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SmartDrivingCar.com/11.04-WorkVehicles-012423
4th edition of the 11th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.216in;width:1.383in" class="" width="133" height="21" border="0"> Driverless Work Vehicles: On This
Side of the Horizon
M. Sena Jan. 27, “ Land-based robots are already on wheels WHEN WE THINK of driverless vehicles, our mind’s eye tends to drift toward the horizon where we see ourselves at some point in the future being chauffeured around by an artificially intelligent robot in the form of a passenger car. I think it’s time to direct our sights toward solutions which are much closer at hand: driverless work vehicles (DWVs). I believe this is where we should be focusing our money and attention. The first image that pops into my head when I think of DWVs is a Zamboni,1 gliding around the Boston Garden ice hockey rink without a driver, smoothing the ice surface in between periods while organ music and the aromas of hot dogs and beer filled the air. I’ve never seen a driverless Zamboni, but how difficult can it be to build one? I remember reading about super-large KOMATSU driverless dump trucks lumbering in and out of mines with no front or back to them. They’re already operating. …” Read more Hmmmm... Another most well written and insightful newsletter focused on the work vehicle market… vehicles that contribute to the provision of goods or services by moving around. Listen/watch our Pod/ZoomCast 301 Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.55in;width:.975in" class="" width="94" height="53" border="0"> SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast
301 / PodCast 301 w/Michael Sena, Editor of The Dispatcher
"F. Fishkin, Jan.27, ” Driverless work vehicles advance while driverless passenger cars seem stalled. The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena joins Alain and Fred on episode 301 of Smart Driving Cars for that, plus Tesla rebounds, Ford's Blue Cruise impresses and more. “
0:00 open
1:00 Driverless Work Vehicles discussion
20:45 Stellantis Reaching for the Data Star
23:27 Winters can be cold, EVs like it hot
36:11 Tesla earnings, news and rebound
38:39 Layoffs hitting Waymo? And other tech companies too.
47:30 Ford’s Blue Cruise top rated by Consumer Reports in active driver assistance
[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
*******************************
BlueCruise is what’s known as an active driving assistance (ADA) system. In the simplest terms, ADA is the simultaneous use of a car’s adaptive cruise control (ACC) to control speed and lane centering assistance (LCA) to control steering. ACC is an advanced form of cruise control that brakes or accelerates to keep the car a set distance from vehicles traveling ahead of you in your lane. LCA provides steering support to keep the vehicle at or near the center of the lane…. “ Read more Hmmmm….. Impressive. Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.291in;width:.35in" alt="image035.png" class="" width="34" height="28" border="0"> Stock Rockets After Q4 Earnings
Report
R. Maurer, Jan. 26, “ Tesla stock rallies after Q4 earnings report ➤ Recap of key points of emphasis from the earnings report ➤ Tesla discloses new credit line ➤ Motor Trend covers Tesla Semi: Read more Hmmmm….. Impressive. Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.208in;width:.975in" class="" width="94" height="20" border="0"> Tesla Q4 Earnings Call 2022 (TSLA)
R. Mauaer, Jan 25., “Listen to Elon Musk and Tesla management discuss Tesla's Q4 2022 financial results and answer questions from investors and analysts. Join Rob Maurer of Tesla Daily for a live blog highlighting key information, followed by reaction to the call and earnings report. “
0:00 Elon opening remarks 7:53 CFO Zach Kirkhorn opening remarks 11:19 Investor questions 30:15 Analyst questions 1:02:29 Recap and analysis Watch more Hmmmm... Worth listening to. Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.133in;width:.916in" class="" width="88" height="13" border="0"> Waymo Lays Off a Number of Employees
As Autonomous Tech Hits Roadblock
Andy Kalmowitz, Jan 26, “Waymo, a self-driving tech company, has reportedly laid off a “limited” number of employees this week. Automotive News reports that the company didn’t disclose just how many people were laid off, but the cuts do seem to be coming from multiple departments.
The news comes during a tough time for the autonomous vehicle industry and the tech sector as a whole. Waymo’s parent company, Alphabet, laid off 12,000 people at Google this week.….” Read more Hmmmm... Unthinkable 12 months ago. See also Rebecca’s reporting: “Waymo lays off staff as Alphabet announces 12,000 job cuts” Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.375in;width:.35in" class="" width="34" height="36" border="0"> Volvo invests in Toronto driverless
vehicle startup Waabi
S. Silcoff, Jan 18, “Volvo AB’s venture capital arm has invested an undisclosed amount in Toronto autonomous-vehicle startup Waabi Innovation Inc…
Prof. Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor renowned as one of the leading researchers in the field, was previously chief scientist at Uber Technologies Inc.’s self-driving division. She left with most of her 40-person team in early 2021 to start Waabi after U.S. autonomous-vehicle startup Aurora Innovation Inc. bought the unit. Both Uber and Aurora invested in Waabi, alongside U.S. and Canadian venture capitalists and AI luminaries including Geoffrey Hinton, when it raised US$83.5-million two years ago…. “ Read more Hmmmm….. Excellent. Finally some good news in this space. Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.241in;width:.425in" class="" width="41" height="23" border="0"> Will We Blame Self-Driving Cars?
J. de Freitas, Jan. 26, “One of the challenges facing the industry is trying to estimate how much liability AV firms will have for accidents involving their vehicles. In the U.S., makers of driver-assistance technologies that are installed in most newer vehicles have already faced a stream of accident-related lawsuits for issues such as defective steering sensors and camera misalignments. As fully autonomous vehicles become more common, they will inevitably be involved in accidents.
Typically, when a human driver is involved in an accident for which they are not at fault, neither the driver nor the manufacturer of the vehicle is at risk for liability. A key question for AV manufacturers and insurers is whether AVs will be treated the same way. When an AV is involved in an accident that it didn’t cause, who will be held responsible?..
But they were more likely to say that the manufacturer of the not-at-fault vehicle should be sued when the vehicle was an AV than when it was human-driven…” Read more Hmmmm….. What??? Wrong premise! What is essentially certain is that the AV will have a data stream that will, in most cases, be overwhelming evidence as to who is “at fault”. While there may be some high profile suits early-on, these will quickly disappear once the hard evidence overwhelms the he-said, she-said finger pointing. Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.191in;width:.916in" alt="image036.png" class="" width="88" height="18" border="0"> Tesla announces $3.6b Semi, 4680
battery factories in Nevada but questions abound
F. Lambert, Jan. 24, “Tesla has officially announced its expected new battery and Semi factories in Northern Nevada, along with $3.6 billion in investment to make them happen. But are these actually new factories, or simply the completion of Gigafactory Nevada to its originally planned size?
Earlier today we reported on the Nevada Governor hinting at plans for Tesla’s new factory, which were expected to be officially unveiled today. Tesla has now put up a blog post describing its progress with its previous investments in Nevada and the plans for this new investment.
Tesla says that it has already spent $6.2 billion in Nevada and hired 11,000 employees, while creating 17,000 local construction jobs building out its Gigafactory there, and that the factory has produced:
.….” Read more Hmmmm….. Really only a drop in the bucket in terms of what is needed. Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.191in;width:.916in" alt="image036.png" class="" width="88" height="18" border="0"> Tesla (TSLA) releases Q4 2022
results: beats earnings and misses on revenue
F. Lambert, Jan. 25, “… ” Read more Hmmmm….. Sounds like a double win. Just sayin’ J. Alain
Previous SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast/PodCasts
https://www.cartsmobility.com/ provided technical support
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 300 / PodCast 300
F. Fishkin, Jan.24, “ Episode 300 of Smart Driving Cars! Alain returns from Africa, Mobileye eyes robotaxis in Israel and beyond, Tesla demand rises after price cuts, Mercedes talks level 3 and Toyota Boshoku shows future mobility for all. Tune in and subscribe!
0:00 open;
1:11 Alain on trip to Nairobi, Kenya and public transit there;
5:52 Mobileye looks to deploy robot taxis in Israel and Europe this year;
11:42 Forbes piece on map of places where autonomous vehicles are serving public;
13:30 Tesla price cuts spur demand;
17:45 Tesla staged video? Alain’s take;
20:52 Mercedes talks level 3 availability;
21:54 Interview with Richard Chung of Toyota Boshoku courtesy of Ken Pyle and Viodi.com;
32:00 Alain on podcast number 300!”
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 299 / PodCast299
F. Fishkin, Jan.12, “”Episode 299 of Smart Driving Cars rolls in with Buffalo advancing plans for autonomous shuttles, Tesla becoming the number one luxury car brand in the U.S., concept self driving cars plus interviews from CES with Holon and Ottonomy. Join Alain Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin for the ride. Thanks to Ken Pyle and Dr. Elizabeth Monroe.
0:00 open
1:14 RFP for self driving shuttles in Buffalo
2:41 ZF unveils next gen shuttle
8:46 WSJ report on concept self driving cars
10:50 Tesla headlines top luxury brand in U.S. and more
17:56 CES Holon interview courtesy of Ken Pyle
31:30 Alain comments on Holon
32:30 Intro to CES Ottonomy interview
49:39 Alain comments on Ottonomy “
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 298 / PodCast298 w/ Ken Pyle CES 2023 & Start of 2nd Decade of SDC eLetter
F. Fishkin, Jan. 8, “CES 2023 brought out crowds and innovation once again. The Smart Driving Cars team, with Alain Kornhauser, Ken Pyle and Dr. Elizabeth Monroe, caught up with Halo.car, Stradvision, Zoox and more. With videos courtesy of Viodi, Alain joins Fred Fishkin for a look as the Smart Driving Cars newsletter begins its second decade.
0:00 open
1:04 Smart Driving Cars Newsletter enters second decade. Where we’ve been…where we are.
12:30 Mobileye at CES
14:29 Safety capabilities of vehicles aren’t being utilized
18:08 Caterpillar and John Deere impress
23:30 interview with Halo.car remote vehicle repositioning
41:30 discussion of Halo.car value
46:30 The Boring Company and a little history from Alain
55:30 Stradvision interview
1:04:00 Zoox Interview
1:15:00 Upcoming TRB conference”
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 297 / PodCast297 w/ Michael Sena, Creator of The Dispatch
F. Fishkin, Dec. 30, “AI, driver monitoring systems and safety are on top in Michael Sena's latest issue of The Dispatcher. He joins Alain and Fred for that and much more on Tesla, Elon Musk, Aurora, a look at the year that was and a look ahead. Smart Driving Cars episode 297.
0:00 open
1:00 ChatGPT and AI
6:00 Alain’s take on AI
20:00 Elon Musk, FSD and more
22:00 Aurora’s Urmson sees driverless shakeout but not his own
30:40 Bosch is not giving up on internal combustion engines
32:50 Senator Manchin wants to block EV tax credit cheating
40:17 China and the global car market
46:30 Consumer Reports delivers ADAS guidelines to automakers
48:00 At end of 2022 a look at the progress and a look ahead”
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 we
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 Squad 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 autonomous 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 against Dawn Project and O'Dowd
32:19 Pittsburgh 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 ..."
@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."
@ 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]" style="height:.483in;width:.816in" alt="image039.png" class="" width="78" height="46" border="0">
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.208in;width:.975in" class="" width="94" height="20" border="0"> Riding Nairobi's Craziest Matatu,
Kenya
J. Billam, Feb. 11 ’22, “I show my wild experience riding Nairobi's Craziest Matatu (local bus) bound for Rongai in Kenya's capital city… “ Watch more Hmmmm... If we aren’t going to have Moves-style Autonomous Transit Networks, then Matatus may well be the answer to safe, equitable, affordable, sustainable, and colorful mobility. Millions take them every day in Nairobi, Kenya. Amazing. J Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.4in;width:.383in" class="" width="37" height="38" border="0">All Nairobi Matatu Routes at your
fingertips!
“ Have you ever found yoursel in town with no idea how to get to a certain destination using Public Transport and you end up calling friends or asking strangers where a certain Matatu stage is? You are not alone!! Thousands of Nairobians go through this daily!
So us cool peeps at MyRide Africa thought to bring this to an end so that you never get lost in Nairobi again! We have the all new Matatu Map on the App that can help you to find any route in Nairobi in 3 easy steps…’’ Read more Hmmmm... Just returned from a trip of a life time to Kenya. Absolutely fantastic experience Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.35in;width:.483in" class="" width="46" height="34" border="0"> RFP NO. 22DBM0071 BUFFALO
INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM FOR THE UNDER SERVED
(ITS4US): SELF-DRIVING SHUTTLES
S. Still, Jan. 10, Project Overview: University at Buffalo is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit proposals from qualified firms to provide self-driving shuttle vehicles and operations in the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and surrounding neighborhoods. The project is funded by the US Department of Transportation as part of its ITS4US program.
Proposal
Date/Time:
February 1, 2023 2:30pm EST. Proposals received after the
specified time will not be accepted.
The Request for Proposals (RFP) documents are available now by registering through this link: https://www.nyscr.ny.gov/adsOpen.cfm Questions can be addressed to David Markey, Senior Buyer, at [log in to unmask]. ….” Read more Hmmmm... I love what Dr. Steve Still is trying to do in Buffalo. All the best. Alain
Hmmmm…. Happy New Year! Welcome to the inaugural issue of the 2nd decade of the SmartDrivingCars eLetter.
Much has remained the same:
There are still 3 distinctive markets for SmartDrivingCars:
[log in to unmask]" style="height:2.083in;width:1.566in" class="" width="150" hspace="5" height="200" align="left">Since the root cause of
the vast majority of crashes is driver misbehavior,
SafeDrivingCar systems would most effectively achieve public
safety aspirations. Unfortunately, there has been essentially
no advance in SafeDrivingCars since NHTSA/FMVSS No. 126 Electronic
Stability Control (ESC) rule enacted on 09/09/2011.
By being silent on mandates, Washington has not made any
substantive progress on road safety in more than a decade.
We should all be demanding change!
There have been advances in warnings and turn-off-able systems that are largely ineffective at addressing chronic misbehavior such as alcohol abuse, tailgating, texting and road rage. Notable outliers that have proven to be effective are blind spot warnings and rear automated emergency braking (RAEB). Luckily, both of these systems aren’t perceived by the buying public to be misaligned with the freedom associated with driving one’s own car. These systems are being desired by the marketplace rather than needing to be mandated. Unfortunately, such market forces are not commensurate with speed governors, ignition locks, attention monitoring and texting prevention systems.
What may be even more dangerous is the evolution of visual entertainment systems such as Continental’s “pillar2pillar” display. How can a driver pay attention to the road ahead when there is so much to see between the pillars that has nothing to do with driving safely? NHTSA/FMVSS should step in immediately and permit the enabling of these systems only if speed governors, ignition locks, attention monitoring and texting monitoring systems are also engaged. Just look at what has been happening since 2010 wrt highway safety. At some point, some OEMs will really focus on safety and create cars that are as dedicated to safety as this mother.
As we’ve expected from the beginning, this form of automation has been embraced by car makers because it is highly desired by car buyers, especially when the “feet-off” and “hands-off” features are promoted without much mention of the “eyes&brain-on” requirement. These features, including intelligent cruise control and automated lane centering, have essentially become standard equipment. More advanced versions such as Tesla’s FSD command $15k price tags that are purchased in volume today and whose future inclusion in vehicles allows MobilEye to tout $3.5B in booked revenue, Continental to feature a partnership with Amberellla and nVIDEA to make a major automotive announcement at CES 2023 to supply the continued OEM demand to provide such comfort & convenience capabilities to near and longer-term new car buyers.
[log in to unmask]" style="height:1.091in;width:1.933in" class="" width="186" hspace="5" height="105" align="left">Deployment of fleets of
DriverlessCars to move people and/or goods from start to finish
has had mixed results. In private settings such as farms,
mines, ports and warehouses the capabilities of today’s
driverless technology is substantively delivering value to OEMs
such as Caterpillar and John Deer.
Deployment in public spaces for public uses is at best slow and steady. One of the possible highlights, using remote drivers, is that of Halo.ai whose application is only for the empty repositioning of vehicles in the shared-use car space. I was thoroughly impressed with their application of driverless technology to not move people or goods, but to simply assist in the management of cars to efficiently deliver a shared car to a customer location and to reposition that asset to the next customer. The demands of the driverless system are substantially reduced because there is no one in the car when it is under remotely automated control and that repositioning can be done on the safest road segments and largely at the safest times. Excellent!
I was also very impressed with the Holon vehicle for use in MOVES-style kiosk2kiosk Autonomous Transit Systems. The vehicle is appropriately accommodates shared rides and the disabled community
With respect to moving people in MOVES-style kiosk2kiosk shared-ride Autonomous Transit Systems, I was very impressed @ CES 2023 with the appropriately sized Holon vehicle that is definitely oriented to provide kiosk2kiosk ride-sharing mobility and properly serve the physically disabled community . The smaller GM/Cruise Origin may well be the leading US-made shared-ride-oriented MOVES-style driverless vehicle opportunity; however, I could not find them at CES. A very similar Zoox vehicle was displayed @ CES 2023 and also looks very impressive as a MOVES-style shared-ride and wheel-chair friendly vehicle . The purpose built Waymo vehicle seemed oriented to private ride-hailing and may not be US made. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to have a discussion with anyone @ the Waymo booth to gain any appreciation for Waymo’s deployment strategy.
With respect to the movement of goods. There were some interesting “last 50-500 feet” sidewalk solutions such as Ottonomy’s delivery robot.
Alain
[log in to unmask]" style="height:.225in;width:1.391in" alt="image046.png" class="" width="134" height="22" border="0"> Automotive AI Is Making Both Cars and
Drivers Better
M. Sena, Dec. 28, “ AUTOMOTIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AAI) is a term that has different meanings, depending upon who is using it. For some, it means completely removing the human from the driving task and turning over control of the vehicle to software and sensors. For others, the goal of AAI is to supplement and improve the human driver's abilities in order to make driving safer, offer new and better services, and increase the effectiveness of transport management. The latter goal, improving the driving experience, has proven achievable with AI that accomplishes one or a limited set of objectives. The former goal, removing the human from the driving task, has proven to be devilishly difficult because the car needs to drive at least as well as a human.
AI that can approximate a human, that has the ability to understand and learn any intellectual task that a human can, is called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It is also called ‘Strong AI’, with its six major branches: machine learning, neural networks, robotics, expert systems, fuzzy logic and natural language processing. AI that has proven to be excellent at accomplishing one goal at a time, like playing chess, or interpretring spoken commands or answering questions like APPLE’s SIRI, is called ‘Weak AI’. ….” Read more Hmmmm….. If Elon can call FSD "FSD", then Michael can call AI "AI". (Please at least read The Turing Test). Both are names that enormously over-state their realities. FSD is not anywhere near Full anything and AI is nowhere near Intelligent. Both do a few cute things in very narrow circumstances and neither can find their way out of a paper bag. Alain
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
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 fundamentals 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
I'm going to the moon!!!... Literally!
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
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
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 Hmmmm... Another excellent issue. Enjoy! Also watch or listen:ZoomCast 285 /PodCast 285 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 Hmmmm... 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 Hmmmm... 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'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]" style="height:1.016in;width:6.625in" alt="image047.png" 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
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"
1. Isabelle Grosgogeat "Impact of women and minority ownership on private equity"
2. Joyce Luo "Equitable data-driven resource allocation to fight the opioid pandemic"
3. Caroline Noonan "The impact of carbon price on power plant dispatch, production costs, and total emissions"
4. Hari Ramakrishnan "Lighting up dark pools"
5. Serena Ren "Automatic art appraisals"
6. Mitchell Stroebell "A comparison of advanced player statistics for the NBA"
7. Jack Woll "Pairs trading and volatility"
8. Andre Yin "Equity trading strategies based on macroeconomic event analysis"
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 delvier "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.
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
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