technology platform, the scale and density of our user network and insights from over one billion rides to continuously improve our ridesharing marketplace efficiency and develop new offerings. For example, we pioneered a shared ride offering, or Shared Rides, providing lower-cost rides to riders traveling similar routes while improving the efficiency of our network. More recently, we were the first to launch a publicly-available commercial autonomous offering in the United States..." Read more Hmmmm...."... A commercial autonomous offering" ... Talk about an "offering" that is un-scalable without a non-trivial pivot.. elimination of the attendant. Oh well... Lots to learn in the filing. The very brief and necessarily shallow CliffNotes are at LYFT’S IPO FILING SHOWS RIDERSHIP IS SURGING—SO ARE LOSSES .. Alain
Feb 1, "The Congestion Surcharge (Tax Law Article 29-C) was enacted on April 1, 2018, with collection of the surcharge scheduled to begin on January 1, 2019. The onset of collections was delayed due to a temporary restraining order (Taxifleet Management LLC, et al. v. State of New York) that was lifted by the Court on January 31, 2019. Accordingly, the Congestion Surcharge must be collected beginning at 12:01 am on Saturday, February 2, 2019....
... Recordkeeping
Persons or entities liable for the surcharge
must keep records that are sufficient to
determine whether the surcharge was properly
applied, and must electronically transmit
those records to the Tax Department upon
request. This includes, but is not limited
to, the following for all transportation
that is subject to the surcharge:
A. Marshall, Jan 31, "In 2007, New York
City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, in a
belated embrace of the 21st century,
required that every taxi plying the streets
of the five boroughs start taking credit
card payments.... For the TLC, they made
work more interesting, because along with
those readers came GPS trackers that became
a cornerstone of the agency’s growing data
operation....axis provided insight into the
city’s transportation ecosystem. Are cabs
speeding along a certain stretch of street?
Time to review the street design. Getting
stuck at the same intersection every rush
hour? Maybe rethink the traffic light
timing.
And starting Friday, New York will start
clawing in the same kind of data from the
ride-hailing companies that have stormed its
streets in recent years. ... " Read
more Hmmmm...
It will be very
interesting to observe
the real behavior of
Lyft & Uber,
especially in the outer
boroughs. To date, the
Lyft & Uber data
have not divulged {O,
oTime, D, dTime} of
individual trips to the
level of precision that
the T&LC has been
for years collecting
from Yellow (and Green)
cabs . Can't wait to
look at precise
individual {O, oTime, D, dTime} data
of Lyft & Uber trips
and compare/contrast
with conventional cabs.
It will be very
interesting.
Alain
Oct 16, Establishes
fully autonomous vehicle pilot program
A4573 Sponsors: Zwicker (D16); Benson
(D14)
Oct 16, Establishes
New
Jersey Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Task
Force AJR164 Sponsors: Benson (D14);
Zwicker (D16); Lampitt (D6)
Waymo team, June 13,
"Ariel rides after school. Neha hops to
the grocery store. Barbara and Jim zip
around town while kicking back.
They’re all part of the Waymo early
rider program we launched last April.
Today, over 400 riders with diverse
backgrounds use Waymo every day, at any
time, to ride all around the Phoenix
area. Their feedback helps us understand
how fully self driving cars fit into
their daily lives.
One year in, our early rider program and
our extensive on-road testing is helping
us build the world’s most experienced
driver. In fact, our fleet of cars
across the U.S. is now driving more than
24,000 miles daily; that’s the
equivalent of an around the world road
trip! Here’s a quick report on how our
riders use Waymo, what we’ve learned,
and what’s next....As some of the first
people in the world to use self-driving
vehicles for their everyday
transportation needs, our early riders
are helping shape this technology.
Thanks to their feedback, we’re refining
the rider experience to make sure that:
... nobody wants to carry grocery bags
a block down the street... " Read
more Hmmmm....
Yipes!! The personal car isn't
bad enough in its focus on
private single-occupant
parkingSpot2parkingSpot
mobility? Are we now going to
have Waymo providing it
Door2Door with zero opportunity
to share rides and while
delivering negative public
benefits of increased energy,
pollution and congestion with
all of its empty vehicle
repositioning. No wonder the
CPUC voted to forbid
ride-sharing. Did Waymo made
them do it since Waymo hasn't
done ride-sharing in Phoenix?
Having 2 or more people in the
car isn't ride sharing if they
would have all gone together in
their own car had Waymo not been
there. So Bad!!! Without
ride-sharing, this is
just expensive, energy
inefficient and
environmentally
challenged private
chauffeuring for the
entitled privileged
class:
See
video Just like watching Oszzie & Harriet
or Leave
it to Beaver.
For Waymo to "Win it", they'll
need to embrace ride-sharing
because no "Blue-state" PUC is
going to be as impressionable as
as California's. Alain
KMay 24, "About 9:58 p.m., on Sunday, March
18, 2018, an Uber Technologies, Inc. test
vehicle, based on a modified 2017 Volvo XC90
and operating with a self-driving system in
computer control mode, struck a pedestrian
on northbound Mill Avenue, in Tempe,
Maricopa County, Arizona.
...The vehicle was factory equipped with
several advanced driver assistance functions
by Volvo Cars, the original manufacturer.
The systems included a collision avoidance
function with automatic emergency
braking, known as City Safety, as well as
functions for detecting driver alertness and
road sign information. All these Volvo
functions are disabled when the test vehicle
is operated in computer control..."
Read more Hmmmm....
Uber must believe that its systems
are better at avoiding Collisions
and Automated Emergency Braking than
Volvo's. At
least this gets Volvo "off the
hook".
"...According
to data obtained from the self-driving
system, the system first registered
radar and LIDAR observations of the
pedestrian about 6 seconds before
impact, when the vehicle was traveling
at 43 mph..." (=
63 feet/second) So the system
started "seeing an obstacle when
it was 63 x 6 = 378 feet away...
more than a football field,
including end zones!
"...As the
vehicle and pedestrian paths converged,
the self-driving system software
classified the pedestrian as an unknown
object, as a vehicle, and then as a
bicycle with varying expectations of
future travel path..." (NTSB:
Please tell us precisely
when it classified this
"object' as a vehicle
and be explicit about the
expected "future
travel paths." Forget
the path, please just tell us the
precise velocity vector that Uber's
system attached to the "object",
then the "vehicle". Why didn't the
the Uber system instruct the Volvo
to begin to slow down (or speed up)
to avoid a collision? If these
paths (or velocity vectors) were not
accurate, then why weren't they
accurate? Why was the object
classified as a
"Vehicle" ??
When did it finally classify the
object as a "bicycle"? Why did it
change classifications? How often
was the classification of this
object done. Please divulge the
time and the outcome of each
classification of this object. In the tests
that Uber has done, how often
has the system mis-classified an
object as a "pedestrian"when the
object was actually an
overpass, or an overhead
sign or overhead
branches/leaves that the car
could safely pass under, or
was nothing at all??
(Basically, what are the
false alarm characteristics
of Uber's Self-driving
sensor/software system as a
function of vehicle speed
and time-of-day?)
"...At 1.3 seconds before impact, (impact speed was 39mph = 57.2 ft/sec) the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision" (1.3 x 57.2 = 74.4 ft. which is about equal to the braking distance. So it still could have stopped short.
"...According
to Uber, emergency braking
maneuvers are not
enabled while the
vehicle is under computer
control, to reduce (eradicate??)
the potential for erratic
vehicle behavior. ..."
NTSB: Please
describe/define potential
and
erratic vehicle
behavior
Also
please uncover
and divulge
the design
& decision
process that
Uber went
through to
decide that
this risk
(disabling the
AEB) was worth
the reward of
eradicating "
"erratic vehicle behavior". This
is
fundamentally
BAD design.
If the Uber
system's false
alarm rate is
so large that
the best way
to deal with
false alarms
is to turn off
the AEB, then
the system
should never
have been
permitted on
public
roadways.
"...The vehicle operator
is relied on
to intervene
and take
action. " Wow! If Uber's
system
fundamentally
relies on a
human to
intervene,
then Uber is
nowhere near
creating a
Driverless
vehicle.
Without its
own Driverless
vehicle Uber
is past "Peak
valuation".
A. Madrigal, Mar 28, "On Tuesday, Waymo announced they’d purchase 20,000 sporty, electric self-driving vehicles from Jaguar for the company’s forthcoming ride-hailing service.... But the company embedded a much more significant milestone inside this supposed announcement about a fancy car. With orders now in for more than 20,000 of these vehicles and thousands of minivans that Chrysler announced earlier this year, Waymo will be capable of doing vast numbers of trips per day. They estimate that the Jaguar fleet alone will be capable of doing a million trips each day in 2020. ..." Read more Hmmmm...Yup!! This is HUGE! It will change the city and the key to making it so it doesn't make thing worse is Ride-sharing. If we ride-share we'll reduce energy, pollution & GHG by more than 50% and provide high-quality, affordable mobility indiscriminately for all. It becomes the new high-quality, low-cost mass transit. If it's kept/operated as another alternative for the 1%ers to be chauffeured alone, then the outcome is UGLY. Ride-sharing is KEY! Alain
"The front-facing
video suggests that this person was
crossing the lane at a slow speed and
should have been noticed by the system
in time to at least apply the brakes,
if not stop the vehicle completely,"
he said. "While a human may not have
been able to avoid this crash, a
well-designed, well-working collision
avoidance system should have at least
begun to apply the brakes."..."
" ...
Again, my sincerest condolences
to Elaine Herzberg's family and
friends.
The
simple arithmetic is: She
crossed more than a lane and a
half before being struck or more
than 15 feet. Average walking
speed is about 4.6 ft/sec
which means that she was
"visible" on this stretch of
road for more than 3 seconds.
Uber's speed of 38 mph = 55.7 ft/sec
means: Uber was 150 ft away
when she began crossing the
left-hand lane and could have
been visible by an alert
driver. The car's lidar
and radar surely must have
"seen" her beginning at about
that time. Car
stopping distance
including "thinking time used in
The Highway Code" @ 38mph is 110
feet. The driver should have
been able to stop 40 feet
short. Any Automated Emergency
Braking (AEB) system should have
been able to stop the car in
little more than the stopping
distance of 72 feet, half way to
Elaine. This simple arithmetic
suggests that there may be a
very fundamental
fatal flaw in Uber's AEB.
And the
driver was not paying
attention. At 3 seconds prior
to impact, Elaine was within a
12 degree field of view when she
began to cross the left lane.
While outside the fovea, this is
well within a normal gaze had
the operator been looking out
the window.
The
released video is from a "dash
cam&qu ot; and is unlikely
to be the video captured by
Uber's "Self-driving" system (or
whatever Uber calls it). That
video may well be at a much
higher resolution and frame
rate. Uber MUST release that
video (not just the dash-cam
video) as well as the radar and
lidar
data that was being used by
their "Self-driving" system.
Uber was testing its system at
the time of the crash and
therefore MUST have been logging
those data in case something
went wrong. Uber needs those
recorded data in order to have a
chance to learn what went wrong
and fix it. Something did go
wrong, very wrong. Uber and
everyone else MUST also have the
opportunity to learn from this
tragedy. So Uber MUST release
all of the data. Alain
May
18, Enormously successful inaugural Summit
starting with the Adam
Jonas video and finishing with
Fred Fishkin's
live interview with Wm. C Ford III.
In between, serious
engagement among over 150 leaders
from Communities at the bleeding edge of
deployment, Insurance struggling with how
to properly promote the adoption of
technology that may well force them to
re-invent themselves and AI (Artificial
Intelligence) and the various technologies
that are rapidly advancing so that we can
actually deliver the safety,
environmental, mobility and quality of
life opportunities envisioned by these
“Ultimate Shared-Riding Machines”.
Save the Date for the 2nd Annual... May 16
& 17, 2018, Princeton NJ Read
Inaugural Program with links to Slides.
Fishkin Interview of Summit Summary
and
Interview of Yann LeCun.
Read Inaugural Program with links to
Slides. Hmmmm...
Enormous thank you to all who
participated. Well done! Alain
Video similar to part of Adam's Luncheon talk @ 2015 Florida Automated Vehicle Symposium on Dec 1. Hmmm ... Watch Video especially at the 13:12 mark. Compelling; especially after the 60 Minutes segment above! Also see his TipRanks. Alain
This list is maintained by
Alain
Kornhauser and hosted by the Princeton
University
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