[log in to unmask]" class="" width="136" height="80" border="0">
SmartDrivingCar.com/10.47-Xmas22-122522
47th
edition of the 10th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> Autonomous Vehicles Reality Check
Part 2: Moving People
R. Bishop, Dec. 22, “ Recent
reporting/blogging about AV’s can be maddeningly confusing,
because the days of saying anything meaningful about “AV’s” as a
singular entity are long past. What’s going on depends on what
kind of AV you’re talking about. Writers and pundits can
pontificate about “the trouble in AV City” if they want, but
they must first explain what AV sector they’re referring to. To
make sweeping statements is meaningless; the dynamics of the
technical, operational, and business factors are too diverse.
Thus this three-part article series, my shot at describing the
great breadth of today’s AV’s and providing color commentary.
A fundamental AV distinction regards what’s inside the vehicle:
people or freight? This Part Two article focuses on moving
people. Part Three will focus on moving goods.
Two Distinct Domains: Private or Commercial? ….” Read more Hmmmm….. Excellent, must read
that among other things makes clear the distinction between
what are largely orthogonal markets: Private (selling a
vehicle) and Commercial (selling a ride) .
What is missing,
especially in the "selling a ride" coordinate is
appreciation for the diversity of the "people" being
moved. The spectrums
spanning poor -> rich; young ->old; able->
dis-able; conservative -> liberal; .... that reflect not
only on when & where each of those individuals choose to
go but also on their choice as which commercial AV
deployment they'll choose to make the trip that today isn't
made or switch from the way they are going today.
As we know from the
movement of goods, one size doesn't fit all; one deployment
doesn't fit all. Pick-ups do well for haulin' some of your
own stuff, Class 8's for big valuable stuff. Then there are
flatbeds, tankers, cements, choo choos, boats, ... and so on
for very specific stuff. It ends up really mattering what
good it is when it comes to figuring out what and how to
deploy something to best move it.
My point is the
discussion about deployment along the private and especially
the commercial domains has failed to recognize the diversity
of the customer set and is failing to deploy near-term
capabilities to be better serve the mobility needs of
individuals that would be best served by that deployment.
Moving people is a "big-dimensional" market characterized by foudomains: {P, A, B, t} where P = people; A = from location; B = to location; t = time.
Deployment must
address not only the diversity of A, B and t but also that
of P. In order for an AV deployment to capture a customer
it needs to be the best for that customer when that customer
wishes to go from A to B at time t. That's the deployment
challenge . The diversity of P is certainly as important as
that of A, B and t. To date the deployment focus has been
one-size to fit all that has fit very few in the deployed
Operational Design Domain. Alain
[log in to unmask]" alt="SDC-podcast-thumbnail-296-brandes-newsletter.jpg" class="" width="115" height="65" border="0">
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 296 / PodCast296 w/ Jeff Brandes,
term-limited Florida State Senator & visionary of all 10
annual Florida Automated Vehicle Summits
"F. Fishkin, Dec. 17,
“The driving force behind Florida's 10th annual Automated
Vehicle Summit, former State Senator Jeff Brandes, joins Alain
and Fred for a dive into the progress to date and what's to
come. Plus Waymo, Uber Eats, TuSimple and more. 0:00 open 1:00 Jeff Brandes background 5:50 Is technology being used to
provide some societal good 7:51 Highlights from 10th annual
Florida Automated Vehicle Summit 24:24 Brandes on what is next
for him 34:34 NY Times: Once You See the
Truth About Cars 37:13 Waymo doing airport
transportation in Phoenix 39:11 Uber Eats will use
sidewalk deliver robots in Miami 40:30 TuSimple reportedly will
lay off many in coming week”
[log in to unmask] 732-928-4691
Technical support
provided by: CARTSmobility.com
a 501c3 dedicated to Safe & High-Quality Mobility for
All. Tax-deductible donations are most appreciated @ Support CARTS’ mission to provide
safe & high-quality mobility for all
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="58" height="30" border="0"> The 2022 FAV Summit at Omni Amelia
Island Resort
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="117" height="18" border="0"> Autonomous Transit Networks in
Florida - Jacksonville MOVES and Tallahassee MOVES
J. He, Dec 13, “On
the occasion of the 10th Florida Automated Vehicles Summit ’22,
CARTS released our study for the Total Addressable Market (TAM)
for a MOVES-type, city-wide deployment of autonomous transit
network (ATN) for Jacksonville, FL and Tallahassee, FL.….” Read more Hmmmm... Very
interesting! Alain
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="74" height="17" border="0"> Cruise’s driverless robotaxis are accepting passengers in Phoenix and Austin
A. Hawkins, Dec. 20, “Cruise is delivering on its promise to expand its robotaxi service to two new markets before the end of the year. For years, Cruise has operated its autonomous ridehail service exclusively in San Francisco. But earlier this year, the GM-backed company said it would launch in Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas, before the end of 2022.[log in to unmask]" class="" width="74" height="17" border="0"> Elon Musk’s giant payday on trial: everything he said in court
T. Sottek, Dec. 22, “These days Elon Musk is always on trial in the court of public opinion, but occasionally he’s also on trial in actual court. On Wednesday, November 16th, Musk testified in the Delaware Court of Chancery in the legal trial over his $56 billion pay package from Tesla. You might recall that this is the same court (and judge) Musk would have appeared before if he had not completed his takeover of Twitter, so it was kind of like a peek into an alternate simulation. Even Musk seemed to think so:. …” Read more Hmmmm... . Whew! Interesting. Alain[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> Trimble to acquire transportation management platform Transporeon for $1.9B
J.
DiNapoli, Dec. 16,”Technology solutions
provider Trimble Inc. has
announced it will acquire German logistics company Transporeon,
which uses a cloud-based TMS to connect carriers, logistics
service providers and shippers.
The all-cash deal unveiled Monday is valued at $1.98 billion
and expected to close in the first half of 2023.
Rob Painter, Trimble’s president and CEO, said digital
software solutions are in high demand in the commercial
transportation market and the acquisition of Transporeon
represented a great opportunity.
“We’ve kept our eyes on this business for years,” Painter said
during a call to discuss the deal with analysts and investors
on Tuesday. “We are building a business for the long term and
assets like this don’t come along often. We kept our balance
sheet in a position to be able to act on opportunities like
this. So when we got approached, we quickly engaged.”
Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) is a Sunnyvale, California-based supply
chain technology provider for trucking companies, freight
brokerages and 3PLs. Its transportation division provides
services such as enterprise, mobility, final-mile, mapping and
maintenance solutions...." …” Read more Hmmmm... Wow, I should have
stayed in the business. :-) Alain
Staff, Dec. 25, “
Boston College will ban electric scooters and other electric
transportation devices, including hover boards and electric
skateboards, from campus beginning December 22.
According to a December 7th letter sent to the BC community from
Vice President for Student Affairs Shawna Cooper Whitehead, Vice
President for Human Resources David Trainor, and Executive
Director of Public Safety William Evans, the decision was made
to help ensure the safety of all members of the BC community. ….” Read
more Hmmmm….. Yea!! Alain
[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="28" height="34">[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="33" height="28"> California passes law banning Tesla
from calling software FSD
J. Crider, Dec. 23,
“ California passed a new
law banning Tesla from calling its software Full
Self-Driving (FSD). Although Tesla has never claimed that FSD
was fully autonomous, the electric–maker is developing the
technology for fully autonomous vehicles. Until its vehicles
are fully autonomous, drivers must be alert and ready to take
over at all times when engaging FSD or Autopilot.
California lawmakers, however, disagree with the labels of FSD.
Senate Bill 1398 was one of the hundreds that Governor Newsom
signed into law. The new law takes effect in 2023 and
specifically targets Tesla’s name for its software. The bill was
sponsored by Senate Transportation Committee Chair Lena
Gonzalez, who claimed that Tesla falsely advertised its tech and
that doing so was a safety issue ….”
Read
more Hmmmm….. Yea, I hope that we
can now move on. Alain
[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="33" height="28"> Tesla China Rumors, Wedbush Cuts
Price Target, Discount Impact, PCE
R. Maurer, Dec. 23,
“ ➤ New rumors and reports on Tesla in China
➤ PCE report
➤ Wedbush cuts TSLA price target
➤ US discounting drives inventory down
➤ Megapack leak
➤ Twitter CEO report ….” Read more Hmmmm….. Interesting. Alain
Previous
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast/PodCasts
https://www.cartsmobility.com/ provided technical
support
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 295 / PodCast295 w/ Robert Hoevers,
CE, Squad Mobility
"F. Fishkin, Dec. 11,
“Squad Mobility is bringing its solar powered mini vehicle,
the Solar City Car to CES next month. CEO Robert Hoevers joins
Alain and Fred on episode 295 to show and tell. Plus the
upcoming Florida AV Summit, Tesla, the Everyday Astronaut and
more. 0:00 open 1:00 Squ!
ad Mobility CEO Robert
Hoevers 5:23 Deployment potential for
Squad Mobility? 11:45 How adding autonomous
capability can help 24:40 Florida AV Summit upcoming
29:30 The Everday Astronaut, Tim
Dodd, is heading to space 32:10 LA Times on Tesla claiming
FSD may be failure but not fraud 38:02 Radar coming to Teslas 38:58 Matt Lowne Steam Train
Station animation 42:08 More on Henry Posner and
trains assisting Ukrainians 42:43 TRB gets new executive
director
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 294 / PodCast294 w Michael Sena,
Editor, The Dispatcher
"F. Fishkin, Dec. 2,
" With The Dispatcher publisher, Michael Sena, joining Alain
and Fred this is a meaty episode 294 of Smart Driving Cars. On
the agenda: the driverless car landscape shifts, China's car
strategy, is AI really AI, can Tesla make it big in trucking
and what is happening to sidewalks? And there's more...in this
deep December discussion.
0:00 open 1:00 The Shifting Driverless Car
Landscape 15:00 Autonomous mobility
companies have gotten the deployment wrong 22:14 Automakers pausing paid
advertising on Twitter. Michael’s perfect pizza explanation. 31:54 China Inc. Global
Automobile Monopoly? 47:17 Cities have forgotten what
sidewalks are for 58:43 A most intelligent
discussion of Artificial Intelligence. Is there even such a
thing? 72:00 Tesla releases FSD update and delivers first
Tesla Semis to Pepsi. Can Tesla be a major player in trucking?
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 293 / PodCast293
"F. Fishkin, Nov.. 27,
" The reported Argo lifeline from Amazon that never arrived,
The Ambarella/Continental deal, a safety report from Cruise,
and Tesla opens up FSD and moves to block cheating on
attentiveness. Episode 293 of Smart Driving cars with
Princeton's Alain Kornhauser & co-host Fred Fishkin.
0:00 open 0:42 what happened to Alain 1:43 Argo AI’s lifeline from
Amazon that never came 5:00 Ambarella/Continental Deal
12:14 Cruise Safety Report 13:00 Tesla opens up FSD 18:44 Cybertruck pre-orders top
1.5 million 19:47 HOLON !
23:08 NY Times on AI Recipes 24:17 Mercedes to charge
subscriptions for performance boost 27:00 Nuro layoffs 29:33 BrightDrop
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 292 / PodCast292 w/Chuck Cook, FSD Betta
Tester
"F. Fishkin, Nov.. 18, " Chuck Cook, pilot
and airline industry veteran, has been a prominent Tesla FSD
Beta tester, well known inside and outside the company.
Recently featured in the NY Times, Chuck joins Alain
Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin on episode 292 of Smart Driving
Cars for a look at where FSD is today.
0:00
open 1:00
Tesla FSD Beta tester Chuck Cook 29:05
Chuck Cook unprotected left turn FSD videos 39:00
Is Tesla using customers improperly to Beta test? 52:40
Motional and Lyft to launch fully driverless ride hailing in
L.A. 53:37
Waymo shows new prototype vehicle without steering wheel 54:10
Cruise expands SF driverless service to daylight hours 56:34
Tesla’s data advantage
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 290 /PodCast 290 A
New Deployment Framework for Autonomous Vehicles
"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
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast
289 /PodCast 289 Argo Shuts Down w/Michael
Sena, Editor, The Dispatcher
F. Fishkin, Oct. 27,
"The demise of #Argo AI, the joint Ford-Volkswagen venture is
a step forward for autonomous vehicles, not a step back. So
says Princeton's Alain Kornhauser on episode 289 of Smart
Driving Cars. Alain and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by The
Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena for that plus #Tesla, Elon
Musk and more."
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 288 /PodCast 288 So Disappointing!
F. Fishkin, Oct. 23,
"Waymo is bringing Robotaxi service to L.A.. But Princeton's
faculty chair of autonomous vehicle engineering is concerned
the focus may not be in the right places. Alan Kornhauser
and co-host Fred Fishkin zero in on Waymo, Lyft, Tesla and a
test drive in the Ford F-150 Lightning on episode 288 of Smart
Driving Cars. "
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast
287 /PodCast 287 Special Edition: The ABCs of Autonomous
Vehicles: Technology, Economics and Policy
F. Fishkin, Oct. 12, "A
special webinar edition of Smart Driving Cars: From the
Reason Foundation , The Brookings Institution and Princeton
Autonomous Vehicle Engineering, welcome to the ABCs of
Autonomous Vehicles: Technology, Economics and Policy. Join
Princeton's Alain Kornhauser, Cliff Winston of Brookings and
Marc Scribner of Reason and moderator Fred Fishkin.
"SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 286 /PodCast 286 Tesla AI Day
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. "
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 285 /PodCast 285 w/Michael
Sena, Editor of the Dispatcher
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
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 284 /PodCast 284 w/Danny
Shapiro, VP Automotive, nVIDIA
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."
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 283 /PodCast 283
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
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 282 /PodCast 282 w/ Michael Sena,
Editor of The Dispatcher
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
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast281 /PodCast 281
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
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 280 /PodCast 280 w/Cade Metz, NY Times
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."
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 279 / PodCast 279 w/Scott Painter, CEO Autonomy
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
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 278 / PodCast 278 Tesla 2022
shareholder's meeting
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!
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 277/ PodCast 277 w/Michael Sena, Editor of The Dispatcher
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."
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast
Episode 276/ PodCast 276 w/R.
Mudge, President, Compass Transportation
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
Recent
Highlights of:
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="78" height="46" border="0">
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="35" height="31" border="0"> Once You See the Truth About Cars, You Can’t Unsee It
Guest Opinion: A. Ross & J. Livingston,Dec. 15, “ In American consumer lore, the automobile has always been a “freedom machine” and liberty lies on the open road. “Americans are a race of independent people” whose “ancestors came to this country for the sake of freedom and adventure,” the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce’s soon-to-be-president, Roy Chapin, declared in 1924. “The automobile satisfies these instincts.” During the Cold War, vehicles with baroque tail fins and oodles of surplus chrome rolled off the assembly line, with Native American names like Pontiac, Apache, Dakota, Cherokee, Thunderbird and Winnebago — the ultimate expressions of capitalist triumph and Manifest Destiny.
But for many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots. ….” Read more Hmmmm….. The fu! ndamentals of our MOVES approach to the deployment is focused directly on providing a high-quality affordable alternative to this community. Moreover, the comment that the NYT posted with the article. Alain
T. Dodd, Dec. 8, “t's
true! I have been chosen as one of the members of the
incredible dearMoon mission around the moon on SpaceX's
Starship rocket. To learn more about the mission and to meet
the rest of the crew, visit -
http://dearmoon.earth &
https://dearmoon.earth/share_crew/tim... And hear more
about the announcement from Yusaku Maezawa!!! - https://youtu.be/DKNSlL3Inn8...
“ Watch more Hmmmm... So deserving! Tim
has done so much to make rigorous “rocket science”
understandable by non-rocket scientists while maintaining
the rigor. For that substance he has been most justifiable
awarded this special honor. Life is good! Tim, you most
justifiably earned this incredible privilege. Full
disclosure… I’m a long time subscriber to Everyday Astronaut. Alain
[log in to unmask]" class="" width="112" height="22" border="0"> December 2022 Issue
M. Sena, Nov. 28, ““In all of
mankind’s history, there has never been more damage done
than by people who ‘thought they were doing the right
thing’.” So says Lucy after her friend Charlie Brown
reveals that he has replaced her little brother Linus’s much
nuzzled security blanket in the cartoon series Peanuts
by Charles Schultz. This appeared in The Economist
November 19th 2022 in an article that
commemorated the 100th year of Charles Schultz’s
birth. He died in 2000 after 50 years and 17,897 cartoons.
That, my friends, is dedication. It pays to start early.
I’m not sure if Elon Musk actually
thinks he is doing the right thing(s), or if he doesn’t really
acknowledge the concept of right versus wrong. Some people
honestly believe that whatever they do is right—at least for
them. Leaving moral issues aside, such as how one as an
employer treats fellow human beings who are employees, we can
address the issue of whether he is creating or destroying
value in companies in which people have given their time and
efforts in exchange for a salary, or in which individuals or
funds have invested their own or their customers’ money. So,
once again the seemingly never-ending saga of the Musketeer
continues on the pages of the. December issue of The Dispatcher
But it’s only one of the
stories in the issue. Skip it if you don’t care about Musk and
his companies. If you care about driverless cars, the first
story should be of interest. If you want more info on what
China is doing to the Western car industry, there is something
in the issue for you. I hope you will all read Musings
this month. Not everyone has built a car or written software,
but everyone has walked on a sidewalk at some point in their
lives. I take you on a sidewalk journey through time and ask
you to think about whether you want to have sidewalks to walk
on to get some place in the future, or whether you would
prefer to have sidewalks that are paid attractions, like rides
at an amusement park….” Read more Hmmmm...Continued
excellence. Comments are @ ZoomCast 294 / PodCast294 . Alain
Argo AI Folded After a Lifeline
From Amazon Never Arrived: Report
P.Holderith, Nov. 22,
“The dream of smoking a cigar with the windows up in your
self-driving turbine-powered jet car may be on hold. At least,
that's what the demise of Argo AI, backed by monolithic
automakers Ford and VW indicated. Before it all came crashing
down though, Bloomberg reports Amazon nearly stepped in to
keep the ball rolling.
The retail giant, which
is rumored to be laying off thousands of employees, was
allegedly interested in the technology for use in its
Rivian-built delivery vans last year. However, a struggle to
determine how Argo would be governed with three large
investors as well as an alleged high cost of the autonomous
driving company's tech soured the deal. Then Russia invaded
Ukraine, which hasn't done anyone besides defense contractors
any good.
Amazon was reportedly
willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the
startup. Ford had already invested $1 billion in 2017,
followed by an even bigger $2.6 billion pile of cash from
Volkswagen. In fact, VW's now-deposed CEO Herbert Diess even
met with Jeff Bezos personally to discuss details of a
potential deal. This was followed by prototype Argo vehicles
running Amazon delivery routes, albeit without dispensing any
packages.
Argo additionally hired 150 people to work
on what seemed like a surefire investment from Amazon, but it
was for naught. A governing deal couldn't be struck, the
global economy was in a further state of disrepair thanks to
that Vlad guy over in Russia—what's his last name again?—and
inflation got more serious….” Read more Hmmmm... Reminiscent of what
Larry Burns recalled in his book “Autonomy: The Quest to Build the
Driverless Car―And How It Will Reshape Our World”
about a failed “partnership” between Ford & Waymo that
would have “reshaped our world”. Waymo (L), VW (W), Amazon
(L), VW(L)… now what? Alain
What Riding in a Self-Driving Tesla
Tells Us About the Future of Autonomy
C. Metz, Nov. 14, “Cade and Ian spent six
hours riding in a self-driving car in Jacksonville, Fla., to
report this story.
When we decided it was
time for lunch, Chuck Cook tapped the digital display on the
dashboard of his Tesla Model Y and told the car to drive us to
the Bearded Pig, a barbecue joint on the other side of town.
“I don’t know how it’s
gonna do. But I think it’s gonna do pretty good,” he said with
the folksy, infectious enthusiasm he brought to nearly every
moment of our daylong tour of Jacksonville, Fla., in a car
that could drive itself.
The most telling moment
came as the car drove us to lunch. After navigating heavy
traffic on a four-lane road, taking an unexpected turn and
quickly remapping its route to the restaurant, the car took a
right turn onto a short street beside a small motel.
But watch as the Tesla
struggles to make sense of its environment, veering from the
road into a motel parking lot. Chuck is forced to retake
control….
Tesla is constantly
modifying the technology, working to fix its shortcomings.
Since the day we drove around Jacksonville, the company has
twice released new versions of the technology that show signs
of improvement. But the moment in the motel parking lot showed
why it may be a long time before cars can safely drive
anywhere on their own….
Tesla is constantly
modifying the technology, working to fix its shortcomings.
Since the day we drove around Jacksonville, the company has
twice released new versions of the technology that show signs
of improvement. But the moment in the motel parking lot showed
why it may be a long time before cars can safely drive
anywhere on their own…
Mr. Cook had been posting
online clips of his Tesla trying to navigate an unprotected
left turn near his home in Jacksonville. …
Soon, Mr. Musk noticed
the videos and vowed to solve what Tesla enthusiasts began
calling “Chuck’s turn.” In the weeks that followed, Tesla
equipped several test cars with a new version of its
self-driving technology and sent them to Mr. Cook’s
neighborhood, where they spent several weeks testing the new
software and gathering data that could help improve it.
Mr. Cook and I spent a
good chunk of our day asking his car to navigate the turn
named after him. Each attempt was different from the last.
Sometimes, the cars approached much faster from the left.
Other times, from the right. Sometimes, the gap between the
two was enormous. Other times, it was tiny.
Not long after that day
in Jacksonville, Tesla released a new version of its software
to Mr. Cook and other beta testers. When facing heavy
traffic, it could navigate Chuck’s turn with a precision that
was not possible in the past. So if it needed to stop next to
the median, it would position itself so that traffic could
safely pass both in front and behind. Chuck’s turn is just
one scenario among the endless scenarios a Tesla might face on
American roadways.
Chuck’s turn is just one
scenario among the endless scenarios a Tesla might face on
American roadways….
As the car approached the
shadows beneath this mossy canopy, it suddenly changed course,
turned sharply right and headed the wrong way down a one-way
street: he moment highlighted the difference between Tesla’s
self-driving technology and “robotaxi” services being
developed by companies like Waymo, owned by the same parent
company as Google, and Cruise, backed by General Motors. The
robotaxi companies are trying to reduce these unexpected
moments by tightly controlling where and how a car can drive.
But these services will have strict limitations that make the
task easier. The cars will travel only in certain
neighborhoods under certain weather conditions at relatively
low speeds. And company technicians will provide remote
assistance to cars that inevitably find themselves in
situations they cannot navigate on their own…. "Read more Hmmmm... This is exactly the
basis for our MOVES-style approach to deployment. In the
near term, this technology has a reasonable chance of being
good enough if its calibrations (the released version) has
been biased to work well in …” in certain neighborhoods
under certain weather conditions at relatively low speeds” ,. It must also
demonstrated that it does work well (zero disengagements) in
a sufficient subset of the streets in those neighborhoods
such that the driver/attendant is not needed to ensure safe
operation. Substantially better mobility can then
be delivered between many locations throughout those
neighborhoods in most weather conditions than the mobility
available today throughout those neighborhoods.
Unless Driverless is
substantially better in delivering mobility to some in some
places they will never be more that a fad or fashion
statement. Unfortunately, that’s how Driverless has been
positioned to date. “My car drives itself! A ride becomes a
goofy selfie on TikTok/Instagram/Twitter… Look Mom, no
hands!!! Good luck in any repeat customers or near-term
RoI.
As we’ve been saying
over and over, the substantial value proposition of
driverless (or real FSD) is NOT safety (it can be “as safe”
but, again, way too difficult for it to be substantially
safer) and, in the near term, not a fashion statement or toy
for the rich (way too expensive to create that). It
certainly can’t be substantially better than one’s own
personal car, although it can come close to being as good
and maybe even arguably better to some.
The attributes that
can make Driverless substantially better than all other
forms of mobility is its capability to affordability deliver
high-quality (auto-like demand-responsive non-circuitous,
24/7 availability in most weather conditions) mobility
affordably while being safe, equitable and environmentally
responsive (by facilitating casual ride-sharing when
warranted as is done naturally when using elevators). Such
a mobility service is offered by Kiosk2Kiosk elevator-like
operation throughout the safest subset of interconnecting
streets. We call these MOVES-style Driverless Transit
Networks.
Affordability is THE key
differentiator. If you are rich enough to afford a car for
yourself and have a driver’s license, then this system isn’t
substantially better than what you have now. Neither is it
if you can afford to pay and tip an Uber/Lyft gig worker or
if your expense account pays for your taxi/limo or black car
driver or if you have a chauffeur. Nor if you live in
Manhattan or in the very center of a few of our largest
cities. For everyone else (the too young, the too old, the
too poor, the sufficiently poor that can’t afford a car for
each driver in the family, then MOVES-style Driverless Transit
Networks can readily be transformative. Trenton NJ
turns out to be one of these communities where 70% of
households have access to one or fewer cars. Perth Amboy,
NJ,. Cherry Hill, MD, Patterson, NJ, Scranton, PA are
similar. My Mobility Disadvantage Index for
places in New Jersey can be found here and for the rest of the
US, here.
I am confident that
Waymo, Cruise and Tesla could today, make their systems work
safely in Trenton and many of the other Mobility
Disadvantaged communities if they simply added to their
training set the data from driving between the kiosks in,
say Trenton, and generated a ***.Trenton release of their
***Driver to be used exclusively in Trenton to deliver
substantially improved mobility to many. Alain
Gusciora
leads big in Trenton; many council seats up in the air
J. Fox, Nov 9, "Trenton
Mayor Reed Gusciora has a huge lead in his bid for a second
term, putting him in a dominant position against two of his
longtime foes, Council President Kathy McBride and
Councilwoman Robin Vaughn, in the city’s nonpartisan election.
According to numbers from the Mercer County Clerk’s office,
Gusciora currently has more than 70% of the vote...." Read more Hmmmm... Yea!! Now Trenton MOVES can
become a reality. Alain
A Deployment Framework for
MOVES-style Driverless Transit Networks
A. Kornhauser, Nov. 1, "So much has been
happening lately on the AV scene. With all these recent
changes in mind, it seems a good moment for me to reiterate
the basic fundamentals of mobility and then to restate the
context with which I see the potential value of AV technology.
In the following presentation, I will identify some pertinent
societal challenges where mobility might have an opportunity
to substantially improve quality-of-life. Fundamental to this
concept is the deployment of technology that disrupts consumer
choice, thus allowing the marketplace to deliver both the
economic return on the investment in the technology and to
unleash the societal benefits of the improved
quality-of-life." Read more Hmmmm... View
slides, listen
to PodCast and/or watch
a repeat of the presentation that I made at the 2022
UBC International Road Safety Symposium.
Alain
Ford,
VW-backed Argo AI is shutting down
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
Ford thinks driver assist is a
safer bet than driverless cars, but it’s fooling itself
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
Waymo says it’s bringing
robotaxis to L.A.
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
The Long Run to Autonomous
Vehicles
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
Batteries: Theme of
the Next Mad Max Dystoposeries
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
Thursday, September
22, 2022
Thor for Autonomous Vehicles,
Robotics, Medical Instruments and More
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
Self-Driving Tech Company Floats
Possible Sale to Apple or Microsoft
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
Funding Roads: Pay
for the Effect or Pay for the Cause
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 Releases FSD Beta 10 69
With New Occupancy Network
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
Can Tesla Data Help
Us Understand Car Crashes?
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
Tesla, GM Score Biggest
Share of $1.2 Billion EV Order From Startup Autonomy
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
Tesla's 2022 Shareholder Meeting
with Elon Musk
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
GM's Cruise robotaxi unit
drives deeper into the red
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="636" 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
Baidu unveils
autonomous vehicle without steering wheel
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
U.S. agency probing
self-driving Cruise car crash in California
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
THE
DISPATCHER
Princeton Fifth
Annual SmartDrivingCars Summit
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
NHTSA Releases
Initial Data on Safety Performance of Advanced Vehicle
Technologies
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
Dr. Steve Still's Tribute to
Heywood Patterson
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
The Evolving
Business of Powering Our Vehicles
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
From pricing carbon to fighting
opioid abuse, ORFE showcased top senior projects
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:
Princeton ORFE Class of 2022 Senior
Thesis Symposium "Best 8"
PAVE VIRTUAL PANEL “AVS AND
PUBLIC GOOD: TRENTON MOVES”
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
NJDOT Commissioner
Gutierrez-Scaccetti and the Trenton NJ MOVES Program
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
Musk promises 'dedicated
robotaxi' with futuristic look from Tesla
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
Taking our next step
in the City by the Bay
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
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.
SmartDrivingCar.com/10.05-Invitation-020422
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
Alain L. Kornhauser, PhD
Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering
Director, Transportation Program
Faculty Chair, Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering
229 Sherrerd Hall |
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