[log in to unmask]" _mf_state="1" title="null" src="cid:[log in to unmask]" width="44" height="44" border="0"> The SmartDrivingCars eLetter, Pod-Casts, Zoom-Casts and Zoom-inars are made possible in part by support from the Smart Transportation and Technology ETF, symbol MOTO. For more information: www.motoetf.com. Most funding is supplied by Princeton University's Department of Operations Research & Financial Engineering and Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering (PAVE) research laboratory as part of its research dissemination initiatives.
Staff, Dec. 18, "The Law Commission of England and Wales and
the Scottish Law Commission (the Law Commissions) have today
[18 December 2020] announced landmark
proposals that will seek to ensure the safety of
self-driving vehicles via a comprehensive new legal
framework.
Hailed as “leading the way on the regulation of this
technology” by Transport Minister Rachel Maclean, the
Commissions propose a new approach to assigning
responsibility.
The proposals include:
T. Adams, Dec 20, "Five years ago, I was invited to test one
of Google’s prototype driverless cars on the streets near the
company’s headquarters in California. The car, alive with tech
and sensors, navigated the traffic faultlessly and, sitting
passively inside it, I could see only a couple of reasons why,
by 2020, the vehicles would’t be everywhere.
One stubborn problem was the insurer’s question of who would
be liable in the event of an “autonomous car” being involved
in an accident. That came closer to being resolved last week
with a framework government legal report suggesting,
logically, that responsibility for all motoring offences, even
fatal accidents, should transfer from the driver (now the
“user-in-charge”) to the car-maker or its software.... " Read more Hmmmm.... Can't/won't be the car
maker. The car is the commodity. It just did what it
was told to do. Those actuators are rock-solid and
rarely go bad. Tires hold up the car. Throttle
accelerates. Brake decelerates. Been doing that well
for more than 100 years. The car didn't didn't make any
of the bad decisions that led to the crash.
It has to be
the automatedDriver... the software & sensors that
sense the environment, make the decisions and "tell" the
actuators/car what to do.
It could also
be the operator who placed the car in a situation that
was outside the automatedDriver's Operational Design
Domain. But again, the automatedDriver should not have
permitted/enabled the operator to operate outside of its
Operational Design Domain,
So it is the
automatedDriver that is the responsible entity
and is desperately in need of "insurance" and the
ultimate responsibility of determining that it is "Safe
Enough" to incur the safety risk of providing affordable
driverless mobility in an Operational Design Domain in
order to achieve the improvements n quality-of-life
afforded by the improved mobility in that ODD.
Since a disproportionate amount of the risk is being taken by the entity that created the automatedDriver that entity should simply buy the cars as a commodity and operate the fleet, . Alain
K. Korosec, Dec 17, "Autonomous vehicle company Aurora
Innovation sent offers Thursday to more than 75% of employees
at Uber Advanced Technologies Group, just a week after
announcing plans to acquire the self-driving subsidiary,
according to a source familiar with the post-merger
integration plans.
Uber ATG Toronto, which employs about 50 people where the
subsidiary conducted its research and development work, did
not not made the cut, according to a source. Nor has Uber
ATG’s chief scientist Raquel Urtasun, who led the Uber ATG
R&D team. It was previously confirmed that Uber ATG CEO
Eric Meyhofer would not join Aurora once the deal closed.
Until today, it was unclear if Urtasun, a University of
Toronto professor and the Canada Research Chair in Machine
Learning and Computer Vision as well as the co-founder of the
Vector Institute for AI, would be moving over to Aurora.
Urtasun is considered a leading expert in machine perception
for self-driving cars...." Read more Hmmmm.... I interpret this to mean that
Chris is confident in Aurora's Driverless technology
stack and is looking at this acquisition as enhancing
Aurora's ability to safely deliver and scale mobility
valued by customers. Alain
K. Stanley, Dec. 2020, "To investigate the impact that
autonomous vehicles (AVs) could have on U.S. automobile
insurance, researchers interviewed stakeholders and conducted
a literature review. A key finding from their research is that
the U.S. automobile insurance system should be sufficiently
flexible to accommodate the introduction of AVs. Most experts
agreed that, although some changes to the U.S. automobile
insurance model may be indicated as vehicles are increasingly
automated, it is too early to make radical changes to the U.S.
automobile insurance system.
In addition, a majority of experts predicted that AVs would be
deployed through a fleet ownership model, although their
predictions regarding the specific formulation of fleet
ownership differed. A majority of experts also said that the
insurance claims process for accidents involving AVs and
conventional cars would not change significantly in the
future, and experts agreed that consumer acceptance was very
important to successful AV deployment...." Read
more, Hmmmm....
Haven't had a chance to fully consume, but ...
1. Amazing
that the researchers spent time on "no-fault'
insurance. This approach implies that crashes are
independent of driver mis-behavior. This can only exist
if all road vehicles are automated with equally good
automated drivers. No conventional cars being driven by
mis-behaving humans. Since we have barely started
automating cars, this isn't going to be a really for a
very long time, if ever. (Human-driven horse-drawn
carriages still use public roads in Pennsylvania and
other states.) Moreover, insurance itself should be a
motivating the car buying public to purchase automated
safety features. This technology fundamentally helps
customers from causing crashes when they mis-behave,
thus closing the loop and allowing insurance to keep
more of the revenue derived from premiums from their
customers who purchased crash-avoidance technologies.
Making insurance no-fault takes away any financial
incentive to purchase or even use technology that makes
one a better driver. That's a monumental incentive that
would vaporize with no-fault insurance. So I find the
discussion on Automated
technology (Levels 1, 2 or 3) baffling.
The focus is
on Autonomous ("Levels 4 & 5") and not really on
Automated (Levels 1, 2 or 3). I, of course, love that
Rand organized automated driving of vehicles using
public roads into just two groups. Those that require
real-time supervision by fully capable of driving humans
(so poorly called "Level 1,2 &3" by SAE/NHTSA) and
those that do not need, nor desire, real-time human
assistance ("Level 4". I prefer to withhold
recognition of "Level 5" because it requires the
automation system to be able to perform in all circumstances which
by its definition is never achievable, so why
bother discussing it. Circumstances are really
important in driving. So important that we should be
using "Operational Design Domain" as the descriptor as
Rand uses throughout its recent report
"Safe
Enough". The ODD for
conventional cars requires us to not mis-behave when we
drive. Again, most crashes are occur when conventional
cars are operated outside their ODD; when we
mis-behave. One of the fundamental advantages of
automation is that the ODD itself ca/must contain a
precise definition of its ODD and can be precluded from
wandering outside its ODD, kept from mis-behaving.
Thus, the precise specifications of the ODD is critical
to the discussion/operation of any automated system.)
2.
Unfortunately, I found the report very hard to digest.
While it contains a realization that Autonomous vehicles
("Level 4") will be primarily "Owned" and operated by
Fleets, accommodation of private ownership seems to get
in the way. Instead of grouping Fleet owners with
individual consumers, these should have been treated
separately. It is all about who is responsible for
safe operation. For Fleets, Fleet owners/"substantial
entities" are responsible for safety. These entities
have substantial resources and stakes. Individuals have
limited resources and have very little opportunity to
capture any benefits/efficiencies in scale. Fleets have
assets at-risk (reputation .. etc.), can self-insure and
have access to re-insurance. Individuals can readily
walk away, have limited resources and are unlikely to be
able to maintain the technology sufficiently well
without their continued oversight; thus, effectively
negating/voiding the "Level 4" functionalities. These
two "customers" of Autonomous
vehicles ("Level 4") need to be treated separately
as they are today. personal car insurance is very
different than corporate fleet insurance.
S. Talbott, Dec. 17, "Dear President-Elect Biden,
This year it appears that you will be the one who will be able
to grant us our Christmas wish for the upcoming year. The
United States of America has had a very very difficult year
and what we need from You is a vision of a better built
tomorrow that takes into account the transportation needs of
all. Mr. Biden that will require an Autonomous/Electric
Vehicle Czar. The Czar’s mandate should be to provide a
strategy and develop a framework for Autonomous and Electric
Vehicles that prioritizes equity in transportation.
We know that much like other industries, parts of the
transportation industry have suffered greatly during this
year. Unlike sales of vehicles over $30,000, sales for
vehicles under $30,000 have been decimated by the pandemic and
the resulting economic downturn. The truth is that the
inequities in the transportation market mirror the rest of
society where we see a world of have and have nots. ...
Transportation equity should be a cornerstone of the work
that you do in your administration. If we want to build back
and build back better, then there has to be a recognition of
the lack of transportation options for too many.
T. Lee, Dec. 18, "The average cost of a lithium-ion battery
pack fell to $137 per kWh in 2020, according to a new
industry survey from BloombergNEF. That's an
inflation-adjusted decline of 13 percent since 2019. The
latest figures continue the astonishing progress in battery
technology over the last decade, with pack prices declining 88
percent since 2010.
Large, affordable batteries will be essential to weaning the
global economy off fossil fuels. Lithium-ion batteries are the
key enabling technology for electric vehicles. They're also
needed to smooth out the intermittent power generated by
windmills and solar panels.
But until recently, batteries were simply too expensive for
these applications to make financial sense without mandates
and subsidies. Now, that is becoming less and less true.
BloombergNEF estimates that battery-pack prices will fall to
$100 per kWh by 2024. That's roughly the level necessary for
BEVs to be price-competitive with conventional cars without
subsidies. Given that electric vehicles are cheap to charge
and will likely require less maintenance than a conventional
car, they will be an increasingly compelling option over the
next decade...." Read
more Hmmmm....
This is non-trivial! Electric motors are much more
simple (fewer parts) than ICEs, and don't require a
transmission. If batteries become as cheap as a gas
tank (still have a long way to go, but
order-of-magnitude reduction in 10 yeas is a start), and
if we can generate all the electricity we need without
coal (EVs consume new electricity, which comes from coal
that we would not have had to burn), then EVs may
actually make real sense. Alain
K. Korosec, Dec 15, "Zoox, the autonomous vehicle company
that was acquired this year by Amazon, revealed this week the
product of six years of work: A purpose-built self-driving
vehicle designed to carry people — and someday maybe even
packages — in dense urban environments.
The company’s story has captured the attention of skeptics and
supporters alike, perhaps because of its secretive nature and
outsized mission. Unlike its rivals, Zoox is developing the
self-driving software stack, the on-demand ride-sharing app
and the vehicle itself. Zoox also plans to own, manage and
operate its robotaxi fleet.
It’s been an expensive pursuit that almost led to its demise
before Amazon snapped it up — and the mission is still far
from over. But today, as an independent Amazon subsidiary, it
has the financial support of one of the world’s most valuable
public companies.
TechCrunch interviewed Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson
about the company’s milestone, the vehicle design, its exit to
Amazon and what lies ahead...." Read
more Hmmmm....
Very interesting. Alain
Press release, Dec 17, "...Unlike current passenger vehicles
that focus on the driver, Zoox is designed for riders. The
vehicle was built from the start to optimize features
necessary for autonomous, electric mobility, such as sensor
placement and large batteries.
Each vehicle features four-wheel steering, allowing it to pull
into tight curb spaces without parallel parking. This
capability makes it easy for Zoox to pick up and drop off
riders, quickly getting to the curb and out of the flow of
traffic to provide a better and safer experience.
The vehicle is bidirectional, so there is no fixed front or
back end. It can pull forward into a driveway and forward out
onto the road without reversing. In the case of an unexpected
road closure, the vehicle can simply flip directions or use
four-wheel steering to turn around. No reversing required.
Inside the vehicle, carriage seating facilitates clear
visibility of the vehicle’s surroundings as well as
socializing. Each seat has the same amount of space and
delivers the same experience — there’s no bad seat in the
house. Carriage seating also makes room for a wider aisle,
allowing passengers to easily pass by each other without
getting up or contorting into awkward positions..." Read
more Hmmmm....
I guess, but... the vehicle itself seems to be just a
1st cut and pretty much a continuation of ZooX rather
than some new insight from Amazon. Why is entry from
the side? Why facing seats? What about wheel chair
accessibility? No OLED screens? Cup holders?? Doesn't
seem to have leveraged much from the removal of the
requirement to accommodate a human driver and the
replacement of the ICE & transmission with electric
motors. Alain
K. Korosec, Dec 14, The Station is a weekly newsletter
dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just
click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your
inbox.
Hi friends and new readers, welcome back to The Station, a
newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people
and packages move from Point A to Point B...." Read
more Hmmmm....
In case I've missed some things, Kirsten probably has it
here. Alain
N. Lavars, Dec 15, ".... The next phase of the
trials will see these trips carried out without anybody
onboard, beginning next year. ..." (Alain's
emphasis) Read
more Hmmmm....
Let's wait until the "next phase" actually starts
before we get too excited here. The headline should
at best read: "... In the Next
Phase Walmart Plans to Remove..." Alain
These editions are sponsored by the
SmartETFs Smart Transportation and Technology ETF, symbol
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F. Fishkin, Nov 25, "What you should know about electric
cars, climate change and more. The Dispatcher publisher
Michael Sena joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host
Fred Fishkin in an eye opening edition of Smart Driving
Cars.."
F. Fishkin, Nov 24, "When it comes to active driver assistance systems, what works and what needs improvement? Some answers from Kelly Funkhouser… program manager for vehicle interface, head of connected and automated vehicles at Consumer Reports. She joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 186 of Smart Driving Cars."
C. Metz & K. Conger, Dec 7, "Uber, which spent hundreds
of millions of dollars on a self-driving car project that
executives once believed was a key to becoming profitable,
is handing the autonomous vehicle effort over to a Silicon
Valley start-up, the companies said on Monday.
Uber will also invest $400 million in the start-up, called
Aurora, so it is essentially paying the company to take over
the autonomous car operation, which had become a financial
and legal headache. Uber is likely to license whatever
technology Aurora manages to create.
The deal amounts to a fire-sale end to a high-profile but
star-crossed effort to replace Uber’s human drivers with
machines that could drive on their own. It is also
indicative of the challenges facing other autonomous vehicle
projects, which have received billions in investments from
Silicon Valley and automakers but have not produced the
fleets of robotic vehicles some thought would be on the
streets by now...." Read
more Hmmmm...
Actually a good article. Alain
S. Wilmot, Nov 30, "Nikola Corp. NKLA 0.76% isn’t turning out
to be the next Tesla that investors—and General Motors GM
-0.67% —were hoping for.
The electric-vehicle startup put its eye-catching “Badger”
pickup-truck project on ice Monday as part of a radically
shrunken version of its deal with GM. All that is left of the
original agreement signed in September is a plan for GM to
supply Nikola with fuel-cell technology for U.S. big rigs.
Detroit’s biggest auto maker had planned to take an equity
stake in Nikola in exchange for building the Badger under
contract. But the deal has been in doubt almost from the start
after a hedge-fund report detailed the limitations of Nikola’s
technology, leading to the resignation of founder Trevor
Milton.
GM won’t sell Nikola fuel cells soon. For all its fanfare
about hydrogen, the startup is currently focused on
battery-powered versions of its first electric truck, the
“Tre.” It hopes to start full-scale production in the fourth
quarter of next year in Germany and in early 2022 in Coolidge,
Ariz. Hydrogen trucks won’t come before 2023, and in Europe
Nikola is using Bosch as its fuel-cell supplier. ..." Read
more
Hmmmm... Lessons for many in this endeavor. See also Andrew
Hawkin's take as well as David
Morris'. Alain
Today is the first day those insiders can sell their shares, and Nikola's stock price is down 15 percent. That's on top of yesterday's 26 percent decline after Nikola announced it was canceling its Badger pickup truck...." Read more Hmmmm... More lessons. Alain
In October 2020, Consumer Reports published ratings of Active Driving Assistance Systems, defined as systems that allow the driver to use Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) to simultaneously control both the speed and steering of the vehicle. An industry webinar was also held...." Read more Hmmmm.... A MUST read along with "Cadillac's Super Cruise Outperforms Other Driving Assistance Systems". Most unfortunately, CR has not picked up on my main complaint about ACC: Tapping of the brakes by the driver turns off the ACC! This is BAD!!! Even the hardest, let alone the slightest, engagement of the brakes should NOT turn off the ACC. It should ONLY disengage the acceleration/throttle function of the ACC.
- Support the creation of government policies and company practices to ensure that innovation and safety go hand-in-hand
- Use consumer data to inform the industry of best-practices to aid in development
- Influence the safe design, testing, and deployment of systems consumers will like and use
- Advocate for transparency and clarity in marketing and consumer education of system
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