[log in to unmask]">
SmartDrivingCar.com/10.41-Yea4Trenton-111422
41st edition of the 10th
year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
According to numbers from the Mercer County Clerk’s office,
Gusciora currently has more than 70% of the vote...."
"F.
Fishkin, Nov.. 12, "As GM expands Super Cruise, assistant
program engineering manager Jonathan Vitale joins Alain
Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a look at the
capabilities now and in the future. Plus Ouster, Velodyne,
Trenton Moves, TuSimple, Waymo, Tesla and more. Smart
Driving Cars episode 291!"
0:00
Open
01:00
GM Super Cruise assistant program engineering manager
Jonathan Vitale
27:23
Trenton Moves
37:00
Ouster and Velodyne
38:45
Waymo
45:30
Tesla and Zoom
Techstination
[log in to unmask]
732-928-4691
Technical support
provided by: CARTSmobility.com
a 501c3 dedicated to Safe & High-Quality Mobility for All
F.
Lambert, Nov. 1, "Tesla is reportedly planning to start
importing electric cars made in China to the US, according
to a somewhat-questionable report from Reuters.
Update: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has now denied the Reuters
report via Twitter.
Reuters came out with a new report today that claims Tesla
is currently validating a plan to import electric cars made
at Gigafactory Shanghai in China to the US market...." Read more Hmmmm... . Whew!!! What a bad
idea. Alain
F.
Lambert, Nov. 1, "Tesla and Zoom have announced that they
are officially teaming up to bring video conferencing inside
Tesla vehicles.
Over the last few years, Tesla has invested heavily in
features that are aimed to be useful for the in-car
experience when its vehicles become self-driving.
I am talking about in-car video games and Tesla Theater,
which integrates streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu
directly into the center display of Tesla vehicles....." Read more Hmmmm... . This is a great idea
but ONLY if it operates when the car is in park
and Tesla monitors any attempt to jailbreak that
restriction. Alain
A. Hawkins, Nov. 9,
"Kia America just announced the 2023 pricing for the EV6, and
much like many EVs before it, it’s going in the wrong
direction.
Next year’s EV6 will
start at $49,795, including a $1,295 destination charge — a 16
percent price hike, or $7,100 more than last year’s model.
Previously, the Light base model EV6 started at $42,695,
including the destination charge. (That model has now been
discontinued and replaced with the Wind RWD trim.)
And that’s not taking into account any dealer markups
or options that would likely end up pushing the Kia EV6’s
price north of $50,000, which is dangerously close to luxury
vehicle levels of price. (Kia isn’t jacking up the price for
nothing, though: the 2023 EV6 is getting a pretty significant range boost.) Inflation sucks, but
inflation in the EV sector is especially depressing for a
number of reasons... " Read more!
Hmmmm... Good thing electricity is
perceived to be free. How
long is that going to last? Alain
Nov. 12, "On Saturday,
November 12 at 11:06 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched the Intelsat
G-31/G-32 mission to a geosynchronous transfer orbit from
Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force
Station in Florida.
This was the fourteenth launch of this booster, which
previously supported Dragon’s first crew demonstration
mission, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, SXM-7, and 10
Starlink missions.
https://www.cartsmobility.com/ provided technical
support
"F. Fishkin, Nov.. 6, "On
episode 290 of Smart Driving Cars, Princeton's Alain
Kornhauser shares a presentation just delivered in Vancouver
titled...A New Deployment Framework for Autonomous Vehicles.
Plus.. he chats with co-host Fred Fishkin about Waymo, Lyft,
Aurora, Tesla and more.
0:00 open
01:00 A New
Deployment Framework for Autonomous Vehicles presentation 01:04:20 Waymo
making passenger trips to Phoenix airport 01:06:30
Layoffs at Lyft 01:09:30
Aurora reaffirms enough cash until commercial deployment 01:10:30 New
FSD Beta from Tesla
F. Fishkin, Oct. 9, "The
biggest take-away from Tesla's 2022 AI Day? Princeton's
Alain Kornhauser says it's the massive compute power. Why?
Join Alain and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 286 of Smart
Driving Cars. Plus Kodiak Robotics, Mobileye, Uber,
Motional and an upcoming webinar on The Present and Future
of Autonomous Vehicle Technology. "
F. Fishkin, Sept 27, "Will
the world be facing a Mad Max scenario for battery
components as electric vehicles fill the roadways? The
Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena has some advice for
decision makers on episode 285 of Smart Driving Cars with
Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. And
more on the EV tax credits, tire pollution, a tech solution
to railroad crossing dangers and some hood ornament
nostalgia. Or listen.. "
0:00 Intro
1:18 Battle over batteries
15:53 Electricity generation and
electric vehicles
22:28 Tech to solve ungated
railroad crossing dangers
26:11 Pollution from tires
32:23 Sean Connery’s Aston
Martin
34:08 Some hood ornament history
40:00 South Korean wants half of
all cars autonomous by 2035
43:22 Why don’t you have a self driving car yet? Brad Templeton
writes in Forbes
F. Fishkin, Sept 22, "What
will NVIDIA's DRIVE Thor mean for companies looking to
deliver autonomous mobility? VP of Automotive Danny Shapiro
joins us for episode 284 of Smart Driving Cars. Plus the Biden administration is
funding Smart Transportation Technology, GM Cruise aims to
develop chips for self driving
and the NTSB pushes tech to combat impaired and reckless
driving."
F. Fishkin, Sept 11, "The
strategy for survival at Aurora, new Detroit testing for
Mobileye, NVIDIA's coming virtual developer conference and
another AI upcoming for Tesla. Princeton's Alain Kornhauser
and co-host Fred Fishkin share the latest on those stories
and more on episode 283 of Smart Driving Cars."
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI Open
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=80 Aurora
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=762 Mobileye
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=872 NVIDIA
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=948 MIT
Mobility Forum
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=1031 GM BrightDrop
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=1072 GM
Cruise
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=1446 Uber
Nuro
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=1589 Lucid
Nikola
https://youtu.be/nBl1pD2BFcI?t=1648 Tesla
AI Day
F. Fishkin, Aug. 31, "Is there
really a battle over building and maintaining roads? "The
Dispatcher" publisher Michael Sena on the history and outlook
on episode 282 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain
Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus... the Saudi
linear city plan, GM, #Tesla, Baidu, Waymo and more."
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=106
Michael Sena ..battle over roads
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=2004
Michael Sena Saudi linear city
plans
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=2456
Aluminum makes cars…China makes aluminum
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=2759
Teslas banned from Chinese
Communist Party retreat
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=2951
GM’s mandator OnStar option
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=3333
Gatik partners with Pitney Bowes
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=3416
Waymo reported seeks to withhold trip level data in SF
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=3538
GM president on autonomous vehicle strategy
https://youtu.be/F1qDhRqAA5c?t=3619
Baidu says automous EV rides in
China have surpassed one million
F. Fishkin, Aug. 28, "A new
step for Tesla FSD with Beta 10 69 release and the company's
"Occupancy Network". Princeton's faculty chair of autonomous
vehicle engineering, Alain Kornhauser, weighs in on that plus
oversized EVs, Toyota's view of autonomous mobility,
Pittsburgh's Guaranteed Basic Mobility Program and some
excitement surround SpaceX and NASA and more."
00:42 new Tesla FSD Beta 15:37 Tesla AI Day coming 19:07 Space X Launch 21:06 NY Times Essay on oversized
EVs 24:18 California to ban gasoline
cars by 2035 25:43 Toyota Research Institute
says AVs not imminent 31:35 Tesla acts agains Dawn Project and O'Dowd 32:19 Pitssburght
Guaranteed Basic Mobility 38:24 Waze shutting carpooling
service 41:09 NASA readies Artemis
F. Fishkin, Aug . 22, "How can
Tesla data help with the understanding of car crashes? NY
Times reporter & author Cade Metz joins Alain and Fred to
explore the latest Tesla news, including the new higher price
for FSD. Plus NHTSA reports a
continuing rise in traffic deaths, Lyft in Vegas, Cruise and
Waymo. And Princeton and NBA great Brian Taylor joins us to
remember legendary basketball coach Pete Carril."
F.
Fishkin, Aug . 11, "After announcing it will spend 1.2 billion
dollars on EVs and rapidly expand its vehicle subscription
service, what does the future hold for Autonomy. Serial
entrepreneur & CEO Scott Painter joins us for episode 279
of Smart Driving Cars. Plus
Tesla, Argo AI and more ..."
Timeining
Index:
@t=47 Autonomy CEO Scott Painter
@t=2485 Tesla, Ralph Nader
@t=2635 Anti-Tesla ad campaign
@t=2657 Pittsburgh Post
Gazette
@t=2892 Argo AI
@t=2967 Congressional push for AV
legislation
F. Fishkin, Aug . 7, "Elon Musk
talked about his vision for Tesla robo-taxis
and more during his Q&A following the 2022 shareholders'
meeting. Weighing in on that and more is Princeton's Alain
Kornhauser on episode 278 of Smart Driving Cars with co-host
Fred Fishkin. Plus TuSimple, GM
Cruise, Lucid, Argo and more."
Timeining Index:
@ t=55 Musk vision for autonomous taxis
@ t=728 When and where first robo-taxis will be deployed.
@ t=1177 What about the role of Musk’s
Boring Company?
@ t=1530 Musk responds to Autopilot
suggestion
@ t=1941 Alain on automatic emergency
braking
@ t=2230 California acts against Tesla for
using terms Full Self Driving and AutoPilot
@ t=2357 TuSimple blames human error
for crash
@ t=2456 Barron’s reports When the Lawyers
Come for Autonomous Vehicles
@ t=2552 GM President talks safety
@t=2722 Losses at Lucid
@ t=3071 Alex Roy talks elevators!
F. Fishkin, July 30, "A look at
cities & mobility, turmoil at VW, the cash problem at
Cruise & more. "The Dispatcher" publisher Michael Sena
joins Alain Kornhauser & Fred Fishkin for another spirited
discussion on episode 277 of Smart Driving Cars."
F. Fishkin, July 25, "Following
the TRB gathering in California, what was accomplished?
Compass Transportation & Technology President Dick Mudge
joins us for a look. Plus the
latest on Tesla, Cruise, Baidu, Zoox
& more. Smart Driving Cars episode 276 with Alain
Kornhauser & co-host Fred Fishkin."
Link to 275 previous SDC PodCasts & ZoomCasts
K. Korosec, Oct 26,
"Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup that burst on the
scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment, is
shutting down — its parts being absorbed into its two main
backers: Ford and VW, according to people familiar with the
matter.
During an all-hands meeting Wednesday, Argo AI employees were
told that some people would receive offers from the two
automakers, according to multiple sources who asked to not be
named. It was unclear how many would be hired into Ford or VW
and which companies will get Argo’s technology.
Employees were told they would receive a severance package
that includes insurance and two separate bonuses — an annual
award plus a transaction bonus upon the deal close with Ford
and VW. All Argo employees will receive these. For those who
are not retained by Ford or VW, they will additionally receive
termination and severance pay, including health insurance.
Several people told TechCrunch that it was a generous package
and that the founders of the company spoke directly to its
more than 2,000 employees..." ... Certainly a "class
act" way to shut down.
"...said Farley. “It’s
mission-critical for Ford to develop great and differentiated
L2+ and L3 applications that at the same time make
transportation even safer.” Farley also insinuated that Ford
would be able to buy AV tech down the line, instead of
developing it in house. “We’re optimistic about a future for
L4 ADAS, but profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale
are a long way off and we won’t necessarily have to create
that technology ourselves,” ... Read more Hmmmm... What??? What is "L4
ADAS"??? You are really going to do L3 which many believe is
harder than L4. L3 is going to require that Ford accept the
safety liability and the "obey all the legal operation"
liability for the life of the vehicle whenever the driver is able to engage that
functionality. There is NO WAY Ford or really any OEM is
ever going to take on that substantive amount of liability
unless there is such an abundance of fine print that it
makes Elon's proclamations about FSD seem like junior
varsity.
We all understand
that "L2+" is today's "50s-style chrome & fins"
propelling the selling cars in showrooms as OEMs have always
done. Absolutely no need to get to
driverless (L4 in some societly
or commercially viable ODD).
Idf someone does develop
(as I quoted last week) Schumpeter’s
Disruptive Technology Threshold …: "... [I]n capitalist
reality…, it is not [price] competition which counts but
the competition from the new commodity, the new
technology…- competition which commands a decisive cost or
quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of
the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at
their foundations and their very lives.” Joseph A Shumpeter
(1883-1950)”, it is going to simply make it available
to allow Ford to continue to serve its customers or will use
it to crush Ford? Alain
L. Sumagaysay, Oct. 27, "...", Read more Hmmmm...
Another view. Alain
A. Hawkins, Oct. 26,
"...." Read more Hmmmm... Andrew's view. Alain
A. Hawkins, Oct. 27,
"When Ford announced yesterday that it was pulling its support
for Argo AI, the autonomous driving startup it had financed
since 2017, it cited as one of its reasons a belief that
driver-assist technology will have more near-term
payoffs....." Read more Hmmmm... I
agree with Andrew, as I stated above. Alain
Russ Mitchell, Oct 19,
2022 “The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, said
Wednesday that it plans to make L.A. its next market. “L.A. is
in the top three ride-hailing markets in the United States and
globally,” said Saswat Panigrahi, the company’s chief product
officer. “The commercial opportunity is huge.”
But Waymo offered scant
information about its plans, including when the commercial
service will begin and how extensive the service’s coverage
will be….” Read more Hmmmm... or what the
service will be? Ride-hailing??? Compete with Uber/Lyft…
good luck! After leading the "testing phase" for the last 13
years, this is their plan for the "deployment phase". So disappointing! Doesn’t
come close to meeting Schumpeter’s Disruptive Technology
Threshold …: "... [I]n
capitalist reality…, it is not [price] competition which
counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new
technology…- competition which commands a decisive cost or
quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of
the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at
their foundations and their very lives.” Joseph A Shumpeter
(1883-1950)”. Alain
K. Pyle, Oct. 13, "Autonomous
vehicles (AV) provide the opportunity to correct government
transportation failures is how the Brookings Institution’s
Clifford Winston characterized
the potential opportunity provided by autonomous vehicles.
Winston spoke to the possible economic impact of autonomous
vehicles in an online media briefing (YouTube video) that also included
speakers from Princeton and the Reason Foundation who touched
on the technology and the role of public policy and
regulation. A lively question and answer period followed the
briefing...." Read more Hmmmm... Ken, thank
you. Excellent. Alain
Tesla Staff, Sept. 30,
"Streamed live..." Read more Hmmmm... I'm not much of a
fan of humanoids so you may skip the first hour; however,
starting @ 0:58:00 - FSD Intro, the next hour and a half is
substantive and a must watch. My takeaway remains
driverless "everywhere" is so enormously challenging that
the near-term opportunity (next 10 years) to sell such a
vehicle to a consumer is simply unthinkable. The terms &
conditions would need to be so onerous making the total
addressable market essentially null.
That said, I suspect
that there exist some, possibly many, societally beneficial
Operational Design Domains (ODD), where "FSD 69.2.2" or near term releases can deliver safe
driverless mobility. This deployment strategy is what I
with the technical support of CARTS, Inc. have decided to
focus on. Alain
Sept 28, M. Sena, "IN
THE PAST, when a country believed it was not receiving enough
of a resource that it felt it needed and deserved, it went to
war to take it. Gold, silver, tea, spices, cotton, cod, coal,
grain, oil and many other
commodities have been the causes of nations attempting to
steal land and seas from other nations. There are countless
numbers of movies that show us the horrors of war, but the postapocalyptical MAD MAX film series
gives us a glimpse of what it could look like after all the
big wars have been fought and lost. Warlords and their gangs prey on survivors of the wars
that caused societies everywhere to collapse. They battle each
other over gasoline, water and
food. Are we trading wars over oil for wars over lithium,
cobalt, nickel and rare earth
metals, jumping from one frying pan into another? As
governments continue with their policies to dramatically
increase demand for these commodities, the chances for
expanded conflicts increase. In many areas, they have already
begun. ..." Read more
Another excellent issue.
Enjoy! Also watch or listen:ZoomCast 285 /PodCast 285 Alain
J. Huang, Sept 20, "...In
today’s vehicles, active safety, parking, driver monitoring,
camera mirrors, cluster and infotainment are driven by
different computers. In the future, they’ll be delivered by
software that improves over time, running on a centralized
computer, Huang said.
To power this, Huang introduced DRIVE Thor, which combines the
transformer engine of Hopper, the GPU of Ada, and the amazing
CPU of Grace.
The new Thor superchip delivers 2,000 teraflops of
performance, replacing Atlan on
the DRIVE roadmap, and providing a seamless transition from
DRIVE Orin, which has 254 TOPS of performance and is currently
in production vehicles..." Read more Hmmmm... Watch Jenmsen's
keynote @ 2022 GTC. Watch: Nvidia Explains Self-Driving Car
Vision at GTC 2022. See how the XPeng
G9 utilized nVIDIA. Watch the G9's version of "FSD"
called X Alain
D. Welch, Aug. 30, "Aurora
Innovation Inc.’s chief executive officer recently laid out a
range of options for the self-driving company to respond to
worsening market conditions and partners pushing out
timelines, including a possible sale to Apple Inc. or
Microsoft Corp., according to a document seen by Bloomberg.
Chris Urmson, who co-founded
Aurora after running Google’s self-driving car project, also
outlined cost cuts and floated measures including taking the
company private, spinning off or selling assets and pursuing a
small capital raise in a memo labeled “board discussion
pre-read” and dated Aug. 3. Urmson
inadvertently sent this to staff and asked them on Aug. 9 not
to open it, the document shows. ..." Read more Hmmmm... Realistic but not good
news. With revenue at zero all of
these companies are struggling. The annual addressable
market of new class 8 trucks in the US is about 275,000
units. Given the large number of competitors addressing a
limited market that has yet to yield any revenue for any of
them suggests that this is a
really tough business, especially if first revenue remains a
year or more in the future.
What may be even more
daunting is competition from a TeslaSemi with "FSD.Class8", not to
mention the Waymo Via initiative.
They both can cross subsidize their driverless Class 8
initiatives with their driverless people movement
investment.
I still contend that there is
a substantial near-term revenue opportunity Advanced Professional Driver Assistance focused on
improving Professional Driver workplace. OSHA should be mandating such
technology. Aurora could be generating revenue from it
today. CEOs of trucking companies could be paying for it
today and pocketing extremely attractive RoIs. Professional Drivers would be
happier campers. So much so that the driver shortage might
disappear. Alain
M. Sena, Aug. 30, "The
September 2022 Issue in Brief
Funding Roads: There
was a time when the main problem with roads in the U.S. and
Europe was that there were not enough of them to keep drivers
from getting stuck in traffic. Then, environmentalism,
NIMBYism, anti-feceralism and
anybody-with-a-beefism put the breaks on all infrastructure. They
shifted the debate to how to pay, rather than what do we need
to stay competitive with the countries where the rulers decide
what gets built where and how. Is there a way forward for
democracies to have a functioning infrastructure, or must we
look on with envy at countries where totalitarian governments
build infrastructure like it’s the 1950s in the West?
Dispatch Central: A new city in the desert is an old
idea - The de facto head of the Saudia
Arabia government has designed a city with one stroke of the
pencil. One very long stroke.
Aluminum: Another
brick in the Wall of China – Governments required higher fuel
efficiency. OEMs lowered car weights to comply. China cornered
the market on the material that was needed to make it happen:
aluminum. Sound familiar?
Some countries actually do
something about Tesla – China (again) seems to be the only
country that can tell Tesla to “Heel?”, and Tesla heels. We
don’t wonder why this is so.
GM looking for money in all the wrong places – Making
something like OnStar a ‘standard option’ is
like telling parishoners they
need to put money in the collection basket in order to get into mass. ..." Read more Hmmmm... Another fantastic issue.
See ZoomCast 282/PodCast 282 for a
discussion of the content. Alain
Tesla Daily, Aug. 22, " Looking
at first impressions from Tesla’s release of FSD Beta
10.69..." Read
more Be sure to watch Ashok Elluswamy's "Occupancy Networks" keynote
presentation at CVPR on June 20, 2022.
Very impressive, especially the use of training videos and it realization in FSD 10.69
Also pertinent are video
demonstrations of:
My takeaway from the above is
that FSD 10.69 is impressive but not near "Full" anything,
especially if put in the hands of some individual who
themselves may well be a menace on the road.
While not being near "Full"
anything, FSD may be nearing the point in which it is FSD
within some useful Operational Design Domain.
It is one thing to be able to
safely negotiate a trips segment: safely drive straight
down a well marked lane in
clear weather, safely make an unprotected left, safely stop
behind a stop line at a stop sign, ... Each is an important
achievement.
It is a whole other challenge
to be able to safely go from some origin to some destination
thus delivering useful mobility to some person or some thing safely without any
disengagements. The ensemble of these origin-destination
pairs would define the ODD for FSD. To date that ODD has
been essentially null. The challenge for subsequent
releases of FSD may well be to begin to explicitly identify
FSD's ODD sand assess the extent to which these ODDs have
emerged from the null state to begin to safely provide some
useful mobility to the general public. Alain
Asking FSD to be "Full"
everything, everywhere to everyone is simply a naive
unachievable objective. To me a better question may well be
in which Operational Design Domain is FSD indeed Full
Self-Driving?
Once that ODD is determined,
restrict FSD to operate ONLY in that ODD.
Tesla must accept the
responsibility allowing FSD to be engaged ONLY when the car
is operating in Operational Design Domain where Tesla has
certified that FSD drives safely. Else, FSD safely pull
over, stop disengage and turn the responsibility of continuing on to the human driver.
It should be Tesla's responsibility to allow FSD to be
turned on and the determination of when and where it ceases
to move because Tesla must be held responsible and liable if
it something bad happens when it is driving. If I'm driving I'm responsible and liable.
Not my passenger who may or may not be paying attention to
what is going on. If FSD is driving it must accept that
responsibility and not expect the passenger to help out. The word "Self" implies
"Full"; else the product should be called
Partnership-driving or Team-driving or ??? Alain
C. Metz, Aug. 18, "Shortly
before 2 p.m. on a clear July day in 2020, as Tracy Forth was
driving near Tampa, Fla., her white Tesla Model S was hit from
behind by another car in the left lane of Interstate 275.
It was the kind of accident that occurs thousands of times a
day on American highways. When the vehicles collided, Ms. Forth’s car slid into the median as
the other one, a blue Acura sport utility vehicle, spun across
the highway and onto the far shoulder.
After the collision, Ms. Forth told police officers that
Autopilot — a Tesla driver-assistance system that can steer, brake and accelerate cars — had
suddenly activated her brakes for no apparent reason. She was
unable to regain control, according to the police report,
before the Acura crashed into the back of her car.
But her description is not the only record of the accident.
Tesla logged nearly every particular,
down to the angle of the steering wheel in the
milliseconds before impact. Captured by cameras and other
sensors installed on the car, this data provides a startlingly
detailed account of what occurred, including video from the
front and the rear of Ms. Forth’s
car.
It shows that 10 seconds before the accident, Autopilot was in
control as the Tesla traveled down the highway at 77 miles per
hour. Then she prompted Autopilot to change lanes..." Read more We've been calling for an
independent analysis of the Tesla data for some time.
Privacy is easy to protect. There is no need to know who
owns or was operating each Tesla. Also see ZoomCast 280 Alain
D. Hall, Aug. 9,
"Tesla, GM, Volkswagen and Ford are among the automakers set
to get big orders from Autonomy, a startup offering drivers
the option of subscribing to an electric vehicle instead of
buying one outright.
Autonomy plans to announce Tuesday that it’s ordering nearly
23,000 EVs from 17 different automakers for a total outlay of
$1.2 billion. With chip shortages limiting production capacity
at most automakers, it’s unclear how soon such a fleet could
be amassed. The order represents 1.2% of the projected US
electric vehicle production through the end of next year... .” Read more Hmmmm... While this is a
very interesting play for an individual to acquire a
subscription to have a "Drive-it-Yourself" (DiY) electric car that gives
the individual anywhere
& anytime mobility. The subscription is acquired using
a simple anywhere & anytime mobile
phone app (the "autonomy" of the concept) that
bundles, insurance, maintenance, taxes, the vehicle,...
Essentially everything except the electricity. Just DiY it and get from where you are to
where you want to go when you want to "Just do It" (JdI). All at an
attractive monthly subscription charge when you consider all
that is bundled. This is DiY/MaaSS (Mobility as a SubscriptionService) for those that
can DiY.
See the Bloomberg
Video and well as SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 279 / PodCast 279 w/Scott Painter, CEO Autonomy
I can readily envision the
extension of Autonomy's DiY/MaaSS
to MOVES/MaaS where "MOVESMobility, Inc." places a $n.m Billion RoboTaxi
order with Tesla, (and/or GM, Toyota,
VW, Benteler, Zoox,
Baidu, Alibaba, AutoX, ...) to
deploy safe, equitable, affordable, sustainable,
high-quality mobility for all 24/7/350+ throughout
Trenton, Perth Amboy, Patterson, Newark, Camden, Atlantic
City, Edison, New Brunswick, Scranton, Greenville, Newburg, Brooklyn, Queens,
Staten Island, .. and their environs' Operational Design
Domains (ODD). 😁 Alain
E. Musk, Aug. 4, .” Read more Hmmmm... Watch the Q &
A portion starting about an hour in from the start. Watch
especially the comments about his vision of the Tesla RoboTaxi (aka driverless cars, what
I prefer to call autonomousTaxis or aTaxis,
the new "Modern Transit"). The key visions are:
@
t=6375 ... the issue of how he sees
these driverless vehicles being operated (deployed).
While I don't agree
with the option of owning your own and renting it out "AirB&B -style where B&B =
Mobility". It is easier and more likely to begin by having
a Professional entity managing a fleet of Tesla RoboTaxis that provide mobility to
the everyone in the community. This will be the the "Modern Public Transit". An
example being Trenton MOVES using a fleet of Tesla RoboTaxis.
For these RoboTaxis to be attractive to a
fleet operator, they will need to be styled differently than
consumer versions that are sold to individuals. The RoboTaxi will need to be easy to get
in and out and interface well with wheelchairs. They'll
need to accommodate ride-sharing
(personTrips are the source of the revenue, not vehicle
sales). They should have 4-wheel steering so they will
never need to back up in stub-end operation. He has re
imagined the pickup truck. Certainly, he can re-imagine a
car focused on providing safe, equitable, affordable,
sustainable high-quality mobility throughout a community.
At the end of
addressing the future of Robotasis
he states ..." assuming we do all these
things, I think, probably, Tesla will be the most valuable
company in the world."
@ t=7057 Elon is asked "when will
Tesla launch the first pilot city for the RoboTaxi business?
Elon dodged the question by
stating that he is focused on doing driverless everywhere,
even in every imaginable simulation of the real world.
Consequently, once achieved, it could be released everywhere
al at once.
While a great vision,
this is simply not realistic. He started selling Teslas in California, not throughout
the whole country. He fully understands that one must crawl
before one walks, before one
runs.
As you might suspect,
I have the ideal "California" for him to first deploy his RoboTaxis and its not California or
Arizona. It is New Jersey: Trenton, NJ or Perth Amboy, NJ
or Patterson, NJ or many other
cities in New Jersey where the mobility offered by Tesla RoboTaxis would be life changing to
many while becoming an interesting alternative to everyone
else. DoJo can more readily
regress the coefficients to deliver safe driverless
operation within any one of these Operational Design Domains
(ODD) rather than trying to do them all simultaneously.
Coefficients can/should be tied to ODDs rather than having
one "magical" set that works in all ODDs. It is trivial for
the Operating system to load the coefficients that work best
in theRoboTaxi's current ODD.
This should allow RoboTaxis to
demonstrate their technical, economic
and societal virtues much sooner in these communities.
Market success will fuel expansion and replication in the
delivery of safe, equitable, affordable, sustainable,
high-quality mobility so that is spreads beyond New Jersey
to California and beyond just like the purchase of the first
Teslas spread from California to
New Jersey and beyond.
@ t=7417 Elon is asked about the
Boring Company.
True, if one could bore tunnels
inexpensively, it would be great for longer distance
travel. Certainly, all of the
freeways in and around cities would be placed underground.
High Speed rail on the NorthEast
Corridor can only go underground for long stretches.
Bringing the Dinky to a Nassau Street terminus must be done
underground. By the way Washington Road should be
underground eradicating the cancer that it is as a surface
street severing the Princeton Campus. Then there is Rt. 29
that devastated Trenton by barricading the western part of
Trenton from the Delaware River and Rt. 129 that severed
neighborhoods; a scenario that was repeated in essentially
every city to accommodate through-moving surface travel.
They should all go underground. There is much good that
could be done. The challenge is the above if.
@ t=6665 "when disengaging autoPilot with the wheel, the
accelerator stays on. Please fix it!"
Maybe... touching or
not touching the steering wheel has little in common with
acceleration (and braking) which is (are) controlled by the
feet. The steering control should be readily overcome by
input of a torque on the steering wheel; however, the
steering control should revert to dominance if the driver
ceases to exhort a torque on the wheel. Moreover, torquing
the steering wheel should not disengage the brake or the
throttle.
With respect to the
driver actions on the brake and throttle:
Driver input from the
throttle should have precedence over "intelligent cruise
control (ICC)" input to the throttle and brake and should
NOT turn off the system simply because the driver touched
the accelerator pedal.
For the brake, it is
a little different. Tapping the brake should turn off the
acceleration function of the ICC. Acceleration should
remain off until the driver explicitly re-engages it.
Moreover, driver input to the brake, if less than what the
ICC calls for, should always be dominated by the
ICC's desire to brake. Tapping of the brakes should not
turn off the braking function of the ICC. That intelligent
brakig function should continue
to keep m fro getting to close
to the vehicle in front of me. The acceleration function
has been turned off so I won't accelerate into the back of
the car ahead of me and the braking function should continue
to do its best to keep a proper separation between me and
the vehicle ahead. Turning the whole system off placing me
completely in control should require an explicit action by
me that indicates I'm knowingly usurping responsibility.
I believe ICC should be on
all the time. Driver sets the speed and separation (or it
is done automatically relative to the speed limit, weather
conditions and road curvatures). Driver can choose to
override the throttle and override the braking at any time;
however, in the absence of overrides, the ICC is in charge.
Alain
Reuters, July 26,
"General Motors Co (GM.N) has lost nearly $5 billion since
2018 trying to build a robotaxi
business in San Francisco, and now as the automaker's Cruise
unit starts charging for rides, the losses are accelerating.
GM said on Tuesday it lost $500 million on Cruise during the
second quarter - more than $5 million a day - as it began
charging for rides in a limited area of San Francisco. ... that may be the
case for the last quarter, but the chart below from GM's 6/30/222 10-Q Shows
($800M) for the last 6 months or $4.38/day when divided by
182.625 Whew!😅...
Cruise's costly effort to transform autonomous driving
technology from a long-term research project to a
profit-spinning business comes as investors are backing away
from riskier bets on technology, and
reassessing how soon robot vehicles of any kind will be
deployed in large scale on public roads.
Shares of autonomous
vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation Inc (AUR.O), for
example, are down 80% for the year to date. Shares of robo-trucking company TuSimple Holdings Inc (TSP.O) have
lost more than 70% of their value. Some automakers, including
Ford Motor Co (F.N), have scaled back investments in automated
vehicle units, or taken on partners to share the costs....
Cruise's losses for the
first six months of the year deepened to $900 million from
$600 million during the same period in 2021 - when Cruise was
not charging for rides. Higher compensation costs to keep
staff on board after putting aside plans for an IPO were one
factor in the results, GM executives said.
Chief Executive Mary Barra said on Tuesday she is still
bullish on Cruise, and reaffirmed a forecast that the unit
could generate $50 billion a year in revenue from automated
vehicle services and technology by 2030. .” Read more Hmmmm... Nice optimism.
The source of the reality check above comes from GM's 6/30/222 10-Q.
Start reading from page 41. then on page 43:
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="635" height="98" border="0">
Whoa! The only nice
thing that can be imagined is by assuming that they've had
essentially zero revenue, the operating costs have "only"
been $800M for the last 6 months. That is non-small.
I'd like to suggest
that the strategy of trying to create a profitable
driverless mobility service for folks that already have 2 or
more cars in their garage, have excellent public transit
service or travel on expense accounts when wanting to go to
between the airport and "downtown" may not be the wisest way
to launch such a mobility service. There is little
opportunity to be substantially better or even equivalent to
what those potential customers already have. Little
opportunity to get loyal and repeat customers. The focus to
date has been too heavily weighted on getting the technology
to work for folks who already have more mobility options
than they know what to do with. Great for click-bait;
challenging for the 10-Q. What must Waymo's 10-Q Cash Flow
chart look like?
Capturing loyal and
repeat customers is really tough
when the competition is excellent and entrenched. While
pricing can be high, volume is almost non-existent even with
nominal pricing. Except for the novelty, the marketplace in
the Chandlers and SFs is essentially non-existent. To date
those markets have been quiet, at best. What must
Waymo's 10-Q Cash Flow chart look like?
It astonishes me that
to date none of the leading driverless companies have spent
any money trying to serve the needs of folks that don't own
cars, aren't traveling using someone else's money, nor have
access to a good public transit system focused on their
mobility needs.
These folks definitely can't pay as much for a
ride as those that are being chased by Cruise & Waymo,
but there are more of them. Moreover, its
almost trivial to provide them with a mobility option that
is substantially better than what they have today for many,
if not most, of their daily personTrips.
This is the market
that we've found in New Jersey; in Trenton & Mercer
County, Perth Amboy & Middlesex County and Patterson
& Passaic County. We haven't even begun looking in
Newark, Camden, Atlantic City
and the rest of New Jersey.
The excuse seems to
have been that it would be too expensive to deal with NJ's
bad weather, even though, we've made it clear that New
jersey is not interested in a 365.25 days/yr. mobility
solution. We'd be more than pleased with a 350 days/yr.
operation. New Jersey has more than 350 good days a year.
We aren't so entitled that we can't wait for the hurricane
to blow through, the snow to be shoveled or the fog to lift
before we go about our normal business. We enjoy the "snow
day" at home. We are convinced that is actually
easier and cheaper to capture recurring and loyal
NJ customers.
The rule-of-thumb for
a Trenton-MOVES style operation is:
a vehicle needs to serve at least 100 personTrips/day. With
slightly better ride-sharing and
time-of-day pricing, one might be able to get to 150
personTrips/day. To cover a fleet of 100 vehicles,
ridership needs to be about 10k to 15k personTrips/day.
This kind of utilization leads to per personTrip
capitalization costs of less that
$1/personTrip for vehicles costing upwards of $150k @
interest rates upward of 7.5%. That is
to say, $1/personTrip
readily covers the
vehicle capital costs even at moderate scales.
Given that trips
on-average are less than five miles, vehicle operating costs
are less than $1/personTrip.
Management costs are
largely fixed. With volume the per personTrip burden
decrease enormously, and can't
be more than $0.50/personTrip.
Break-even fare is
thus roughly $2.50/personTrip.
An average market
fare of $3.50/personTrip delivers a profit of
>$1.00/personTrip, >$100/vehicle-day.
A fleet of 100
vehicles delivers a profit >$10k/day,
>$3.0M/yr. in the Trenton ODD serving 10k personTrips/day.
From where do these 10k personTrips/day
materialize?
Essentially all the
riders of NJ Transit rail would love a simple reliable
convenient way to get to & from the train. By on-demand
service within the community around the train station,
loyalty upwards of 80% could be achieved for anyone wanting
to go to NYC or within walking distance to any other NJ
train station. For Trenton that represents a marketplace of
8,000 personTrips/day that currently drive to & from the
station every day and those that currently don't use the
train that would if it was easy and reliable to them to get to AND from the
station, when they wanted to get to and from there. Half of
the 10k would easily come from serving the Trenton Train
Station.
Trenton Central HS
has 1,800 students. More than 1,500 live more than a 10 minute walk to the TCHS. Truancy
is proportional to how far a student has
to walk to school. Trenton MOVES could readily
serve 1,250 of these students every day. That's 1/4 of the
needed 10k.
We only need another
2.5k personTrips and we haven't even begun dealing with
getting people to & from work in Trenton, doctors,
shopping visiting friends, etc. needed by the 70% of Trenton
households who have access to one or zero cars. 100
vehicles serving 10k personTrips/day making >3.0M/year @
an average fare of $3.50/personTrip is just the start of a
profitable business. Employing 200 vehicles costing at most
$100k at interest rates of less than 7.5% serving 150
personTrips/day at fares of $3.00/personTrip makes way more
than $5M per year.
Expanding Trenton
MOVES throughout Mercer County giving the opportunity to
increase average fare (because of the longer personTrips) to
maybe $5/personTrip keeping utilization @ 150
personTrips/vehicle-day of a fleet of 1,000 vehicles and
doing a little better on interest rates and cap costs can
lead to profits of >$10M/year for Trenton/Mercer MOVES.
There are at least 10 replications of Trenton/Mercer MOVES
that could be done in NJ by 2030 utilizing a fleet of at
least 10,000 vehicles leading to a profit of
>$100M/year.
This kind of success
leads to having many more people leave their cars at home
and frequenting NJ-MOVES as their mobility system. This
could lead to a NJ-Moves fleet of >100,000 vehicles is generating a profit of >$1B.
If Mary expects this to be
achieved by 2030 and replicated in the 50 other states (on
average) as the Universe she expects to exist in 2030, I'm
hopeful but skeptical. My point is, that starting with
Trenton MOVES as the big bang that achieved her vision seems
to me to be a lot clearer that where Cruise/Waymo have
chosen to try to create a Big Bang. Seems as if she and
Kyle should be taking Trenton and New Jersey much more
seriously. Please call me! Alain
Reuters, July 16,
"China's search engine giant Baidu Inc on Thursday unveiled
its new autonomous vehicle (AV) with a detachable steering
wheel, with plans to put it to use for its robotaxi service in China next year.
Cost per unit will drop to 250,000 yuan ($37,031.55)
for the new model, compared with 480,000 yuan for the previous
generation, Baidu said in a statement.
“This massive cost reduction will enable us to deploy tens of
thousands of AVs across China," Baidu's chief executive Robin
Li said at the Baidu World conference. "We are moving towards
a future where taking a robotaxi
will be half the cost of taking a taxi today.” Read more Hmmmm... Really?? See video. Where do I buy 10
for immediate delivery to New Jersey with option to buy 100
more by EoY'22 and 1st inline
to buy 1,000 more by EoY'23. eMail me!!!
While the design is
certainly not ideal for "Trenton MOVES" or "Perth Amboy
MOVES" they would be good enough
to get started with addressing the "Sociology Challenges" of
MOVES-style deployments. And the price is right if this isn't total
click-bait. But... that is a really
big if . 🙁 Alain
Press release, July 12,"May
Mobility, a leader in the development and deployment of
autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, today closed a $111
million Series C round of funding. Additionally, the company
plans to continue to pursue its deployment programs using the
Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicle
platform while beginning development on another vehicle design
centered around mobility, Toyota’s e-Palette, signaling the
next potential milestone as it seeks new ways to bring
equitable mobility solutions to the masses...." Read more Hmmmm... Hopefully this will enable May
Mobility to take seriously Trenton MOVES and other
MOVES-style deployment initiatives in New Jersey and
beyond. Alain
D.Shepardson, July 7, "The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a
special investigation into a recent crash of a Cruise
self-driving vehicle in California that resulted in minor
injuries, the agency said on Thursday.
The auto safety agency did not identify the specific crash,
but a Cruise vehicle operating in driverless autonomous mode
was involved in a crash involving minor injuries on June 3 in
San Francisco, according to a report filed with the California
Department of Motor Vehicles. ... " Read more Hmmmm... The police report
indicates that the Cruise vehicle stopped while making a
protected left turn, yielding to avoid being T-boned by a
speeding Prius that might run its red. Instead
the Prius changed to its left turn lane and broadsided the
Cruise vehicle. I can't wait to see the Cruise 360 video of
that crash. Hopefully the
Prius' insurance company will reimburse the Federal
Government for its expenses incurred in its special
investigation of the crash that it caused. Alain
June 24, M. Sena "THE
DISPATCHER, July 2022
IN THIS ISSUE
Princeton Fifth Annual SmartDrivingCars Summit ...........
Safe, Equitable, Affordable, Sustainable, High-quality
Mobility for Everyone
.......................................................2
Dispatch
Central................................................................9
Someone lit a fire under NHTSA
.......................................9
The Economist: Right analysis, wrong solution ..............12
Musings of a Dispatcher: Eyes on the Back Story...........15
The evolution of digital maps and ADAS
........................15
Digital Maps for the Vehicle – 1970-2022
......................24 ...
" Read more Hmmmm... Another great edition and
very well written summary of the 5th Summit. Alain
June 15, Press release,
"Today, as part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s
efforts to increase roadway safety and encourage innovation,
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the initial
round of data it
has collected through its Standing General Order issued last year and initial
accompanying reports summarizing this data.
The SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems summary
report is available here,
while the SAE Levels 3-5 automated driving systems summary
report is available here.
Going forward, NHTSA will release data updates monthly..." Read more Hmmmm...
This is a good start; however, as NHTSA repeats many times,
this is just a start and there are many "data limitations".
The most severe may well be the possibility of substantial "sampling bias", the most
severe of which is that each OEM sourced the reported data
very differently. That makes the data between OEMs
incomparable.
Also un reported is any measure that
would enable a "crash rate" for an OEM to be determined.
One only has a numerator value but no denominator value.
Finally, 392 crashes
of "Level 2" cars were reported during the "10" month period
of July 2021 and May 15, 2022. About 12 million vehicles
are involved in traffic crashes every year among the 283
million vehicles that operate in the US. Assuming any one
vehicle is unlikely to be involved in more than one crash
per yer, it means that each
vehicle, on average is involved in 12M/283M = 0.0424 crashes per year. Thus, if
these ADAS cars were involved in crashes at the average
rate, and had their ADAS on all the time, the 500 vehicle
crashes per year contained in these data would expect to be
generated from a fleet of only about 11,800 vehicles (or
0.0042% of the vehicles ("everything being equal", ADAS on
all the time.).
Consequently, either,
...
Anyway. It is a
start and at least to me the numbers are not startling.
What needs
improvement is sourcing of the incidents. Maybe OtA should be mandated. At minimum,
the VIN should specify the existence of theses capabilities. Then normal
police reportings can begin to
"automatically" access the "black box event recorders"
(see also Accident data recorder and NHTSA) that are in
most cars today. Unfortunately, privacy concerns makes this not-easy. So
here we are. It wont
be easy to do much better, but we should continue to try.
What the data do
point out is that a substantial number of the crashes
involved the rear ending of a stationary object. I have
pointed out repeatedly that the source code of these systems
explicitly disregard stationary
objects in the lane ahead. Justifying this explicit process
is that current sensors incur
unacceptable false positives when trying to determine if
sufficient headroom exists under detected stationary object
in the lane ahead. Thus, to avoid braking in response to
these rare false positives, stationary objects in the lane
ahead are all assumed to be "pass under-able".
As one drives, one
encounters many stationary objects in the lane ahead. These
are readily sensed and precisely located ahead. Readily
sensed are overpasses, signs, tree canopies, traffic lights,
... all of which can usually be readily passed under. (As
can vehicles ahead that come to rest in vehicle-follower
mode. These are not disregarded because one is in
vehicle-follower mode.)
But when one is in
vehicle-leader mode and one encounters a stationary object
ahead, I believe, most, if not all "Level 2" systems
disregard that object and assume the car can pass
underneath. So if you are in
vehicle leader mode and come over the crest of a hill to be
confronted with a stopped object ahead, your system will
disregard that object. Similarly, if the vehicle that you
are following changes lanes forcing you to become a leader,
any stationary object ahead will be disregarded. Alain
3 minute Promo: https://youtu.be/q5Ov_dPuRV4
The 5th Summit: https://www.cartsmobility.com/summit
S. Still, June 3, "... Heywood
Patterson, 67, He often drove members of his church to Tops,
helping them load their groceries into his car and then taking
them home. "That's what eh did
all the time," Deborah Patterson said. "That's what the loved
to do". ..." Watch Video Hmmmm... A
principal reason for "Trenton MOVES"-like deployments is to
do what Heywood Patterson "loved to do" for the many. Alain
M. Sena, May 24, "New Car
Assessment Programs (NCAPs) all around the world have created
a separate and unequal set of standards for vehicle safety
operating in parallel with the Type Approval processes in most
countries and the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards
and their equivalents in other countries. One standard is
enough. In this month’s the lead article, I look at why this
has happened, why it is not a good idea, and what should be
done to correct the situation.
There is no Musings in this month’s issue. Instead, I have put
my musings energies to work in Dispatch Central. You can see
the topics below. The section ends with a notable quote from
the CEO of Stellantis on the
topic of battery electric vehicles.
Enjoy your June issue of The Dispatcher. All comments are
welcome, whether you want to take exception to something I
have written or you just want to
let me know that you got something out of reading it. ..." Read more Hmmmm... Every month, great
reading. Enjoy! Alain
A. Nathans, May 11,
"When Serena Ren presented her senior thesis on using machine
learning for art appraisals last month, she hoped to see her
friend, Joyce Luo, present her thesis on fighting opioid
addiction. But since all students in the Department of
Operations Research and Financial Engineering present their
theses in parallel sessions, this was impossible.
But on May 4, Ren and Luo finally got to see each other’s
presentations in a classroom in Sherrerd
Hall, thanks to the department’s first-ever event in which
selected students present their thesis work to the whole
department.... " Read more Hmmmm... I'm so
proud! Hopefully we'll be able
to release the video so you can enjoy. Keep trying the link:
PAVE, May 4,
"Autonomous vehicle technologies offer incredible potential:
they could make our highways safer,
they could offer new mobility options for people who can’t
drive, and they could help create a more equitable
transportation system for those who are not well-served by our
current system.
During the month of May, we are highlighting places where AVs
are in use — today — being deployed, tested, and used for
public good. We want to look at examples of the technology
being used to serve food deserts, to expand access to rural
communities, to offer new accessibility options, and more.
We are starting with the Trenton MOVES initiative, which is
the first large-scale urban transit system in America based
entirely on self-driving shuttles. The shuttles, which carry
four to eight passengers, serve traditionally underserved
Trenton neighborhoods, where 70% of households have limited
access to a single automobile, or no access at all. Our
panelists will detail the program, describing how it works,
the results it has achieved, and their vision for the
future......" Read more Hmmmm... Very nice. Be sure
to watch video 😁 and see ZoomCast 267 Alain
P. Keller, April 29,
"New Jersey recently announced a $5 million grant for the
Trenton Mobility & Opportunity: Vehicles Equity System or
MOVES Project. The grant to the City of Trenton will support
the planned start up and eventual deployment of 100 Autonomous
Vehicles that will provide an on-demand automated transit
system to serve the 90,000 residents of Trenton....." Read more Hmmmm... Very nice. 😁 AlainSaturday,
April 23, 2022
April 21, "CARTS Executive
Director Jerry He explains to the audience at #CoMotionMiami that:
Hmmmm... Yup! See ZoomCast265 Alain
H.
Jin, April 6, "Electric carmaker
Tesla (TSLA.O) will make a "dedicated" self-driving taxi that
will "look futuristic," Chief Executive Elon Musk said on
Thursday, without giving a timeframe.
The 50-year-old billionaire, wearing a black cowboy hat and
sunglasses, made the comments at the opening of Tesla's $1.1
billion factory in Texas, which is home to its new
headquarters.
"Massive scale. Full self-driving. There's going to be
a dedicated robotaxi," Musk told
a large crowd at the factory...." Read more
Hmmmm... Wow! It was
brilliant for Elon to begin focusing his EVs on rich
Californians who already have a stable full of cars to go
all the way to grandma's house and back and were really
looking for a neat toy.
Elon followed the
graceful rollout of his Supercharger infrastructure which
enabled the upper-middle class that doesn't have a backup
fleet and needs to have a toy and reliably go back and forth
to grandma's house. Viola!!! No longer just a toy.
Seamless evolution to "Massive Scale" scale
and Massive Profitability.
RoboTaxis' evolution to "Massive Scale" is
turning out to be different. Starting with rich WesternStaters doesn't seem to be
working sociologically for Waymo. The rides offered seem to
be taken for entertainment and side-show purposes rather
than valued enablers of enhanced quality of life. Nice for
selfies, but not much more.
Recall fundamental
value is to provide a safe, high-quality ride from A to
B. "Safe" is "safe", but "high-quality" is relative to
what one now has readily available. For the rich, that's
where they've already put a lot of money to create for
themselves something really nice.
The chances someone is going to offer something better to an
individual that has crafted something perfect for themselves
is slim-to-none. Consequently, the service is used
primarily for taking selfies.
For those that don't
have their own car for whatever reason (can't drive, don't
want to, too young, too old, and/or too poor) their mobility
options are simply dreadful. Absolutely trivial for an
aTaxi service to be viewed as the quality winner and used to
provide customer accessibility, improved quality of life,
endearment, respect, love, appreciation, loyalty, and use.
Consequently, if Elon
is really serious about achieving "Massive Scale"
then he should basically flip his Tesla strategy and start
by focusing on serving the mobility needs of those that will
fully appreciate and gain the most personal value from his
market offering;
These are the
customers of Trenton MOVES;
only about 50,000 of Trenton's 90,000 population; but 50,000
that will really appreciate you. Start by only serving
Trenton's 8 square mile area with about 100 vehicles and
only during the best 350 days out of the year's 365.25.
They'll be so appreciative and you will have
provided the spark that will allow your aTaxis to go viral! You'll
quickly serve Mercer county,
Newark, Camden, Atlantic City, New Brunswick, Toms River,
Perth Amboy, all of New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, New
York City (except Manhattan), Long Island, .....
That's the natural
road to "Massive Scale"
for Mobility for all. Start with those in most need and
evolve to convert those that will leave their own cars
parked in their driveway.
"Massive Scale"
starts with Trenton MOVES. Alain
The Waymo Team, March
30, "This morning in San Francisco, a fully autonomous
all-electric Jaguar I-PACE, with no human driver behind the
wheel, picked up a Waymo engineer to get their morning coffee
and go to work. Since sharing that we were ready to take the
next step and begin testing fully autonomous operations in the
city, we’ve begun fully autonomous rides with our San
Francisco employees. They now join the thousands of Waymo One
riders we’ve been serving in Arizona, making fully autonomous
driving technology part of their daily lives...." Read more Hmmmm... Congratulations! Enormous
accomplishment and fundamental expression of confidence in
your technology. Please come to New Jersey where we are
certain that you can actually delier "Safe, Equitable,
Affordable, Sustainable, HIgh-quality
Mobility" that will substantially improve the
quality-of-life of many by transforming affordable housing
into affordable living and more.
Let's look at the
back-of-the-envelope numbers...
Trenton:
Population: 90,000.
PersonTrips/Day
(non-walking): 300,000
IntraTrenton:
150,000
PersonTripLength (90%tile): 10 miles
intraTrenton
(100%tile) 5 miles
Operational Productivity:
VehicleTrips/Day:
50
Average Vehicle Occupancy
(AVO): 2
PersontTrips/VehicleDay: 100
PersonTrips/VehicleYear: 35,000
100 vehicle fleet
productivity: 10,000 PersonTrips/day (1/15th market
penetration)
50% market penetration
Fleet requirements: 500 vehicles (AVO =2.5) for 60
PersonTrips/VehicleDay).
Cost:
Depreciation/PersonTrip @
$200k/vehicle, 4 year life =
$200,000/(4*35,000) = $10/7 = $1.43/PersonTrip
Electricity + maintenance
+ management + ... = $0.57/PersonTrip
Cost = $2.00/PersonTrip
New Jersey:
Population: 9+ Million
PersonTrips/Day
(non-walking): >30 Million
IntraNJ
+ NJT/Septa to/from NYC & PHL: 30 Million
PersonTripLength (90%tile): 10 miles
Operational Productivity
VehicleTrips/Day:
60
Average Vehicle Occupancy
(AVO): 2.5
PersontTrips/VehicleDay: 150
PersonTrips/VehicleYear: 50,000
10% market penetration (3
Million PersonTrips/Day: Fleet
requirements: 20,000 vehicles (AVO =2.5) for 60
PersonTrips/VehicleDay).
Cost:
Depreciation/PersonTrip @
$200k/vehicle, 4 year life =
200,000/(4*35,000)= $10/7 = $1.43
Electricity + maintenance
+ management ... = $0.57
Cost per PersonTrip =
$2.00
Revenue: (10% market
penetration: 3M personTrips/Day)
10% @ cost + 90% market
pricing:
10% @
$2.00/PersonTrip (300,000*$2.00 = $600,000/day; $200M/year
90% @
$3.70/personTrip (2.7M*3.70 = $10M/day; 3.5B/year (value poposition could hae the average market price even
higher than $3.70/personTrip (+$1.70 over cost)
Profit: $1.70 *2.7M =
$4.6M/day = $1.5B/year
Seems to me that Waymo should
have responded to the NJ DoT RfEI
and shouldn't be completely ignoring me. I guess I'm
missing something. Maybe someone else will call me? 😎 Alain
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
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.
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. on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022 in the Trenton Central High
School auditorium. Members of the press will be invited
to attend. ...." Read more Hmmmm...
Another real milestone.
The Trenton MOVES RfEI closed February 25, with 20
submittals. Next comes the 5thPrinceton SmartDrivingCar Summit June 2 -> 4, 2022
in Princeton & 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