Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022
2022
6th edition of the 10th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
Moving Forward with Trenton MOVES
K. Pyle, Feb. 9, “Dr. Alain Kornhauser’s vision of bringing equitable, sustainable, and affordable mobility to the people of Trenton took another step forward with the February 9th, 2022 announcement (Facebook) of a $5 million NJDOT Local Transportation Planning Fund Grant for the Trenton Mobility & Opportunity: Vehicles Equity System (MOVES) Project (PDF). The significance of this event goes beyond the grant announcement…” Read more Hmmmm… Ken, thank you for the kind words. Alain
Smart Driving Cars Extra: Trenton MOVES gets moving
Feb. 11, “The New Jersey DOT is providing 5 million dollars to get Trenton MOVES moving. The goal..autonomous, affordable, safe mobility for all. This is a video of the event held on February 9th.” Read more Hmmmm… Fantastic even with challenging audio. Turn on Closed Caption. The substance is in the quality of the words from the Mayor, Commissioner and Superintendent. All from the heart. Very worth absorbing. Alain.
ZoomCast Episode 2 / PodCast 255 w/B. Templeton
F. Fishkin, Feb. 11, “The engaging debate over disengagements. In episode 255 of Smart Driving Cars, Forbes.com Sr. Transportation Contributor Brad Templeton engages with Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser over the path to the future of autonomous mobility. The latest data on disengagements from companies testing self driving vehicles in California, Tesla, Cruise, Waymo and New Jersey begins funding Trenton MOVES…are part of the spirited discussion with co-host Fred Fishkin.”
Technical support provided by: https://www.cartsmobility.com/
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 initiative.
Self-driving cars may soon be coming to Trenton
Staff, Feb. 9, “Officials unveiled plans for a new autonomous vehicle program during an event at Trenton Central High School on Wednesday. The hope is that the program will especially help the younger generations of Trenton residents.
The New Jersey Department of Transportation issued a $5 million grant to help fund the program, which has been named “Trenton Moves.”
Trenton residents would be able to order a self-driving car at kiosks throughout the city and would be dropped off at designated sites like the library, grocery store or hospital. The city is partnering with the state DOT and Princeton University on the project…” Read more Hmmmm… See Video highlight of Session Alain
Trenton MOVES, The World Grooves
S. Rangwalla, Feb. 9, “Trenton is the capital of New Jersey, and boasts a storied history involving George Washington, pesky British colonizers and the Battle of Trenton. It was also a multi-industry manufacturing powerhouse in the 19th and 20th century, churning out steel, construction, cable and rubber products which powered the automotive revolution and made possible some of the most iconic structures in the United States - the Golden Gate, George Washington and Brooklyn suspension bridges to name a few.
It is now launching a different revolution, specifically to make transportation affordable, convenient, time-efficient, green and practical in urban locations which are transportation challenged and car ownership per household is minimal (0 or 1)….” Read more Hmmmm… Yup! Thank you Sabbir. Alain
Trenton gets $5M grant for futuristic MOVES transit system
I. Avikucea, Feb. 9, “State officials awarded Trenton a $5 million grant Wednesday to kickstart a futuristic project they hope brings an electrically powered, self-driving transit system to New Jersey’s capital in the coming years.
Gov. Phil Murphy announced late last year that the state was soliciting companies interested in executing the state’s vision for the micro-transit system, which will give Trentonians access to a cheaper, on-demand option known as Trenton Mobility & Opportunity: Vehicles Equity System (MOVES).
The project is being developed by DOT, Trenton, Princeton University and the governor’s office. The hope is it’s up and running in the next couple of years, with Trenton serving as an incubator of innovation that sets the standard for cities across the U.S., DOT chief Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti said…” Read more Hmmmm… Fantastic. Actually happening. Next step is close of RfEI on Feb. 24, then comes the 5th SmartDrivingCar Summit in Trenton starting the evening of Thursday May 5 in Princeton and culminating at Trenton High School for the SmartDrivingTechnology Festival on the campus of Trenton High School on Saturday May 7. Click HERE to participate as a Sponsor, Exhibitor, and/or Attendant. Alain
Other reportings of Trenton MOVES Announcement:
New Jersey announces grant for Trenton MOVES autonomous vehicle-based urban transit system project
All-electric, self-driving mini buses coming to N.J. capital thanks to $5M grant
TRENTON’S AUTONOMOUS TRANSIT SYSTEM PROJECT MOVES FORWARD
Trenton MOVES Closer to Autonomous Vehicle Transit System with $5 Million Grant
California Robocar ‘Disengagement’ Reports Tell Us A Little
B. Templeton, Feb. 8, “Each year, the state of California requires all parties testing self-driving car systems in California report all the times their system needed to disengage, either for safety reasons as decided by a human safety driver, or because the software detected a problem and demanded the safety driver take over.
From this, one can calculate how many miles each team is driving between disengagements. Each year, this result has not been that useful because there are too many variations in what a team needs to classify as a disengagement. Safety drivers are told to disengage if they have any concern that there might be a safety risk, and often they do so when it turns out there wasn’t really a problem. More sophisticated teams will actually rebuild the situation in a simulator to find out what would probably have happened if there had been no intervention.
Many of the other disengagements happen when the software detects a flaw and decides to insist the safety driver take over. Good software is full of internal self-tests that make sure nothing unusual is going on, and it spits out warnings and alerts of various levels — it is common for this to be happening on a constant basis. Most of these warnings are not serious, but a team can decide which are serious enough to have the software give up. In addition, testing may show that many of these software disengagements may not have been necessary, but they must be reported under the law….” Read more Hmmmm… I love disengagements during testing because one learns from each. That’s what testing is all about.. learning.
Disengagements during deployment (… within one’s operational design domain (ODD) are each “death” if they are your fault, and barely tolerable if they are the other guy’s fault.
Consequently, Disengagements should be reported as accumulated within one’s deployment ODD or outside one’s deployment ODD. In 3 categories:
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Your fault in your ODD (really bad),
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Their fault in your ODD (sort of bad), and
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outside your ODD (good learning for which this is your tuition payment).
In a nut shell… Disengagements tell the technologists a lot. They could tell the rest of us the same thing if the technologists chose to properly divulge them. Alain
America’s Favorite Pickup Truck Goes Electric
When I was twelve, in 1971, the walls of my bedroom in southern New Jersey were covered with full-page photographs of rail dragsters and “funny cars” with swollen engines which I carefully razor-bladed from hot-rod magazines. My older cousin Charlie Seabrook and his car, the Jersey Jimmy, were well known on the East Coast drag-racing circuit. On Saturdays in warmer weather, Charlie and his brother Larry would work on engines down the road from my family’s farm, and I would hang around and watch, in love with the words they used—which showed up a few years later in Springsteen lyrics like “Chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, and steppin’ out over the line,” in “Born to Run,” and “Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor,” from “Racing in the Street,” a song about guys like Charlie, the “hot-rod angels / Rumbling through this Promised Land.”
My cousins tried to teach me about how the power train delivers torque to the wheels. But I was more interested in car guys—the engineer cowboys who raced their “suicide machines” on weekends. Dreaming of one day having that kind of power and independence myself, I built plastic models of the cars that decorated my walls alongside their drivers, a gallery of petrol gods I knew chiefly by aliases: the Snake, the Mongoose, the Flyin’ Hawaiian, and “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, King of the Dragsters.
That year, the National Hot Rod Association’s Summernationals came to Englishtown, New Jersey. Charlie, who was eventually inducted into the N.H.R.A. Hall of Fame, was racing, and I got to go with some friends and stroll through the pits. Top-fuel dragsters run largely on nitromethane, a volatile fuel that contains oxygen. The pits were a mechanical Pamplona of nitromethane bulls, their belching tailpipes and fiery exhaust wrinkling the air, and their pit crews almost feral with the oddly fruity aroma of the fuel and the acrid stench of the smoking, treadless tires that the guys called slicks.
I thought of Charlie, who died in 2016, and the Jersey Jimmy recently, at the opening of a pop-up theme park that the Ford Motor Company created in downtown Austin, Texas, in mid-October, to display its 2022 lineup of S.U.V.s, trucks, and vans. As of 2020, Ford no longer sells sedans in the U.S., a development that might have horrified my cousin, a confirmed car guy.
But, instead of the nitrous roar of the Englishtown pits, the most compelling sound I heard in Austin was the silence of Ford’s Mustang Mach-E as it zipped along a short track, to show off the rapid acceleration that electric vehicles, or E.V.s, are capable of. The Mach-E is a battery-powered version of the sports car that Ford introduced at the 1964 New York World’s Fair; Ford unveiled it as an electric S.U.V. in 2019, in keeping with the company’s move away from muscle and toward family vehicles with cargo space.
The star of the show was the F-150 Lightning—an electric version of the pickup that belongs to the best-selling vehicle line of any kind in the U.S. since the early nineteen-eighties. In a good year, Ford sells on average nine hundred thousand gas-powered F-series trucks, and earns about forty billion dollars annually from the line….
I spoke to Bill Ford on November 10th, the day that Rivian initiated an I.P.O. on the Nasdaq. By the end of the trading day, Rivian had reached a market cap of a hundred and one billion dollars (Scaringe was suddenly worth two billion), which made it for a time worth more than Ford, despite having no profits and little production history. (Ford’s valuation has since risen.) Although Ford’s investment in the startup paid off handsomely, Rivian’s stock price also showed that investors thought a startup that had at that point made just north of two hundred vehicles might have a better chance of transitioning into the age of digital cars than did Ford, one of the world’s great industrial enterprises.
Bill Ford seemed unbothered, however. “This is a blast,” he said, of this pivotal moment in family and company history. “I love this. All my career, I’ve kind of been waiting for this.” When he started calling for greener cars and manufacturing practices, more than twenty years ago, he has said, “the industry reacted like I was a Bolshevik.” Now, he reflected, “it’s here. I only wish I was thirty years younger.”
Last May, Ford’s daughter Alexandra Ford English, who started working for the company in 2017 as a manager in the autonomous-vehicle sector, became the first Ford woman to join the board. She was thirty-three—the age of her great-great-grandfather when he met Thomas Edison.
“She will live what I hoped to live,” her father said. “And that will be very cool.” Read more Hmmmm… Very cool 😎. Alain
Fewer robot cars are driving more miles in California
A. Hawkins, Feb. 10, “California, you may have noticed more robot cars on your roads than usual over the past year. That’s because autonomous vehicle testing is booming in the state, with AV companies having driven more than 4 million miles in 2021, according to data released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles. This represents a sharp increase over the previous two years, a sign that the AV industry has come roaring back after the pandemic-influenced lockdowns of 2020.
There were also fewer companies testing vehicles overall, a reflection of the increased pace of mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in recent years. Of the 50 companies registered with the DMV, only 22 reported testing during the year. Despite skepticism about the longer-than-expected timeline to mass adoption of AV technology, the companies say they expect to begin to roll out their first commercial services starting this year…..” Read more Hmmmm… Excellent. Alain
Cruise to raise $1.35 bln from SoftBank as it readies robotaxis
J. Lanhee, Feb. 1, “Self-driving tech firm Cruise on Tuesday said SoftBank Group Corp’s (9984.T) Vision Fund has agreed to invest an additional $1.35 billion through a second tranche, as it works to launch a commercial ride-hailing service in San Francisco.
Cruise, majority owned by General Motors (GM.N), has strong financial support from its investors including Honda and Microsoft and is not planning to raise more funds from the capital markets in the near term, GM chief executive Mary Barra said….” Read more Hmmmm… All in preparation to a liquidity event. Alain
What Elon Musk Did and Didn’t Reveal About SpaceX’s Starship Rocket
K. Chang, Feb 11, “On an outdoor stage in South Texas between screens with polished computer animations and a real gigantic shiny rocket behind him, Elon Musk provided his latest update on his dreams to send people to settle Mars on Thursday evening.
But while Mr. Musk’s presentation was vivid in detailing his vision of humanity’s interplanetary future, he was more circumspect about the operational details of the massive SpaceX rocket Starship that is central to those and other goals. The spacecraft must overcome numerous technical and regulatory hurdles before it can fly to orbit or fulfill a contract worth billions of dollars to land NASA astronauts on the moon, let alone colonize the red planet…
Mr. Musk has, however, routinely made schedule predictions that were far too optimistic….” Read more Hmmmm… Of course he does. We all know it, expect it and we shouldn’t be having any problem accepting it.
That’s the reality about the future, it is uncertain and thankfully so; else, it would be so boring it wouldn’t be worth living it. Few would watch the upcoming superbowl and its commercials if the outcome was known in advance. And certainly no one would be able to bet on a known outcome, which would be the only silver lining. Must Watch Video. I found it very inspiring. Congratulations Elon for the vision and the dedication and substance to date. Alain
SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
Staff, Feb. 13, “WHEN IT COMES to size and spectacle, the peak of the Space Age passed in 1973, with the final flight of the Saturn V rocket that had carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Taller than the Statue of Liberty, the Saturn V could lug 140 tonnes into orbit. Its first flight, in 1967, provoked Walter Cronkite, an American news anchor reporting far from the pad, to exclaim: “My God, our building’s shaking here!” as ceiling tiles fell around him. Despite half a century of technological progress, nothing as powerful has reached orbit since (see chart 1)..” Read more Hmmmm… Very interesting. Alain
Tesla is asked to disable Boombox feature when in drive, NHTSA deems it a safety risk
F. Lambert, Feb. 9, “Tesla was hit by yet another recall today as NHTSA asked the automaker to disable its Boombox feature, which allows drivers to play sounds through their cars’ external speakers when in drive, as the agency believes it is a safety risk.
The Boombox feature is more than a year old at this point since it was introduced in Tesla’s 2020 holiday update.
Using the external speakers meant for the pedestrian warning sound, the Boombox feature enables Tesla drivers to play pre-selected sounds through those speakers….” Read more Hmmmm… Excellent NHTSA! Tesla needs to stop being sophomoric and trying to be cute. Maybe even becoming more like its parents (including Elon, who is really a most hard-working, straight shooter.).
NHTSA needs to stay vigilant on these impetuous little things that are readily enabled by software and can, even more readily, be disabled over-the-air. NHTSA needs to be vigilant about hacks that enable work-arounds inspired by the few misbehaving Tesla aficionados or possibly larger bans of cyber-security moles. Alain
Tesla dominates car sales in California with impressive growth in 2021 and 2 of top 5 best-selling cars
F. Lambert, Feb. 9, “Tesla is dominating car sales in California with impressive growth in 2021 that has resulted in having 2 of the top 5 best-selling cars in the state…
New data from the California New Car Dealer Association (CNCDA) shows that the Model Y is the best-selling compact SUV in the state and it took the second overall best-selling car position – almost beating the much cheaper Toyota Camry.
Here were the top five best-selling cars in California in 2021:
Toyota Camry: 61,599 units
Tesla Model Y: 60,394 units
Honda Civic: 59,818 units
Toyota RAV4: 59,153 units
Tesla Model 3: 53,572 units…” Read more Hmmmm… Impressive. Read on, even more impressive! This consumer disruption is happening in the market place not the flip space. I’m looking to Trenton MOVES doing the same in the in New Jersey’s equitable mobility space. Alain
Nikola Motors (NKLA) loses its whole supply chain leadership, puts hiring freeze as situation looks dire
F. Lambert, Feb. 8, “… Update: Nikola has issued the following statement:
Nikola’s supply chain department is intact and Nikola continues to hire. The supply chain department has been intentionally strengthened with new and existing leadership. Nikola is focusing its efforts on getting its first BEVs and FCEVs to market and continues to hire strategically for critical roles. We have nearly 1000 employees now, including 220 new hires within the last 120 days. Nikola encourages you to listen to our earnings call on Feb. 24 to get an accurate overview of the company and its progress.
Update #2: we had a discussion with a Nikola spokesperson who tried to argue against the situation being “dire” at the company, but to our point about the supply chain dept, they couldn’t point to a single new hire in the supply chain department and reiterated that they have promoted internally….” Read more Hmmmm… Do I hear the fat lady singing? Nikola’s legacy is destined to be the Harvard Business School Case on the false virtues of Smoke & Mirrors, Silicon Valley Style. Alain
Tesla gets all its Supercharger cables stolen at brand new station
F. Lambert, Feb. 7, “Tesla was the victim of a theft that resulted in having to shut down a brand new Supercharger station, as all the cables on the eight stalls were cut off….” Read more Hmmmm… Theft and vandalism is not a new problem and is a cost that society puts on business causing society to pick up the tab to make good on its mis-deeds. One of the way too many unfortunate challenges. Even in disruptive technologies, people need to behave and be respectful. We desperately need some better sportsmanship. Alain
Autonomous trucking firm TuSimple expanding footprint
Staff, Jan. 26, “… “ Read more Hmmmm… Total click-bait.. Alain
Making it Happen: Trenton MOVES… a Framework for the Deployment of Safe, Equitable, Affordable, Sustainable, High-quality Mobility A. Kornhauser, Jan 11 TRB, “A slide deck describing the framework for a phased deployment of high-quality mobility in Trenton New Jersey that is envisioned to have wherewithal to naturally scale beyond Trenton in a fashion that can be replicated the more than 100 communities across the US that have similar demographic and travel demand characteristics.” Read more Hmmmm… Go through the slides in presentation mode to take advantage of the animations. Alain
4th Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit It is over!!! Now time to actually do something in the Trentons of this world.
Making Driverless Happen: The Road Forward (Updated)
K. Pyle, April 18, “It’s time to hit the start button,” is Fred Fishkin’s succinct way of summarizing the next steps in the Smart Driving Car journey. Fiskin, along with the LA Times’ Russ Mitchell co-produced the final session of the 2021 Smart Driving Car Summit, Making It Happen: Part 2. This 16th and final session in this multi-month online conference not only provided a summary of the thought-provoking speakers, but also provided food for thought on a way forward to bring mobility to “the Trentons of the World.”
Setting the stage for this final session, Michael Sena provided highlights of the Smart Driving Car journey that started in late December 2020. Safety, high-quality, and affordable mobility, particularly for those who do not have many options, was a common theme to the 2021 Smart Driving Car Summit. As Princeton Professor Kornhauser, the conference organizer put it…..” Read more Hmmmm…. We had another excellent Session. Thank you for the summary, Ken! Alain
Ken Pyle’s Session Summaries of 4th Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit:
14th Session What Will Power Safely-driven Cars
13th Session Improving the Moving of Goods
12th Session 3/18/21 Human-centered Design of Safe and Affordable Driverless Mobility
11th Session 3/11/21 Incentivizing Through Regulation
10th Session 3/04/21 Incentivizing Through Insurance
9th Session 2/25/21 Can Level 3 be Delivered?
8th Session 2/18/21 Who Will Build, Sell and Maintain Driverless Cars?
Michael Sena’s Slides, Glenn Mercer Slides
7th Session 2/11/21 Finally Doing It
6th Session 2/ 4/21 Safe Enough in the Operational Design Domain
5th Session 1/28/21 At the Tipping Point
4th Session 1/21/21 Why Customers are Buying Them
3rd Session 1/14/21 The SmartDrivingCars We Can Buy Today
2nd Session 1/ 7/21 A Look into the Future 1st Session: 12/17/20 Setting the Stage Kornhauser & He, April 2021 “Making it Happen: A Proposal for Providing Affordable, High-quality, On-demand Mobility for All in the “Trentons” of this World”
Orf467F20_FinalReport “Analyzing Ride-Share Potential and Empty Repositioning Requirements of a Nationwide aTaxi System” Kornhauser & He, March 2021 “AV 101 + Trenton Affordable HQ Mobility Initiative”
Calendar of Upcoming Events
5th Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
Thursday (evening), May 5, Welcome Reception (Registration required)
Friday, May 6, Equitable Mobility Innovation Forum (Registration required)
Saturday, May 7, Equitable Mobility Festival (Open to All)
Trenton, NJ
Live in Person
On the More Technical Side http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
K. Lockean’s AV Research Group at U of Texas
These editions are sponsored by the SmartETFs Smart Transportation and Technology ETF, symbol MOTO. For more information head to www.motoetf.com
https://www.cartsmobility.com/ provides technical support
SmartDrivingCars Zoom-Cast Episode 2 51 /A. Kornhauser: Making it Happen: Trenton MOVES… a Framework for…
F. Fishkin, Jan. 15, “In this special edition of Smart Driving Cars, Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and his presentation: Making it Happen: Trenton Moves-a framework for the deployment of safe, equitable, affordable, sustainable, high quality transportation. The focus is on providing autonomous mobility in a place where there is real need. A first. Join the effort.” Link to 250 previous SDC PodCasts & ZoomCasts
Recent Highlights of:
February 4, 2022 Trenton MOVES
W. Skaggs, Feb. 3,”We are excited to invite you to join Mayor Gusciora, N.J. Department of Transportation (NJDOT) Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, and Trenton Public Schools Superintendent James Earle to celebrate a $5 million award from the NJDOT Local Transportation Projects Fund for an unprecedented public transportation project right here in the Capital City. The project is called the Trenton Mobility & Opportunity: Vehicular Equity System (MOVES) initiative.
Originally announced by Governor Murphy and Commissioner Gutierrez-Scaccetti in December, TrentonMOVES seeks to provide a safe, equitable, and affordable high-quality on-demand mobility service to Trenton residents. The effort is a collaboration between the Governor’s Office, NJDOT, the City of Trenton, and Princeton University.
The $5 million award is a huge milestone for the project. This will be the first large-scale urban transit system in America to be based entirely on self-driving shuttles. Each vehicle will carry four to eight passengers at a time. The AVs will be low-cost to users in underserved neighborhoods. The high school will be one of the central destinations on the first routes.
The event will take place at 11:00 a.m. in the Trenton Central High School auditorium. Members of the press will be invited to attend. ….” Read more Hmmmm… Another real milestone.
Next comes the close of RfEI (being extended for a couple of weeks), followed by the 5th SmartDrivingCar Summit May 5 -> 7, 2022 in Trenton, NJ. The Summit will be focused on enabling Trentonians to get a first glimpse at technology and mobility systems that can deliver Trenton MOVES’ mobility objectives (Safety, Equity, Affordability, Sustainability,..) and, very importantly, enabling technology and mobility companies to learn the market opportunities available to be captured in Trenton, the rest of Mercer County, and throughout New Jersey.
Trenton MOVES is a win-win opportunity for the citizens of New Jersey (The Public) and the shareholders of mobility provider(s) (The Private), who can come together in a Trenton MOVES Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) that will be created through a Request for Proposal (RfP) process commencing shortly after the close of the Summit. 😁 Alain
5th Annual SmartDrivingCars Summit: Deployment of Safe, Equitable Affordable, Sustainable, High Quality Mobility throughout New Jersey Thursday evening, May 5, through Saturday May 7, 2022. Live in Trenton,NJ.
Alain L. Kornhauser, PhD
Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering
Director of Undergraduate Studies, ORFE
Director, Transportation Program
Faculty Chair, Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering
229 Sherrerd Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
609-980-1427 (c)
This list is maintained by Alain Kornhauser and hosted by the Princeton University LISTSERV.