Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022
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Monday, February 27, 2023
8th edition of the 11th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
Seeking NHTSA review of the Origin
R. Grant, Feb. 2022 “Cruise has taken a big step toward our vision of a safer, more sustainable and accessible transportation future. Together with General Motors, we have filed a petition seeking approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to build and put the Cruise Origin into commercial service.
The Cruise Origin is among the most innovative vehicles in history: a zero-emission, shared, electric vehicle that has been purposefully designed from the ground up to operate without a human driver. This means it does not rely on certain human-centered features, like a steering wheel or a sun visor, to operate safely.
At Cruise and GM, safety is our mission. This petition both demonstrates how the Origin achieves safety objectives of existing standards, and helps enable future AV regulations. NHTSA has made clear in public testimony and regulatory actions, that in order to consider the development of AV standards, they first need more information from real world AV operations. We believe this petition can help enable that outcome: learnings from the Origin, which is designed to improve overall road safety, can help inform the creation of new, updated regulations and standards….”
Read more Hmmmm…..Flashback! This was some of the best news that I had seen in a while when it came out last year, and here we are one year later, and it is STILL at the top of the heap. It bears repeating: Someone who has been actually demonstrating the ability to safely move people on at least some city streets without a driver or attendant (there are only two in the US: Cruise & Waymo) is seriously proposing to manufacture what is actually a driverless transit vehicle that can provide high-quality, demand-responsive mobility to a small group of people when those opportunities arise as well as serve the needs of the individual when necessary.
Think of the opportunity of the demand-responsive mobility that such vehicles can deliver to our communities, especially the mobility disadvantaged, for whom travel demand is non-stationary and so spatially and temporally distributed that it requires a vehicle to respond to the demand for mobility in real time. Such demand, while served exceedingly well by those of us who can afford and have a license to drive a car, has little hope of being adequately served by conventional vehicles that require the demand to respond to pre-set routes and schedules. The space-time combinatorial of the demand is orders of magnitude larger than the space-time combinatorial of the set of scheduled routes.
Thanks for coming with me on this trip down Memory Lane. What are GM Cruise/Origin up to these days? Just keep reading. Alain
GM’s plan to deploy self-driving Cruise Origin on hold as feds weigh exemption request
J. LaRean, Updated Feb 25, “General Motors’ mission to get 5,000 self-driving Cruise Origin vehicles in cities nationwide hangs on whether federal regulators will grant the automaker’s request to exempt the vehicle from federal safety standards.
GM plans to start building the Origin at Factory Zero in Detroit/Hamtramck this year but needs approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to put the vehicles on the roads. The Origin is a small bus-like vehicle that will transport up to six people without a driver. It operates through autonomous technology and has no manual steering controls or pedals.
General Motors’ mission to get 5,000 self-driving Cruise Origin vehicles in cities nationwide hangs on whether federal regulators will grant the automaker’s request to exempt the vehicle from federal safety standards.
GM plans to start building the Origin at Factory Zero in Detroit/Hamtramck this year but needs approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to put the vehicles on the roads. The Origin is a small bus-like vehicle that will transport up to six people without a driver. It operates through autonomous technology and has no manual steering controls or pedals. “The Cruise Origin is on track to start production this year,” said Aimee Ridella, GM spokeswoman. But she is careful to note, “pending government approval.”…” Read more Hmmmm… OK, now to the present day: Wow! Given the advances that Cruise has made in demonstrating safe driverless operation in San Francisco, coupled with the enormity of the opportunity that Cruise’s driverless stack can make when placed in a vehicle that is welcoming to shared ridership, there are many reasons to be optimistic about their potential impact in the driverless, share-ride space. Origin coupled with the Cruise driver is an ideal vehicle for the provision of safe, equitable, affordable, sustainable, high-quality MOVES -style mobility, especially throughout transportation disadvantaged communities.
Origin’s potential is so substantial that NHTSA in its public service role should be seeking to have GM build Origin rather than having GM petition NHTSA for permission. Yes, NHTSA is responsible for the safety of vehicles, but they also have a public calling to provide mobility; else, the travel safety extremum can be most readily attained by having everyone and everything stay home and not travel. That’s absolutely silly! In this case, the mobility opportunity is so enormous that NHTSA should work expeditiously with GM to grant this application. As with Nuro, we have an enormous mobility opportunity that conventionally driven vehicles simply can’t deliver; else, they would have done it many years ago. NHTSA’s mobility responsibility should be demanding that it give Origin the waivers that it needs ASAP, so that society can begin to capture the unique mobility benefits that Origin has the opportunity to deliver. Each day of delay is a day that the improvement in the quality of life of some individuals, especially some that have been very unfairly disadvantaged by the automobile revolution, is delayed. It is about time that NHTSA does something to improve mobility for those who have been left behind by that revolution. Why the feet dragging here??? Alain
Alain
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 305 / PodCast 305 w/Michael Sena
“F. Fishkin, Feb. 27, “ With shrinking populations and vacant office space, Michael Sena says the de-industrial revolution has begun. “The Dispatcher” publisher and consultant joins Alain Kornhauser & Fred Fishkin for episode 305 of Smart Driving Cars. Plus…run flat tires, GM’s Cruise Origin, Locomation, Tesla and more.
- 0:00 open
- 1:00 Is it time we admitted the world will change: the de-industrial revolution has begun
- 21:00 Impact on transportation, automakers
- 28:40 Run flat tires..from Michelin and more
- 35:25 GM’s waits for NHTSA okay for deployment of Cruise Origin autonomous mobility
- 46:00 Locomation denies reports of its demise
- 47:08 The Insider report on Tesla… and upcoming master plan. Alain’s comments not what were reported.
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MIT Mobility Forum: Spring 2023
1. Fridays 12:00-13:00 Boston Time Open to the public
- Registration:
https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoduytqDsiE9ZKHfZ9Mf1hHIzSCx-TxIEq
3. Hosted by Prof. Jinhua Zhao
AGENDA
Feb 17 Alain Kornhauser “Envisioning Profitable Autonomous Transit Networks “
Feb 24 Hani Mahmassani “Telemobility, hybrid work and the next normal”
March 3 Liz Renold and David Mindell “Tectonic shifts in science, technology, and industrial policy: looking ahead”
March 10 Juan de Dios Ortuzar “Modelling Sustainable Options - the importance of habit and perceptions”
March 17 Robin Chase “The case against transportation policy priority one being electrified personal cars”
…
Save the Date:
6th Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit:
Monday Evening, May 22 -> Wednesday 5pm, May 24, 2023
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Bridging Transportation Researchers (BTR) Conference
Paper Submission deadline: April 30
August. 9 & 10
On-line Conference
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Friday, February 3, 2023
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Friday, January 27, 2023
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Tuesday, January 24, 2023
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Friday, January 13, 2023
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Sunday, January 8, 2023
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SafeDrivingCars: Those in which the automated function are explicitly designed to not only substantially reduce driver misbehavior by constraining the performance characteristic such as incorporating speed governors that only permit excessive speeds in geofenced locations such as Watkins Glen International and stretches of the German Autobahn, but also automatically intervene to prevent crashes; thus, extending what is done today with anti-lock brakes and electronic stability control.
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SelfDrivingCars: Those which allow the driver for some extended period of time to be “feet-off” the brake & throttle, delivering to the driver substantial comfort & convenience, but also “hands-off” the wheel for shorter periods of time providing a little more comfort & convenience. Absolutely required are “eyes & brain” focused the human task of driving, ready to intervene should the automated driver begin to fail.
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DriverlessCars: Those which serve only passengers and/or good from trip start, through finish. Luckily, the notion that individuals might own such vehicles for personal use and/or be able to “AirB&B” them for others to get from A to B is now realized by essentially everyone as exceedingly naïve. The Mercedes booth at this year’s CES showed no sign of its [Mercedes Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion LIVE PREMIERE CES 2015](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eftN0lwNk88). Yea!
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Friday, December 30, 2022
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Sunday, December 25, 2022
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Saturday, December 17, 2022
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Sunday, December 11, 2022
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Friday, December 2, 2022
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Sunday, November 27, 2022
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Saturday, November 19, 2022
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Monday, November 14, 2022
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Sunday, November 6, 2022
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Sunday, October 30, 2022
- Hawkins, Oct. 27, “When Ford announced yesterday that it was pulling its support for Argo AI, the autonomous driving startup it had financed since 2017, it cited as one of its reasons a belief that driver-assist technology will have more near-term payoffs…..” Read more Hmmmm… I agree with Andrew, as I stated above. Alain
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Sunday, October 23, 2022
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Friday, October 14, 2022
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Saturday, October 08, 2022
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Thursday, September 29, 2022
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Saturday, September 10, 2022
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Thursday September 1, 2022
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Sunday, August 28, 2022
- Tesla FSD Beta V 10.69 Dominates Downtown Driving
- FSD Beta 10.69 (2022.16.3.10) Release Notes
- FSDBeta v10.69 - HEAVY TRAFFIC - Unprotected Left Turns… Amazing that such turns are legal let alone FSD’s routing algorithm deciding that this is on the best way to go. Safety must not be part of its objective function C’mon Elon.
- FSD Beta V 10.69 Initial Impressions. My impression is that 10.69 drove better than this tester who seemed intent on driving aggressively and not wanting to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. Hopefully no one at Tesla pays attention to this guy.
- Bullish News From Giga Berlin Tours, Production Rumors, Terrible Toyota
- The Tesla Semi Is Officially Here!
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Monday, August 22, 2022
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Saturday, August 6, 2022
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Saturday July 30, 2022
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Monday July 25, 2022
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Saturday July 16, 2022
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Saturday June 11, 2022
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Saturday June 18, 2022
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These systems outrageously reduce crash probabilities, and/or
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maybe some, but we’re probably not much luckier.
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very few of the cars in use during that “10” month period had Level 2 capabilities, and/or
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unfortunately, the VIN number doesn’t identify these cars and only Tesla announces how many sold (I may have missed the reportings)
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very few of the drivers of those cars rarely engaged the Level 2 features, and/or
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likely. Only Tesla releases data on the utilization of its level 2 features but does so only in aggregate terms that don’t allow for correction of sampling bias associated with engagement in “easy” driving conditions versus “challenging” driving conditions.
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enormous under counting
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likely, only Tesla has the opportunity to either “know all” or sample effectively because of their OtA monitoring of its vehicles. Everyone else has conveniently kept their heads in the sand. Mercedes didn’t report any; however, during that period I think my Intelligent Cruise Control and Lane Centering were engaged when I hit a deer. Mercedes must not have been watching me, I didn’t report it and I didn’t get the memo that informed me to do anything.
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Saturday June 11, 2022
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Saturday May 28, 2022
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Sunday May 15, 2022
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Saturday May 7, 2022
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Friday, April 30, 2022
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Saturday, April 23, 2022
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Thursday, April 15, 2022
- those that don’t already have a stable full of their own personal mobility options.
- those for which his aTaxi can substantially change their lives for the better.
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Thursday, March 31, 2022
PersonTripLength (90%tile): 10 miles
Cost:
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Friday, February 4, 2022
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