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SmartDrivingCar.com/12.1-… & Safer!-1/6/24

1^stedition of the 12th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter

Happy New Year! J

Editorial: Time to let Value do the talking and put safety and, especially technology, in the background!

What a year. On a personal level, it was absolutely fantastic. Great sabbatical. Traveled through Italy and Kenya, three trips to Boca Chica: spring break with Elizabeth & Helen, launch of StarShip FT1 with Jerry He, and launch of StarShip FT2 with Elizabeth and 9 students from my best class ever. Plus the writing of “The Real Case for Driverless Mobility” with Michael Sena, 51 issues of the SDC eLetter, and 53 SDC PodCast/ZoomCasts with Fred Fishkin. I am so blessed.

For SmartDrivingCars, it was truly a “Tale of Two Cities”… It was the best of times: From my perspective, Driverless passed the “proof-of-technology” test by having both Waymo and Cruise deliver Driverless rides without Smoke&Mirrors to the public in two Operational Design Domains, Phoenix/Chandler & San Francisco. Since nothing is perfect, it wasn’t either, but it was more than perfect enough to move on to the next step of having the opportunity to begin delivering value. The imperfections were just a very few very minor delays in a few chaotic situations that regularly occur in lively cities, which are completely normal in the learning process of trying to use a new tool to do good and as is all too common in life: the learning of a hard lesson the hard way, for which the silver lining ends up being… this lesson is now learned and its likelihood of being repeated is now even more extremely small. That was the fantastic good news for 2023.

But it is a tale of Two cities. The bad news is that not only has there been essentially no advancement in the “proof-of-market” for Driverless mobility. We may also have even moved backwards. I, with Miachael Sena, will claim that the Driverless “industry” has been barking up the wrong tree and that became all too obvious in 2023. What is in the forefront has no hope sufficient value for sufficient customers. A viable business case isn’t on the table. These systems have been put forth as Uber/Lyft copycats without that in comparison are also-rans.. They aren’t substantially “safer”, if at all “safer”; they aren’t substantially “faster”, if at all “faster”; they aren’t substantially “cleaner”, if at all “cleaner”; they aren’t substantially “…er”, if at all “…er”. They’re also-rans. Their only hope lies in their opportunity to be substantially more affordable.

The Driverless winner will be the company that creates an Operational Design Domain that serves with high-quality the mobility aspirations of customers that most value affordability. Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="6" alt="A book cover of a book Description automatically generated" title="" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_9">SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 352 / PodCast 352 Aurora-Mobileye-Cruise-Tesl

F. Fishkin, Jan. 6, “Aurora and Continental finalize design for self driving trucks, Mobileye hits speed bump, Cruise continues to pay tuition and Tesla gets more real. Episode 352 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin.

0:00 open

0:25 Big week ahead with CES and TRB

1:30 Aurora and Continental finalize self driving truck design

9:47 Tough week for Mobileye and investors

13:20 French grocery giant Carrefour cuts off Pepsi products after price hikes

17:59 Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece headlined In the Year of AI, Autonomous Vehicles Had a Tough Showing

28:16 Reuters reports GM Cruise offers 75 thousand dollars to resolve investigation into failure to disclose all following October crash in SF

35:00 Tesla meets 2023 vehicle delivery goals and adjusts vehicle range estimates

36:56 BYD worries?

40:38 Fisker ending direct to consumer sales in favor of dealers and more Tesla

46:30 Ghost Autonomy survey on self driving tech

49:03 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility book on the way

[log in to unmask]" alt="A black numbers on a blue and white background Description automatically generated"> Aurora finalizes design of self-driving trucks it will make with Continental

Andrew Hawkins, Jan. 5, “Autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation announced the finalization of the design, architecture, and hardware for its Aurora Driver. The technology will power its future lineup of driverless semi trucks that it’s producing with German auto supplier Continental starting in 2027.

Aurora says it still plans on deploying a handful of fully driverless trucks by the end of 2024. But having reached the milestone of finalizing the design of its self-driving hardware and software stack, the company says it’s poised to deploy “thousands” of trucks in just three years.

Aurora — which was founded in 2017 by alumni of Uber, Tesla, and Waymo — has said it plans to deploy 20 fully autonomous trucks this year, with an eye on expanding to about 100 trucks in 2025 and eventually selling to other companies… “ Read More Hmmmm…. This is actually really good news because it is a necessary pathway to a “proof-of-market”. Hopefully this design hides the technology and focuses on the value proposition of more efficient, lower cost and more affordable truck movements by the entities that will pay Continental, and subsequently Aurora, for this technology. Efficiency and lower costs than what is best available today are the values fundamental values that motor carrier CEOs are focused on. Conventionally today, they provide enormously safe transport on our nation’s roadways. What they would loke to do is to provide even better more efficient and more affordable transport services so as to help energize the economy while they strive to improve sustainability. They also wish to achieve this without fanfare or distraction that can do nothing but disrupt efficiency and degrade service. So, hopefully, this design camouflage the LiDARs, and the fact that the cab is empty and focuses on transporting or repositioning its trailer efficiently, affordably and unremarkably. If it does this, it will be pass the “proof-of-market”, and its value will be heard loud and clear by motor carrier CEOs, Continental and Chris! It’s time. Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A white letter on a black background Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_8">Mobileye’s Excess Inventory Hints at Longer Road Ahead for Autonomous Vehicles

Staff, Jan. 5,“ Mobileye, which makes self-driving technology — spanning cameras and chips and systems — posted preliminary results for the third quarter.

The results pointed to what the company called “excess inventory at our customers,” which includes millions of Mobileye’s EyeQ SoCs, used for real-time visual recognition in self-driving vehicles.

Mobileye said that stockpiling has been due to the recent experience of disrupted supply chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To automakers, having more chips on hand means they can build as demand materializes and as technology evolves.

Mobileye, which is owned by Intel, has said that the excess inventory should be worked down through the next few quarters, as car manufacturers themselves are showing evidence of “lower than expected production.”

Investors were swift to desert the company, sending Mobileye shares down about 25% in Thursday’s trading, before rebounding a bit on Friday (Jan. 5). …” . Read More Hmmmm…. This is not good. See earnings report. They are expecting operating losses of $(468)- $(378) million in 2024. Yipes!! Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A white text on a black background Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_7"> Carrefour Drops Pepsi Products, Continues Its Purpose Leadership

D. Pontefract, Feb 4. “In another of its bold moves that underscores the company’s commitment to purpose-driven and ethical business practices, French grocery giant Carrefour has halted the sale of Pepsi products due to unacceptable price increases. The move is in addition to their late 2023 decision to physically highlight the sneaky tactic of “shrinkflation” in their grocery stores. This two-pronged approach by France’s second-largest grocer is not just a retail strategy; it's a loud message about the role of corporations in society and the importance of purpose-driven, ethical leadership.

The decision to stop selling Pepsi products comes amid rising food prices that have hit consumers hard. PepsiCo’s price hikes, which the company attributes to increasing costs, have led Carrefour to draw a line in the grocery aisle, prioritizing consumer interests over supplier relationships. In a statement, PepsiCo retaliated: “We've been in discussion with Carrefour for many months and we will continue to engage in good faith in order to try to ensure that our products are available.”

Carrefour’s move is significant, signalling a refusal to pass on undue cost burdens to customers. It’s a stance that echoes a broader and global societal concern about the rising cost of living, and Carrefour is effectively using its market influence to advocate for more reasonable pricing practices. Of note, in Canada, a parliamentary committee has been working on a “grocery code of conduct” to avoid such situations, with various grocery CEOs being called to parliamentarian committees to explain their pricing practices. (It’s not going all that well for the CEOs.)

Carrefour's previous 2023 campaign against shrinkflation—reducing product size while maintaining or increasing prices—further cements the firm’s position as a champion of transparency and fairness. By openly flagging products that have succumbed to this practice, including those from PepsiCo, Carrefour is not just advocating for fair pricing but also for honest communication with consumers. This dual approach to addressing price hikes and shrinkflation demonstrates a comprehensive commitment to their customers…. “ Read More Hmmmm…. While somewhat off-topic, this is the best news about corporate practices in a long time. This is a fundamental desire for value for the end customer by the intermediary. (This is similar to how Continental will help Aurora be successful). Carrefour is making Pepsi realize that delivering less value and less affordability has its limits even though the short run self-centered greed looked pretty good. Thank you, Carrefour. To many, Pepsi is 2^nd rate, and eating Doritos is nothing but bad. So this is a win-win. For Carrefour: better other things to sell; for the consumer: better healthier items to buy.. Yea!! Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A green and white logo Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_6"> In the year of AI, autonomous vehicles had a tough showing

J. Stickford, Jan 4. “…Many AV companies pull the safety driver to show progress to investors, said Phil Koopman, a CMU professor who studies driverless technology. But that can have significant consequences.

“Once you pull out the driver, you’re not testing, you’re deployed,” he said.

….” Read More Hmmmm…. Koopman isn’t right here? No one has pulled a safety driver “to show progress to investors”. Or at least no one who is still around or in the US of A.

The ONLY reason to pull a safety driver is to make the ride affordable, and not to save a few bucks during testing or to show one’s “manhood”. Again… affordability is the ONLY reason to pull a driver.

And, by the way, if you want to really improve safety, then stop current drivers from misbehaving. Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="A black and white logo Description automatically generated"> Survey: Consumers Prefer Self-driving Tech in Their Cars, Not Robotaxi

J. Stickford, Jan 4. “The electric-vehicle startup is abandoning a direct-to-consumer sales model in the U.S. in favor of using traditional dealerships, after it found the approach too expensive and struggled in 2023 to get its cars to buyers quickly.

The company is in talks with U.S. dealers and hopes to sign up at least 50 this year, said Chief Executive Officer Henrik Fiske Ghost’s survey states three in four consumers (77 percent) expressed a strong preference for fully autonomous driving over robotaxis, and one in two (52 percent) who have firsthand experience with self-driving vehicles would be willing to expedite their next car purchase if full autonomy were available.

Research also found Tesla owners exhibit the highest rate of exposure to self-driving features and are at the forefront of the market in their enthusiasm for autonomous technology, underscoring drivers who have the opportunity to experience self-driving are disposed towards it….” Read More Hmmmm…. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Nothing new here. This is a survey of car OWNERS. Those who today give themselves rides in their own cars. What happens if you survey those who must rely on getting rides or stay home because they can’t get a ride? Remember … at any given time only 50% of those who ride give themselves a ride. The other 50% get a ride. What would be their response to easily getting an affordable high-quality ride in an autonomousTaxi? Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A red and white logo Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_5">Tesla Lowers Range Estimates, Samsung Integration, Argus Says TSLA Among Top Picks

R. Mauer, Jan. 6, “ 0:00 TSLA 0:38 Argus top picks 2:18 Lowered range estimates 8:06 Model Y paint 8:55 Samsung integration 10:09 Sweden union update 11:45 China Autopilot update 12:25 Cybertruck celebrity 13:05 Musk teaser 13:46 Calendar” Read More Hmmmm…. Interesting, especially the FSD v12.1 rollout. Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A white text on a black background Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_4">KIA INTRODUCES NEW THEFT DETERRENT DEVICE FOR VEHICLES NOT ELIGIBLE FOR SOFTWARE UPGRADE

Press release, Dec. 29, Kia America announced today that it is unveiling an additional security measure to support its customers in response to criminals using methods of theft popularized on social media to steal or attempt to steal certain vehicle models. This new hardware modification—an ignition cylinder protector—is designed for the vehicles that are not eligible for the security software upgrade that Kia introduced earlier this year and works to combat theft by reinforcing the ignition cylinder body and preventing its removal through the method of theft promoted in videos that have spread across social media encouraging criminal activity.

This additional modification will be available beginning December 20 through a free Customer Satisfaction Initiative for the models that are not eligible for the software upgrade. Following the completion of the installation, each vehicle will be affixed with window decals to inform would-be car thieves that the vehicle is equipped with enhanced theft protection.

In addition to this ignition cylinder protector, Kia has also designed a software upgrade that further enhances a vehicle’s security by restricting the operation of a vehicle’s ignition system should a potential criminal attempt to steal a locked vehicle without the key, and the company continues to strongly encourage eligible customers to have this software upgrade installed. Since January, dealers have installed the anti-theft software upgrade on close to 940,000 vehicles, and Kia has hosted multiple temporary software upgrade clinics to assist local dealers with installation in key cities with many more planned in early 2024…” Read More Hmmmm…. How brilliant is Tesla’s over-the-air-update (unless you are a car dealer. It must be obvious “that ship has sailed”!) Alain

[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A close-up of a logo Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_3">EV Startup Fisker Ditches Tesla-Style Direct Sales Model

S. McLain, Jan 4. “The electric-vehicle startup is abandoning a direct-to-consumer sales model in the U.S. in favor of using traditional dealerships, after it found the approach too expensive and struggled in 2023 to get its cars to buyers quickly.

The company is in talks with U.S. dealers and hopes to sign up at least 50 this year, said Chief Executive Officer Henrik Fisker. Read More Hmmmm…. Maybe it has additional and possibly more fundamental problems. Alain

*****

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6^th SmartDrivingCar

Summit

May 29 (evening) -> May 31, 2024

Princeton, NJ

********************

Previous SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast/PodCasts

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 351 / PodCast 351 w/ Michael Sena, Smart Driving Cars: Still trying after a trying year

F. Fishkin, Dec. 30, “Still trying after a trying year that featured some significant milestones in driverless mobility. Michael Sena joins Alain and Fred for a 2023 wrap up and a look ahead...which will see the publication of the new book from Michael and Alain (and audio book from Fred)..."The Real Case for Driverless Mobility" #Waymo, #Cruise, #Tesla and more. Remember to subscribe.

0:00 Open

1:00 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility coming soon

7:28 2023 Highlights-The start of driverless revenue service

18:50 The demise of the wannabes

24:00 This is a new market

40:00 Lessons learned in 2023

43:40 Lessons learned in San Francisco

51:35 Serve a demand that is sustainable

57:45 Heading into 2024…the expectations? Still some optimism”

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 350 / PodCast 350 Waymo outperforms human drivers

F. Fishkin, Dec. 24, “The latest report from Waymo again shows it is significantly outperforming human drivers in mobility safety. Plus Space X, Tesla, May Mobility, the Hyperloop and more on episode 350 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin.

0:00 Open

0:56 Waymo reports on safety it significantly outperforms human drivers

13:45 CNBC reports Space X value has reached 180 billion dollars 15:05 May Mobility went fully driverless while avoiding pitfalls

24:35 Hyperloop One shutting down

30:04 Bird files for bankruptcy…others in micro mobility continue

32:04 SF Standard reports little improvement after hundreds of millions spent in effort to curb traffic fatalities in San Francisco

32:57 NY Times Best Metropolitan Diary of 2023 according to readers

34:11 Don’t forget the upcoming book…The Real Case for Driverless Mobility

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 349 / PodCast 349 w/Prof. Bryant Walker Smith

F. Fishkin, Dec. 18, “he Tesla autopilot safety recall and the job cuts at GM Cruise top the headlines on episode 349 of Smart Driving Cars. Bryant Walker Smith, Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law and Assoc. Professor of Law and Engineering at the University of So. Carolina, joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus May Mobility, a new AI Center at Princeton and more.

0:00 open

23:05 GM Cruise cuts quarter of workforce

36:45 DOT response to AV Industry SOS

54:30 Private driverless mobility services to bring employees to work?

1:00:30 May Mobility beginning fully driverless service in Sun City, Arizona

1:01:48 Psychology Today piece on the psychological effects of self driving cars

1:07:54 Governor of NJ announces AI Center at Princeton

1:11:56 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility by Alain and Michael Sena coming very soon

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 348 / PodCast 348 w/ Michael Sena, Editor, The Dispatcher

F. Fishkin, Dec. 8, “What is the real business for Waymo at Alphabet/Google? Michael Sena, publisher of The Dispatcher and co-author of The Real Case of Driverless Mobility joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus Cruise, Tesla and more.

0:00 open

0:46 The real business for Waymo

49:00 Reuters reports AV Industry Association is asking Department of Transportation for help

55:00 NHTSA ..a debate over its role

1:03:34 Princeton fatal accident lesson

1:06:30 Rail service from Scranton to NYC may be back on track

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 347 / PodCast 347 w/ Michael Sena, Editor, The Dispatcher

F. Fishkin, Nov. 29, “With GM Cruise "substantially" cutting spending on Cruise autonomous mobility, should GM turn the keys over to someone else? What is Google's real business with Waymo? The Dispatcher Publisher Michael Sena joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus...Tesla's big truck week and troubles in Sweden, the upcoming book, The Real Case for Driverless Mobility...and more!

0:00 open

1:13 GM cutting Cruise spending

7:09 What is Google's Waymo business really about?

30:00 Tesla's big truck event and troubles in Sweden

42:24 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility book coming soon

SmartDrivingCars Cars ZoomCast 346 / PodCast 346 w/ Cyrus Farivar Forbes senior staff writer

F. Fishkin, Nov. 21, “With the two co-founders having resigned, where does GM's Cruise go from here? GM CEO Mary Barra spoke to employees Monday. Forbes Senior Staff Writer Cyrus Farivar has had a listen and written about it. He joins Alain and Fred on episode 346 of Smart Driving Cars. Plus we add thoughts from The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena. Tune in and subscribe.

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 34 5 The second launch of Starship

Fishkin, Nov. 18, “With a group of his students on hand from the South Padre Island vantage point, Princeton's Alain Kornhauser joins Fred Fishkin to witness the second launch of Starship by SpaceX. Tune in and subscribe!”

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 344 from StarShip#2 Launch Site

Fishkin, Nov. 17, “It's a special edition of Smart Driving Cars. A preview of the planned weekend launch of Starship. Princeton's Alain Kornhauser chats with co-host Fred Fishkin from Starbase in Boca Chica. Compared with autonomous vehicles... he says this is easy!

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 343 / PodCast 343 w/ Cyrus Farivar Forbes senior staff writer

F. Fishkin, Nov. 9, “So much Cruise news and not much of it good. Where do robotaxi's go from here? Forbes senior staff writer Cyrus Farivar joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus Waymo, Britain's Automated Vehicles Bill, Geely's Zeekr and more. Tune in and subscribe.

0:00 open

0:30 so much Cruise news with Forbes Sr. Staff Writer Cyrus Farivar

22:36 Where does Cruise go from here

40:36 Waymo to bring AVs for testing to Buffalo

41:40 Britain's new Automated Vehicles Bill.. liability issue discussion

47:35 Geely's Zeekr public paperwork for IPO

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 342 / PodCast 342 w/Michael Sena, Editor of The Dispatcher

F. Fishkin, Nov. 3, “With "The Dispatcher" publisher Michael Sena looking at The Business of Transport Systems and whether Tesla or Toyota will be first to twenty million, episode 342 of Smart Driving Cars offers in depth insights. Michael joins Alain and Fred for that plus Geely, Waymo, Uber and more.

0:00 open

0:35 The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena on transport options on his way to go fishing in Labrador

2:44 The Business of Transport Systems… Tesla and everyone else

22:40 Getting to twenty million first… Tesla or Toyota?

32:00 Thoughts on the China Export Boom

32:38 Zeeker wants to be provider of Waymo autonomous vehicles…Alain says no.

44:00 Uber and Lyft agree to pay combined 328 million dollars in NY State case for withholding money from drivers.

1:01:45 Tesla won first U.S. autopilot trial involving fatal crash

1:07:50 CivicPlus report on U.S. drivers killing 20 pedestrians per day

1:11:25 AVs and “The Real Case for Driverless Mobility”(book from Michael and Alain coming soon)

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 341 / PodCast 341 w/Russ Mitchell, Correspondent LA Times

F. Fishkin, Oct. 30, “In the wake of an early October incident and action by the state of California, GM's Cruise has suspended robotaxi services. Where does it go from here? LA Times reporter Russ Mitchell joins Alain and Fred to discuss. Plus, Waymo cracking down on misbehaving riders and partners with Uber in Phoenix...and more. Tune in and subscribe. 0:00 open

0:42 Discussion with Russ Mitchell of LA Times of Cruise suspension of autonomous robotaxi services

8:36 What is needed to ensure similar incident isn’t repeated and where industry goes from here

19:20 Forbes online piece from Steven Acquino on Ableism issue not being taken into account

29:30 Teamsters and Rideshare Drivers United working together to put guardrails on autonomous vehicles

31:30 Waymo advises riders of cleaning fees if real messes are left behind

37:28 Waymo autonomous vehicles now available to Uber customers in

Phoenix

39:30 Alain on how financial model can work for autonomous mobility

49:35 NY Times piece on interactive map of NYC neighborhoods

52:10 Reminder that new book from Alain and Michael Sena is on the way.. The Real Case for Driverless Mobility

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 340 / PodCast 340 w/ Michael Sena, Dispatch Central – November 2023.. Critical Materials as Competitive Weapons

F. Fishkin, Oct. 19, “What has China done to Swedish EV battery maker Northvolt AB? "The Dispatcher" publisher Michael Sena joins Alain and Fred for episode 340 of Smart Driving Cars. Plus...robotaxi travails in San Francisco, Honda plans robotaxis in Tokyo with GM and Cruise, Amazon delivering drugs by drone, Xpeng, Tesla and more.

0:00 open

1:15 upcoming book The Real Case for Driverless Mobility

3:10 Critical materials as competitive weapons

7:24 Sweden cuts power to first electric road

21:48 Back on the elevator

24:09 Funding public transport isn’t working

32:00 Michael looks at robotaxi travails in San Francisco

46:25 Honda will start 2026 robotaxi service with GM Cruise and Origin vehicle

54:30 Amazon announces first drone deliveries of prescription drugs

1:02:49 Tesla earnings disappoint investors

1:14:20 Will Xpeng beat out Waymo and Cruise in robotaxis?

1:17:58 Smart Driving Cars Summit returns in 2024

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 339 / PodCast 339 driverless communication, Gates invests, Tesla battery production

F. Fishkin, Oct. 15, “Driverless car communication with pedestrians? On episode 339 of Smart Driving Cars, Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin chat about a report in The Verge on how Waymo is doing it. Plus Bill Gates invests in Glydways, Tesla battery production breakthrough, Model Y ridesharing in Tampa & more. Tune in and subscribe!

0:00 open

0:34 Princeton Scholars discussion on Israel and Gaza link in newsletter

1:56 The Verge report on How Will Driverless Cars Talk to Pedestrians-Waymo Has a Few Ideas.

4:42 Glydways gets investment from Bill Gates for electric robotaxis using dedicated lanes

13:09 Tesla officially releases API documentation for third party apps

15:15 Tesla Model Y vehicles being used by DASH in Tampa for affordable ridesharing service

19:55 Tesla breakthrough in battery cell production at Gigafactory Texas

26:27 Upcoming Podcar City Conference in San Jose

27:56 Publication coming soon for new book: The Real Case for Driverless Mobility by Alain Kornhauser and Michael Sena…and planning underway for 2024 Princeton Smart Driving Cars Summit

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 338 / PodCast 338 Waymo, Costs of Car Ownership, Tesla, Lyft and more

F. Fishkin, Oct. 10, “What was Waymo thinking with a post about Waymo One and first dates? Princeton's Alain Kornhauser on that plus the costs of car ownership, Tesla, Lyft, Zeeker and more. Join Alain and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 338 of Smart Driving Cars.

0:00 open

0:30 Middle East and Princeton Professor and former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer's comments.

3:16 Waymo post on Waymo One-Ideal for first dates

5:46 How the costs of car ownership add up

8:28 Tesla Cybertruck tows SpaceX Raptor

10:05 Why Electric Cars failed 100 years ago

12:20 Elektrek tests Waymo in SF

16:50 Lyft CEO-Big tech made America lonely

19:43 Vault Robotics van to door delivery

23:05 Waymo Zeeker

25:30 Tesla autopilot fatal crash in Florida

36:10 Waymo expands service in SF

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 337 / PodCast 337 Driveless Cars a Tough Sell?

F. Fishkin, Oct. 2, “Driverless cars a tough sell? Not to people who need mobility. That's Alain's response to a piece in The Atlantic. Plus Mercedes Drive Pilot, Uber plays nice with taxi industry, Teamsters oppose Cruise Origin, Tesla, Microsoft and May Mobility. And Alain shares his IATR presentation- Modernizing the Giving of Rides.

0:00 open

0:41 The Atlantic headline.. Why Driverless Cars are a Tough Sell

8:03 Forbes report.. Mercedes Benz Drive Pilot: The Self Driving Car Has (sort of) Arrived 9:40 The Verge report: How Uber learned to Stop Fighting and Play Nice With Taxis

13:45 Teamster Union opposing exemption for building of Cruise Origin

18:50 Tesla missed third quarter delivery estimates..but…

20:50 Microsoft announces new AI companion called CoPilot…umm…

23:13 May Mobility announces software release focused on rider only operations

30:13 Alain talks about his presentation at the IATR Conference in Arizona

41:34 Alain’s IATR presentation slides and more

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 336 / PodCast 336 w Prof. Dan Sperling, UC Davis

F. Fishkin, Sept. 26, “With the swirling controversies surrounding robotaxis in San Francisco and beyond, some words of caution from Daniel Sperling. The University of California, Davis, founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies joins us for episode 336 of Smart Driving Cars. Plus Cruise, Waymo, Governor Newsome's climate lawsuit against oil, Tesla's Optimus robot and more.

0:00 open

0:45 Daniel Sperling , UC Davis, on his opinion piece for The Hill. “ Don’t Fall Prey to the Current Panic Over Automated Vehicles.

6:30 Alain’s viewpoint along similar lines

13:33 A business model focused on giving rides is needed

20:00 Sperling says support for public transit is an obstacle

22:47 Policy makers have an opportunity that they aren’t moving on

28:45 Ride sharing has fallen by the wayside

32:45 The Drive reports on robotaxi opposition in Austin while NPR piece is headlined Horseless Carriages Were Once a Lot Like Driverless Cars. What Can History Teach Us?

38:37 Tesla has data not only on their crashes, but their near misses as well

44:00 Gov. Newsome’s suit against oil companies 47:45 Newsome has also vetoed bill that would have required safety drivers in automated trucks for at least five years.

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 335 / PodCast 335 w Ariel Wolf, Venable Autonomous & Connected Mobility

F. Fishkin, Sept. 20, “How long will NHTSA take to approve the Cruise Origin exemption to build without a steering wheel or pedals? Fred Fishkin chats with the acting NHTSA administrator and co-host Alain Kornhauser and guest Ariel Wolf, who heads Venable's Autonomous and Connected Mobility practice offer insights. Plus Cathie Wood, Tesla, SpaceX and more. 0:00 open

0:42 Ariel Wolf on Venable’s autonomous and mobility practice

2:37 Techstination interview excerpts with NHTSA acting administrator on Cruise Origin

4:02 discussion of the approval practice with Alain, Ariel and Fred

16:16 Cruise has announced wheel chair accessible version as well

27:17 SF Fire Chief statement that Cruise autonomous vehicle was not directly responsible for the death of a pedestrian

35:00 Cruise CEO says backlash has been sensationalized

41:36 Allegations against companies making mobility safer are concerning

49:40 Cathie Wood says when it comes to self driving taxis ..it’s a winner take most market for Tesla

51:42 A go ahead for Cruise Origin could always be corrected if need be.

53:10 Legal changes needed and are being worked on

54:16 Rob Mauer at Tesla Daily had interview with Musk biographer Walter Isaacson”

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 334 / PodCast 334 Waymo autonomous vehicles safer than humans

F. Fishkin, Sept. 12, “Waymo and big re-insurer Swiss Re say Waymo's autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers. Tesla's Dojo supercomputer sends shares higher. Cruise Origin on verge of getting okay. No steering wheels or pedals. Episode 334 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin.

0:00 open

0:30 Waymo Swiss Re research shows Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers

10:47 Tesla shares jump after Morga Stanley analysts see Dojo supercomputer value

13:15 James Douma explanation of FSD included in newsletter

23:00 And Tesla Daily Rob Mauer highlights as well

23:30 GM Cruise near approval from NHTSA for Origin vehicle without steering wheel or pedals.

28:00 California bill requiring drivers in driverless trucks sent to governor 31:00 SpaceX Starbase readies Starship 25

35:20 Just back from Florida AV conference

36:50 Alain impressed with EVTOL tech at Florida conference

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 333 / PodCast 333 The Dispatcher w/Michael Sena & Tampa-Moves Simulation w/Bryce Rasmussen’25
F. Fishkin, Aug. 30, “The Need for Driverless Vehicle Standards is the lead as The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena joins us from Sweden for the latest Smart Driving Cars. More highlights from episode 333.. NHTSA, E-Fuels, China, Elon Musk demos the latest FSD and Bryce Rasmussen, Princeton '25, shows the results demo of the Interactive Person Trip Visualization tool from Princeton. Join Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin...and subscribe!

0:00 open

1:17 The Dispatcher..Standards for Driverless Vehicles

10:39 Recommendations for Standards

21:50 The Dispatcher.. Rudderless at NHTSA

28:45 The Dispatcher… Electrofuels or E-Fuels

32:00 The Dispatcher.. China and Coal

36:08 Elon Musk live streams latest FSD Beta

46:15 Bryce Rasmussen, Princeton ’25, demos animation of Interactive person trip visualization

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 332 / PodCast 332 Right Market w/ Bryce Rasmussen’24
F. Fishkin, Aug. 24, “How can communities plan for autonomous mobility systems? There's a new Interactive Person Trip Visualization developed at Princeton University and Bryce Rasmussen, class of '25, shows us how it works. Episode 332 of Smart Driving Cars with Alain Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin. Plus..Cruise, Waymo, San Francisco, Tesla and more.

0:00 open

0:41 Creation of Interactive Person Trip Visualization in Tampa with Bryce Rasmussen, Princeton class of ‘25

11:20 NY Times has three reporters ride in Waymo robotaxis

16:42 Politico reports Gavin Newsom sides with the robots in autonomous vehicle debate

20:43 Cruise bringing robotaxis to Raleigh

22:40 Beginning October 1 Pinellas’ SunRunner will no longer be free to ride. Why?

27:50 Results and demo of Interactive Person Trip Visualization in Tampa with Bryce Rasmussen

56:00 Visualization tool will be demonstrated at upcoming Florida AV conference and will become available to all

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 331 / PodCast 331 Wrong Market
F. Fishkin, Aug. 21, Following a crash with an emergency vehicle and a request from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, GM Cruise cuts San Francisco robotaxi fleet in half. What Princeton's Alain Kornhauser suggests they should do next, plus Cruise losses, automated vehicle legal issues, Tesla and more. Tune in to Alain and co-host Fred Fishkin for the latest.

0:00 open

0:24 Next Big Future piece on apparent 2 billion dollar GM Cruise loss this year

9:20 Cruise agrees to cut robotaxi fleet in half in San Francisco. Alain says should end service there to focus elsewhere

17:00 Alain’s response to those who point to the robotaxi collision with an emergency vehicle

20:00 The Verge has a report headlined Robotaxis are Driving on Thin Ice

22:00 GM Authority says Cruise is now testing in Charlotte

28:00 A diversion onto The Dinky

33:11 Juris report spotlighting potential criminal liability for operation of automated vehicles

36:27 Tip of the hat once again to Tesla Daily

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 330 / PodCast 3 30 CPUC decision
F. Fishkin, Aug. 12, “Robotaxi service in San Francisco gets the green light from the California PUC. Princeton's Alain Kornhauser outlines his testimony, where services go from here and more on episode 330 of Smart Driving Cars with co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus...the big UPS contract, Tesla and the continuing efforts develop automatic emergency braking that works.

0:00 open

0:22 California PUC okays around the clock robotaxi service in San Francisco

14:50 Alain hearing statement to California PUC in support of the deployment

20:23 More on the benefits of safe, affordable, driverless mobility and thoughts on how best to deploy

29:00 Robotaxi operators should be able to deny service to riders who misbehave

34:24 Coverage of the robotaxi issues needs to change. Too much clickbait.

41:00 Ride hailing model not the right focus

45:07 New UPS contract has created lots of demand for jobs there….but…

48:30 Reports and video of Tesla vehicles on autopilot crashing into police and the automatic emergency braking issue

1:02:27 How can automatic emergency braking be improved?

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 329 / PodCast 329 w/FL Senator Jeff Brandes & DASH’s Shuan Drinkard
F. Fishkin, Aug. 7, “Tampa Downtown Partnership head Shaun Drinkard and Florida Policy Project Founder Jeff Brandes join Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a look at the new Tampa DASH service that will provide affordable mobility with a Tesla fleet of vehicles. Plus a preview of the Florida AV Summit, the latest headlines on Cruise, Waymo, Tesla, Luminar, NuView and more. Smart Driving Cars 329!

0:00 open

0:25 Tampa to use Tesla Model Ys for new mobility service. Shaun Drinkard Tampa Downtown Partnership.

15:06 former Florida State Senator Jeff Brandes on the Tampa DASH project

18:41 Cathie Wood speaking at up Florida Automated Vehicles Summit

30:00 WSJ headline: America’s Most Tech Forward City Has Doubts About Self Driving Cars

32:47 Slate headline: As Cruise Expands to Los Angeles, Self Driving’s Breakout Moment Has Arrived

33:29 Brandes on what AV activities are going on now in Florida

36:40 Cruise reaches union agreement with electrical and janitorial workers in San Francisco

37:25 Luminar AI push

40:02 NuView plans space based LiDAR to map earth in 3D

40:35 On the Tesla Front.. Highland production, Pepsi Tesla Semis and Texas Tesla customers are being offered unlimited overnight charging for 25 dollars a mon”

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 328 / PodCast 328 w/ Wm. Cariss, Holman Growth Ventures +

Fishkin, Aug. 3, “On episode 328 of Smart Driving Cars, we're at the Holman Emerge conference in NJ focused on start-ups and the future of driving, dealerships and mobility. Guests include Holman CEO Carl Ortell, President Chris Conroy, Homan Growth Ventures CEO Bill Cariss and Spiffy founder Scott Wingo.

0:00 open

0:50 Overview of Holman

1:50 Fleet business expanding in robots, etc.

3:00 role of autonomy and investment in autonomous trucking firm, Gatik

5:44 future of cars, driving, dealerships

9:00 Types of start-ups that are of interest

10:20 Decision to go outside company to find worthwhile technology

11:30 upcoming book from Alain and Michael Sena focused on new mobility

14:00 Continuing reinvention necessary

15:30 Scott Wingo, CEO of Spiffy, app-based mobile auto repair and washing

17:00 What is Spiffy doing that competitors aren’t

19:50 Growth of service area and franchising

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 327 / PodCast 327 Han’s the Best!
F. Fishkin, July 29, “A SF Taxi Alliance Board member takes a Waymo ride and says he felt extra safe! That's on top on episode 327 of Smart Driving Cars. That plus the latest from Cruise, Tesla, Uber, SpaceX and more. Join Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for the latest in autonomous mobility.

0:00 open

0:37 SF Standard takes Taxi Worker’s Alliance Board member for Waymo ride and he says he felt “extra safe”

09:40 Waymo focusing efforts on ride hailing

20:00 Cruise expanding to Nashville and more

21:10 Wired report on legal saga of Uber fatal crash coming to end

28:45 TorqueNews report on Musk confirming Tesla FSD v12 Alpha using new single AI model

33:15 SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch 36:25 GM launching Hands Free Eyes On education program

39:56 The Verge reports driverless car legislation still stuck in neutral

49:03 Alain adds one more pitch for new mobility in NJ”

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 326 / PodCast 326 San Francisco robotaxis gain support from disability advocates
F. Fishkin, July 24, “Some disability advocates are voicing support for expanded robotaxis in San Francisco, a SF paper pits Uber against Waymo in a race, Cruise begins testing in Miami, Tesla begins production of DOJO supercomputer and talks to a major automaker about licensing Full Self Driving. That and more on episode 326 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin.

0:00 open

0:28 Disability advocates push for robotaxi expansion in San Francisco

8:08 San Francisco Standard pits Uber against Waymo in race. Clickbait.

12:40 Cruise begins initial testing for robotaxis in Miami

18:49 NY Times reports .. Watching for the Bus Stop Gallery

21:19 IATR Annual Conference in fall will have Waymo as an official sponsor

24:30 John Deere Moves Further in the Field of Autonomy

25:36 DOT accepting applications for the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program

28:00 Tesla begins production of DOJO Supercomputer

31:10 Tesla in discussion to license full self driving to another major automaker

36:20 Washington Post piece on Tesla owners using steering wheel weights

Link to previous 301 -> 325 SDC PodCasts & ZoomCasts

Link to previous 276 -> 300 SDC PodCasts & ZoomCasts
Link to 275 previous SDC PodCasts & ZoomCasts

Recent Highlights of SDC eLetter

Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023

Cruise Imploded in 2023. Can the Robotaxi Industry Recover in the New Year?

J. Bote, Dec. 29, “…With this tumultuous year in the rearview and a pall hanging over the industry, what will happen to robotaxis next year? The Standard interviewed four autonomous vehicle experts for their predictions about how the industry will fare in 2024 as it tries to move past Cruise’s screw-ups….

Alain Kornhauser, an operations research and financial engineering professor at Princeton University, expressed wariness about Waymo’s airport ambitions. Instead, he suggested, the company should focus on where it is uniquely positioned to supplement existing transportation systems.

“There are other people that can get people to the airport,” he scoffed. “The Uber and Lyft drivers can do that, OK?”…

Part of that, Kornhauser said, is heightened transparency from Cruise and Waymo. “They have to be open; they can't cover stuff up,” he said. “Nothing's perfect, and … I don't think anybody's holding anybody to perfection.”

Beyond safety promises, Kornhauser emphasized that Waymo and other autonomous vehicle firms hoping to roll their products out on San Francisco streets should refocus their community efforts.

“They need to see what business they're in, who their customers are and what their customers need,” Kornhauser said. “It's mobility for the folks that really need it, when they need it, to improve the quality of life in San Francisco.” Read More Hmmmm…. I guess all of you already know all of that. 😊 Alain

Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023

Waymo significantly outperforms comparable human benchmarks over 7+ million miles of rider-only driving

Waymo Team, Dec. 20, “ Safety leads everything we do at Waymo. This year alone, Waymo has served over 700,000 ride-hailing trips with public riders and no human driver. We couldn’t have hit that milestone without putting safety front and center, and we are working hard to improve the measurement, transparency, and performance of our fleet.

Our comprehensive research — across more than twenty safety papers that we’ve published over the years to enhance transparency — shows that the Waymo Driver performs safely across a range of evaluations. Building on that work, we’ve published two new papers today: one that compares the Waymo Driver’s crash rates to human drivers’ over our 7+ million rider-only miles from Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; and another that develops clear human crash benchmarks to enable such comparisons.

Our new research found that Waymo Driver performance led to a significant reduction in the rates of police-reported and injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the cities where we operate.

“These reports represent a good-faith effort by Waymo to evaluate how the safety of its autonomous driving system compares with the safety of human driving. The results are encouraging and represent one step in our evolving understanding of autonomous driving safety,” said David Zuby, chief research officer of The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) after reviewing the papers….” Read More Hmmmm…. The quote from David Zuby is indeed substantive and reflects my interpretation of the two papers cited above, as well as previous papers and posts that Waymo has made on this topic.

Waymo deserves enormous kudos for their approach to Safety. I firmly agree with the first highlighted phrase (Since no one else has gotten to where they are, the statement is true by default. That’s a recognition, not a dig.) as well as the highlighted transparency . We have at least one data point that suggests that even the slightest lack of “transparency” can easily negate the virtues of a focused safety mind set.

Safety is tough! It is a qualitative perception of perfection whose quantitative measures can only be achieved asymptotically, if at all. Consequently, any quantitative assessment is doomed to be a comparative to benchmarks rather than absolute, wherein the challenge. All benchmarks come with their own set of caveats and adjustments so the comparison ends up being “apples v apples” as opposed to “apples v oranges,” which is never easy, and may not even end up as being as good as having the comparison not even being “the same fruit”.

Having the comparison be on the same basis is particularly challenging in this safety situation, where the comparison is made between two different sone is comparing two very different mobility situations. The safety of being “given a ride” by Waymo is compared to safety of “giving oneself a ride” by the conventional automobiles.

At least one of the big challenges of having enough data to satisfy “data scientists” of “statistical significance” exists on the “given a ride” side. Also, these data are essentially pristine because Waymo archives its continuous oversight of the operation of its driverless cars and its commitment to transparency.

Unfortunately such data quality does not exist on the “giving oneself a ride” side requiring significant adjustment and modification so as to enable a substantive side-by-side comparison of safety measures. I know from the mishaps that I’ve been personally involved in my lifetime, only a small percentage were ever recorded by any means other than human memory of those involved. Only one or at most two rose to the level of documentation in a police report and only a few more were reported to my insurance company. Certainly the time(s) that I ran over a fire hose or didn’t pull over instantly for an on-coming emergency vehicle never went viral.

Anyway, it is very nice that Waymo has unveiled what has been obvious for some time: they have passed the-proof-of-concept aspect of its “rider-only” process of giving rides by actually “giving rides safely” throughout the Operational Design Domains that it has carefully delineated.

One recommendation as to how Waymo could further enhance its safety credibility would be to compare its performance data with a “giving oneself a ride” data set that is much more comparable in quality to its “giving a ride” data set so as to forego all of the adjustments it need to make to the existing public data set on the safety of today’s systems by which we give ourselves rides.

It turns out that Tesla seems to have compiled data from its vehicles that I suspect rivals, in quality and depth, the data that Waymo has archived. If those two entities could collaborate and subsequently reveal their safety reality, it would do both of them and the public at large an enormously clearer understanding of not only how well each of their technology works, but also in the net contribution, plus or minus, that today’s human driver plays in delivering safety to the mobility of rides whether they are given by a human with technology assistance, or given by technology with minimal monitoring and incidental assistance by a human. Such comparison could readily be conducted, because both Tesla and Waymo have archived vast amounts of substantive, machine-readable data on enabling a more straight forward assessment of the safety of “giving of oneself a ride” (Tesla) and the “giving of a ride” (Waymo).

Even without comparison with Tesla, Waymo has successfully proven that its “giving a ride” is achieved more safely than what we do collectively in “giving ourselves a ride.” With this achievement in-hand, Waymo should now focus on building upon that foundation, while realizing that even for AlphaBet, financial constraints exist and sufficiently large contributions from the public sector can’t be expected to be greater than rounding errors. Consequently, Waymo is going to need to earn its societal value in order to justify its continued existence.

Becoming even safer can earn additional societal value; however, the magnitude of that gain is unlikely to be sufficient as viewed from AlphaBet or by any potential acquirer. Improved safety is simply insufficiently valuable to those needing a ride to achieve financial viability and demonstrate a “proof-of-market. What Waymo needs to do is to quickly focus its more fundamental attributes of flexibility in time and space of giving safe rides, thus delivering an extremely high level of service, safely and affordably.

Once one can give a high level-of-service (LoS) one needs to realize that other modes (drive oneself, be driven by Limo/taxi/Uber/Lyft) also give high quality LoS that is safe and not cheap. For those for whom affordability is not important, Waymo is an “also ran” in the competition to welcome them as a loyal customer any time soon. Efforts to survive on just an LoS comparison is unlikely to be successful.

However, focusing the high-quality LOS on customers that will find the affordability aspects as substantive are likely to be disruptive. At prices they are willing to pay, high quality service is unavailable. Consequently high-quality LoS will be disruptive to those where affordability matters most. Plus affordability builds on itself. Affordability builds scale which leads to even higher affordability where Moore’s Law technology is doing the safe driving.

For a more straight-forward reporting on Waymo’s papers, see Andrew Hawkings: “Waymo has 7.1 million driverless miles — how does its driving compare to humans?“. Alain

Monday, Dec. 18, 2023

Tesla Autopilot Recall Threatens Its Defense in Lawsuits Over Crashes

M. Nayak, Dec. 15, “Tesla Inc.’s biggest vehicle recall ever threatens to hurt the company’s defense in several high-profile lawsuits it faces over crashes linked to Autopilot.

The automaker’s recall of 2 million cars comes after a top US auto-safety regulator found its driver-assistance program failed to ensure drivers stay attentive….Tesla’s biggest vehicle recall ever threatens to hurt the company’s defense in several high-profile lawsuits it faces over crashes linked to Auto…”

Read More Hmmmm…. What??? Did M. Nayak actually read the NHTSA Safety recall, or just talk with ambulance chasers? Read it for yourself (below) and decide. Alain

Part 573 Safety Recall Report

Staff, Dec. 12, “The subject population includes certain MY 2012-2023 Model S that are equipped with Autosteer and were produced between October 5, 2012, and December 7, 2023, and all MY 2016-2023 Model X vehicles, all MY 2017-2023 Model 3 vehicles and all MY 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles that are equipped with Autosteer and were produced through December 7, 2023…

Description of the Defect : Basic Autopilot is a package that includes SAE Level 2 advanced driverassistance features, including Autosteer and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC), that drivers may choose to engage subject to certain defined operating limitations. Autosteer is an SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature that, in coordination with the TACC feature, can provide steering, braking and acceleration support to the driver subject to certain limited operating conditions. Autosteer is designed and intended for use on controlled-access highways when the feature is not operating in conjunction with the Autosteer on City Streets feature. When Autosteer is engaged, as with all SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance features and systems, the driver is the operator of the vehicle. As the vehicle operator, the driver is responsible for the vehicle’s movement with their hands on the steering wheel at all times, remaining attentive to surrounding road conditions, and intervening (e.g., steer, brake, accelerate or apply the stalk) as needed to maintain safe operation. …It is surprising that NHTSA requires “hands on wheel”, rather than “hand near wheel, since Autosteer is steering, and the responsibility of the alert driver is to override Autosteer, and says nothing about “feet near brake/accelerator,” which is needed if the alert driver is to intervene by braking or accelerating…

In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, the prominence and scope of the feature’s controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse of the SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature.

Description of the Safety Risk: In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, if a driver misuses the SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature such that they fail to maintain continuous and sustained responsibility for vehicle operation and are unprepared to intervene, fail to recognize when the feature is canceled or not engaged, and/or fail to recognize when the feature is operating in situations where its functionality may be limited, there may be an increased risk of a collision.

Description of Remedy Program : At no cost to customers, affected vehicles will receive an over-the-air software remedy, which is expected to begin deploying to certain affected vehicles on or shortly after December 12, 2023, with software version 2023.44.30. Remaining affected vehicles will receive an over-the-air software remedy at a later date. The remedy will incorporate additional controls and alerts to those already existing on affected vehicles to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged, which includes keeping their hands on the steering wheel and paying attention to the roadway. Depending on vehicle hardware, the additional controls will include, among others, increasing the prominence of visual alerts on the user interface, simplifying engagement and disengagement of Autosteer, additional checks upon engaging Autosteer and while using the feature outside controlled access highways and when approaching traffic controls, and eventual suspension from Autosteer use if the driver repeatedly fails to demonstrate continuous and sustained driving responsibility while the feature is engaged. Tesla does not plan to include a statement in the Part 577 owner notification about pre-notice reimbursement because there are no out-of-warranty repairs related to this condition.

Identify How/When Recall Condition was Corrected in Production : Beginning midday on December 7, 2023, Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in production received a software release that incorporates the software remedy….”

Read More Hmmmm…. This is what I call a fantastic working relationship between a regulator and a producer to address a safety concern. 1. Identify the problem: driver misbehavior. 2 Work together to construct a software solution imposed by the regulator so that it is now the regulator that has taken responsibility for the proposed solution. 3. Implement instantaneously using over-the-air updating. Perfect!

TL;DR Seems to me NHTSA has found driver misbehavior to be the root cause of crashes. Seems like an enormous win for Tesla with respect to past crashes, and a safety endorsement for the system in the future via the expected near-elimination of driver mis-behavior. Insurance should follow suit by voiding coverage if the driver explicitly circumvented ay of NHTSA remedies. Alain

Want more Alain analysis (Alainalysis? J)? Here it comes!

NHTSA has a full page ad in the Sunday NY Times appealing to drivers to pay attention while driving. Actually, NHTSA should be out front and appeal to drivers to stop mis-behaving while driving. Stop completely disregarding not only the basic rules of the road like speed limits, not tailgating, not running redlights and not drinking and driving. What is being missed here is the cooperative agreement between NHTSA and Tesla that it is the mis-use of AutoPilot by drivers that is the safety challenge, and an agreement by Tesla to actively enforce compliance in the use of the feature. No company wants its product to be used in such a way so as to cause injury to its customer/the public. One would also like to respect the intelligence of one’s customer. Unfortunately, the way cars have been sold over the last 70 years, if not since day one, is the freedom to go from anywhere to anywhere at any time in any way. I am certain every reader of this newsletter can instantly conjure up any number of striking commercials showing speeding vehicles, vehicles being driven where they should not, and the teeny tiny print at the bottom of one’s TV screen admonishing “Do not attempt” etc. The central car design principle seems to have been, nothing should be put in the way of using the car however the owner wishes to use the car. If it were not that, then every car would have an engine interlock system that required the driver to be sober and attentive. Cars would have speed limiters that wouldn’t allow the car to be driven at speeds greater than the speed limit. We would have automated emergency braking systems that worked instead of collision warning systems. And lane keeping systems rather than lane departure warning systems. Again, I am sure you have other ideas for improving our collective safety as drivers and pedestrians.

What happened here is that NHTSA investigated for more than 2 years numerous crashes involving AutoPilot, must have concluded that the fault in those crashes was not that AutoPilot failed to work properly when the driver was paying attention, as is clearly articulated by the Tesla owner’s manual; else, NHTSA’s recall directive would have instructed Tesla to either fix those AutoPilot shortcomings or remove the AutoPilot functionality from all of its vehicles as a safety hazard. NHTSA did not do that because it found that driver mis-behavior was the root cause of the crashes and worked together with Tesla to enhance AutoPilot to more actively enforce the requirement that the driver remain attentive, and responsible, in its use of AutoPilot. Else, the feature must be turned off. This is a fantastic negotiated recall that allows Tesla to monitor the driver’s use of the system without worry about privacy issues (NHTSA made me do it) and the taking away functionality that was rightly purchased by a customer, for misuse, as defined and specified by the ultimate safety regulator (NHTSA made me do it). Thus, no class action suit about “give me back my money because you constrained my use …” This is great.

Plus, the icing on the cake being, Tesla trivially complied with a recall of essentially all of its cars by simply executing an over-the-air update. Something that would have had substantial financial implications for any other car manufacturer was executed at essentially zero cost by Tesla. Moreover, NHTSA and Tesla can jointly monitor the effectiveness of the recall to ensure the greatest effectiveness at making sure that drivers remain attentive while AutoPilot is being used. For example, if allowing 5 warnings before disabling AutoPilot for 30 days are not effective at inducing better driver behavior in the use of AutoPilot, then Tesla and NHTSA can do some A/B testing to determine better values than {5,30}.

On could/should also test the “hands on the steering wheel” requirement versus “foot near the brake”, especially given that newer Teslas have eye trackers that are a better indicator that a driver is paying attention and the assistance that AutoPilot tends to need for an observant driver to “hit the brakes” and slow down, rather than turn the wheel and swerve in order to avoid/mitigate a crash. I’m surprised that NHTSA hasn’t encouraged that drivers “keep foot near brake” in addition to, or really in preference to “keep hands on wheel”.

Thanks for sticking with me J Alain

Read More Hmmmm…. See especially 19:44 Autopilot / NHTSA resolution:

Wild Tesla Bot Update, Tax Credit Changes, Autopilot Resolution, Musk’s University

R. Mauer, Dec. 13, “ 0:00 TSLA 0:51 FOMC / interest rates 4:39 Tesla bot updates 8:56 Tax credit changes 12:54 Uber incentives 14:33 Hotel adds Tesla chargers 15:58 Giga Mexico approval 16:46 Cybertrucks at Giga Texas 17:24 Carwow Cybertruck review 19:44 Autopilot / NHTSA resolution 24:16 Musk's university.” Alain

Friday, Dec. 8, 2023

Who Will Operate Driverless Vehicle Services

M. Sena, Dec. 6, “ I cannot say for sure whether the timing of the behave-and-clean up your mess “Mom Reminder” and the UBER announcement were related, but I suspect they were. Together they set in motion a great deal of speculation in the ether about what it all meant for WAYMO, UBER, and EVERYTHING.

The answer is not 42.…” Read More Hmmmm…. Read on and watch ZoomCast 348. The Waymo deal with Uber is very troubling for many reasons. One, is it even legal with respect to issues of collusion, price fixing? (I’m obviously not a lawyer.) More troubling is that it reinforces the perception that Waymo is focused on giving rides to people who relish Waymo’s novelty as the attribute that makes it the winning mode in the user’s choice process. Compared to classical 5-star Uber service. It isn’t faster, cleaner, easier, friendlier, … It is just more novel.

For Waymo, that’s fine, because they’ll gain “HumanRevenue (minus their finder’s fee to Uber) while expending RoboOperatingCosts” since Uber, at some point, is going to have to start charging HumanRevenue (LivingWage plus Expenses and its finder’s fee) in order to remain a viable ride provider using its gig workforce.

It’s an OK deal for Uber and its gig workers because they only lose these customers as long as the novelty shines. Once that wears off, their service level is a decisive winner, thus Waymo basically gets the “one & done” and Uber gets the repeat customer. The only thing that could upset this apple cart would be if Waymo started to use its substantial RoboOperatingCost advantage (plus the profit margin built into Uber’s finder’s fee that Waymo could keep on its books). Competing on price, Waymo could easily keep the novelty customers well after the novelty completely wore off while remaining extremely profitable even if their profit margin isn’t quite as big as “HumanRevenue minus RoboCosts”. Such price competition certainly wouldn’t go well for Uber nor its gig workforce.

What seems really disappointing is that Waymo isn’t focused on the societal benefit of giving rides to people for whom a ride that actually took them from where they are to, where they want to go, when they want to go would substantially improve their lives because that quality ride is affordable and is simply not available with conventional public transport systems. This market is enormous. It is not only a substantial portion of half of today’s rides, roughly 500 million personTrips per day, but an unknown number of “latent rides” that aren’t going to be taken today by all the people that couldn’t find a ride and stayed home. Not only is their improved quality of life not realized, but also the stimulation to the economy by having them go to the places where they wanted to go but couldn’t because they couldn’t get a ride, let alone an affordable ride.

That’s the real market and societal opportunity, which seems to be completely irrelevant to Waymo and most media outlets. Now with Cruise on the ropes, the two entities that can technologically unleash this opportunity are becoming a pipe dream. We may now need to have to wait for Tesla to get their driverless system to work well enough and be willing to engage and support technically a partner that can profitably deliver safe, affordable, equitable, sustainable high-quality rides to people who need rides, plus, without compromise, those that today give themselves a ride should they so desire. It’s difficult to remain optimistic. Alain

Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023

Cruise is taking a bruising

M. Sena, Nov.26, “IT HAS BEEN a rough couple of months for CRUISE LLC after it reached a high point in August this year. That was when CRUISE, along with WAYMO LLC, received approval from the CALIFORNIA DIVISION OF MOTOR VEHICLES to operate round-the-clock paid ride-supplying services in the state with their driverless vehicles, that is, with no human primary or back-up driver in the vehicle. CRUISE’s license was for 300 vehicles. Then the wheels began to come off the cart, figuratively speaking. On Sunday evening, the 19th of November, CRUISE founder and CEO, Kyle Vogt, announced that he was throwing in the towel. Is this the beginning of the end for CRUISE? Or is this just the end of the beginning, as most of the Pollyannaish opinion pieces on the subject have opined?

Spoiler: It’s not the end for CRUISE, but it should be the end for GM’s skunkworks project with CRUISE, and the start of a more serious approach toward driverless vehicles by the automobile industry and investors. How it began to unravel.…” Read More Hmmmm…. Read on and watch ZoomCast 347 and let’s start picking up the pieces. Alain

Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt Resigns After Weeks Of Crisis

C. Farivar, Nov.20, “Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt resigned Sunday night less than a month after the struggling robotaxi company lost its license to operate in California and paused operations of its autonomous fleet across the country. The subsidiary of General Motors has been widely criticized for an aggressive expansion plan that did not adequately consider safety.…” Read More Hmmmm…. Such a shame! How is it that a totally misbehaving hit and run driver begins a chain reaction that so changes the lives of so many innocent by-standers by creating such a bizarre previously unimaginable situation, when everyone else is trying to do the right thing? We’d better learn as much as possible so that this situation is not repeated ever again.

Some takeaways:

1. No real system is perfectly safe, or even comes close to being perfectly safe. Elevators “kill” about 25 people per year in the US.

2. This industry has to stop selling itself as the cure to the human-driven automobile’s safety challenge as the justification for not only its existence, but more importantly, as viability that is required to achieve market dominant and worthy of investment.

1. GM without Cruise has a better chance of making substantive progress in addressing today’s safety challenge by not allowing the cars that it sells in its showrooms to even start if the driver is impaired by drugs or alcohol, or, if lucid, enabled to speed excessively, run red lights or stop signs, or text or otherwise get distracted with Apple CarPlay or other add-on distractions. GM (and their competitors) has had these capabilities for years. We know why they haven’t made changes to improve safety along these lines: they wouldn’t be able to sell those cars.

2. This reality tells us that in this democratic society where the customer, who is also the voter, is king, the positive attributes of the car’s conventional technology overwhelmingly outweigh its safety challenges to such an extent that it is still able to completely dominate today’s rides market, both the ‘give myself a ride’, as well as the ‘give someone else a ride’ markets. It achieved this market dominance even in competition with other mobility systems whose safety record is substantially better. Unfortunately for the also-rans is that their appeal in giving of rides nets out to be so poor in comparison, that whatever great advantage they might have in safety isn’t sufficient to make them anything more than a niche player in the ‘giving people rides’ marketplace. That’s what Joe Shumpeter might try to teach us as we observe the reality of today’s mobility marketplace.

3. Furthermore, Shumpeter might suggest that for a new technology to become successful disruptive, it needs to have a cost and/or quality advantage that is substantially better that of today’s technology. In the past, GM’s original technology did it well over the horse and buggy, the electric trolley, and the bus. It was their superior service qualities with comparable safety that enabled them to poach most of the customers of all of the competitors, existing or imagined, to achieve ultimate market dominance. It was a service disruption while remaining sufficiently safe and not a safety disruption while offering comparable service. Similarly today, Waymo, Cruise and maybe others in the driverless mobility space can deliver vastly superior service at comparable safety levels to many who today need a ride. If only they focused their deployment strategies on serving those customers who would most appreciate those superior services, they might have a chance at disrupting the rides market place and earning success.

3. Today, about 50% of people who need a ride get a ride from someone else, be it a parent, sibling, relative, friend or stranger.

4. For some of these rides, all is fine and current ride providers can’t be disrupted. A business professional traveling on an expense account where affordability is not an issue, Uber/Lyft/taxis really can’t be beaten. Coming home from going almost anyplace when affordability is a personal issue, the availability of an affordable driverless ride makes all the difference in deciding to go in the first place. That’s life-changing. That’s disruptive. Focus should be on deployments that learning and then serving the mobility needs these folks where these systems have a golden opportunity to actually earn their glory.

4. For the other 50% that have a car that they can and do drive themselves converting them to be substantial customers will be challenging except in situations that involve parking and affordability. Parking, other than at home, is rarely convenient and becoming less free. Providing somewhat convenient accessibility and having the certainty of a return-home service because of on-demand comparably safe 24/7 operation can become a disruptive concept that can convince many to leave their cars at home. It ca get really expensive to ensure oneself that a return home will be available which ends up justifying an individual to drive themselves in the first place. If one looks back to what really made turn-by-turn navigation so disruptive to using paper maps and even to those who stayed home was the fact that it could get you home from wherever it ended up taking you.

My point here is that safety is important, but being safer is NOT and should NOT be paramount for this system any more than it has not been paramount for NHTSA to make GM and other car makers install speed governors, breathalyzers, etc. Driverless systems can deliver so much value to those who need rides from someone else as well as even those that can and do dive themselves rides while being safe that they shouldn’t be unfairly burdened by unattainable safety hurdles.

The other enormous lesson that we all must learn, or re-learn, is that “the cover up ends up being worse than the crime”. Alain

Cruise Cofounder Dan Kan Resigns Following CEO’s Departure

C. Farivar, Nov.20, “On Monday morning, Cruise’s cofounder and chief product officer Dan Kan resigned from the company, less than 24 hours after his fellow cofounder and CEO Kyle Vogt announced his resignation. …” Read More Hmmmm…. Final thought on this: wonder what he and Kyle will do next! Alain

Friday, Nov. 18, 2023

UPCOMING LAUNCH: STARSHIP'S SECOND FLIGHT TEST

Staff, Nov. 17, “The second flight test of a fully integrated Starship is set to launch Saturday, November 18. A twenty-minute launch window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 35 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates. …” Read More Hmmmm…. Can't wait. Here with Elizabeth and 9 of my students. :-) See Pre-Launch ZoomCast below . Alain

Friday, Nov. 10, 2023

Under Fire Over Robotaxi Safety, GM Halts Production Of Cruise Driverless Van

C. Farivar, Nov. 6, “Reeling from a month in which the California DMV yanked Cruise’s permits for its self-driving robotaxis and the company paused all operations, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt held an all hands meeting Monday to explain how the company was planning to address concerns that its autonomous vehicles are not yet safe enough to operate. One of the very first announcements: pausing production of a fully autonomous van called the Origin, which Cruise parent company GM was planning to ramp up in the imminent future.

According to audio of the address obtained by Forbes, Vogt remarked on the company’s recent decision to halt driverless operations across its entire autonomous vehicle fleet, telling staff that “because a lot of this is in flux, we did make the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin.”? …” Read More Hmmmm…. Pausing is fine and likely a good decision; although, pauses necessarily incur additional cost; else, we would all pause all of the time. What is fundamentally troubling here is that one incident that could easily be characterized as a situation in which “the good actors”, while doing everything right, unfortunately tried to do even a little more good, which unpredictably set off a chaotic effect, well-known in the mathematics of non-linear dynamical systems as Chaos theory.

What just happened? What have we learned? The ironies abound.

San Francisco is turning into THE “Training Set” of both what to do and what not to do for those building AI models for “The Real Case for Driverless Mobility” and for those struggling to do good for society.

The biggest lesson that is staring us in the face is that it is really important for all in this business to be able to collaborate and share as much as possible and safety related information including safety scenarios and approaches to being able to safely address those scenarios. These companies should NOT be competing on safety, because safety is a necessary condition. Unsafeness of one reflects poorly on all. The first legislation that Congress should pass of this technology should focus on anti-trust immunity to this industry related to safety. Safet is everyone’s responsibility. We’ve benefited enormously by cooperating on safety in the airline industry. Alain

Friday, Nov. 3, 2023

THE NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2023 ISSUE IN BRIEF

M. Sena, Oct 28, “, Oct. 25, “Two-and-a-half months after I came home to Sweden from my May “Searching for America” trip, which took me through New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, I returned for a second tour of duty. This one was during the last two weeks in July, and it took me from Sweden to Boston, up to Canada, and back. I was carried in cars (mostly SUVs and pick-up trucks, all ICEs), buses, planes (including the kind that land on water), boats, all terrain vehicles, and my own two feet (mostly clad in wading boots) to my many destinations. The trains got me to and from Copenhagen, my point of departure from Europe. The main purpose of this trip was to go fishing with my good friend and fishing partner for the past forty-nine years, whom I had not seen in five years. We went to a river in Labrador where we had fished together between 1986 and 1996. We decided to give it one last try. I found that everyone I met on this trip is still making their choice of transport based on their own particular needs and desires, and not being influenced by either climate change activists or climate change deniers. They are asking themselves what is the best transport option that satisfies the combination of lowest cost, most convenience, greatest comfort, and fastest speed of arrival, and which fits with current conditions of time of year, weather, and time of day? I am fully aware that I didn’t need to travel to the U.S. and Canada to spend a few days fishing in the wilderness of Labrador. People do a lot of things they do not NEED to do. Do I feel better for having done it? Yes, for more reasons than I can list or explain, even to myself. I am happy to have spent the money for this trip in a way that gives people work, and to have had the experience of seeing in person my dearest friends. What else is life for? …” Read more Hmmmm…. Another wonderful issue, especially the lead article “The Business if Transport Systems. Enjoy reading and tune into my discussion with Michael in ZoomCast 342 Alain

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2023

Cruise’s San Francisco Suspension Expose People’sAbleism And Underscores Abled Privilege Enjoyed By Most

S. Aquino, Oct. 25, “ … As someone who has covered both Cruise and Waymo for this column on multiple occasions, and especially as someone who has low vision, I fully admit to feeling frustration over the myopic viewpoint dominating this issue. It should be obvious safety is an important aspect of developing, deploying, and ultimately riding in an autonomous vehicle. Of course people want to be as safe as possible. The problem is nobody accepts safety is but one side of the coin; there is another consideration to take into account that people are predictably—infuriatingly so—missing.

That consideration, as ever, is accessibility.

While members of the disability community have raised safety concerns, the strident opposition by many in City Hall (and, again, residents) to autonomous vehicles overlooks the very real, and very valid, accessibility benefits of using so-called “robotaxis.” The reality is, to claim the concerns are paramountly about safety helps obfuscate any general ignorance towards how disabled people get around. The protestors and naysayers yell and scream about how awful companies such as Cruise are because they can—they’re able to drive their cars or walk down the street or take the bus or otherwise get here and there about town with resistance. Their lifestyle, and more pointedly, their privilege, is such they believe there are other, friendlier, more feasible modes of transportation that ostensibly “everyone” can access in equal favor…” Read more Hmmmm…. Thank you Forbes for publishing this perspective. Recall it was a human driver who hit the pedestrian and then drove away. Human drivers kill an average of more than 100 people every day in the USA. [see below for another recent tragedy] Alain

Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023

SPIA Reacts: Crisis in the Middle East

Staff, Oct. 7, “…” Read more Hmmmm…. Another most informative panel. If you haven’t, also watch: The Outbreak of War In Israel- A Geopolitical Update, was given earlier this week by former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt & Israel, Daniel C. Kurtzer.

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023

Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are significantly safer than human-driven ones, says new research led by Swiss Re

Company News, Sept 6, “Waymo and Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurers, partnered in 2022 to advance risk assessment methodologies and approaches to evaluating safety of autonomous vehicles.

Today, we’re sharing new research led by Swiss Re which shows Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are significantly safer than those driven by humans. In the over 3.8 million miles that Waymo drove without a human behind the steering wheel across San Francisco, CA and Phoenix, AZ, there were zero bodily injury claims and a significant reduction in the property damage claims frequency.

While the research community and general public have long asked whether an autonomous driver is safer than human drivers, the industry has faced challenges in developing a robust and well-calibrated human performance benchmark for comparison. This study addresses these challenges by establishing a comparison baseline based on liability insurance claims data.

The study compares Waymo’s liability claims data with mileage- and zip-code-calibrated private passenger vehicle (human driver) baselines established by Swiss Re. Based on Swiss Re’s data from over 600,000 claims and over 125 billion miles of exposure, these baselines are extremely robust and highly significant.

The findings indicate that in comparison to the Swiss Re human driver baseline, the Waymo Driver — Waymo’s fully autonomous driving technology — significantly reduced the frequency of property damage claims by 76% (a decrease from 3.26 to 0.78 claims per million miles) when compared to human drivers. Furthermore, it completely eliminated bodily injury claims, a drastic contrast to the Swiss Re human driver baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles….” Read more Hmmmm… Compelling findings from folks whose livelihood is focused on assessing safety. As the San Francisco deployment has demonstrated, Waymo passes the proof-of-concept “Turing Test” for safety. However, they have yet to demonstrate that they can pass a proof-of -market test. Alain

Wednesday, August 31, 2023

Tesla FSD v12: Breakthrough We've Been Waiting For?

Rob Mauer, Aug. 28, “➤ Elon Musk livestreams Tesla’s FSD Beta v12 ➤ Tesla compute capacity updates ➤ Hardware 4 information ➤ Highland / Cybertruck updates ➤ Tesla lithium refinery progress ➤ Megapack price reduction ➤ Piper Sandler issues note on TSLA ➤ Calendar." Read more Hmmmm… Very perceptive perspective on FSDv12. Is FSDv12 close to passing Kornhauser’s “Turing Proof-of-concept” for driverless mobility? Alain

Elon Musk Livestream of his FSD v12 drive

Brighter w/Herbert, Aug. 25, “"Elon Musk just livestreamed his Full Self Driving of V12 around Palo Alto Ashok Elluswamy Director of AI was with him”. Read more Hmmmm… Interesting commentary on Elon’s LiveStream of FSDv12.. Alain

GM-backed Cruise is “just days away” from regulatory approval to begin mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, the company’s CEO, Kyle Vogt, said at an investor conference Thursday.

Cruise first unveiled the Origin robotaxi in early 2020 as a bus-like vehicle built for the sole purpose of shuttling people around in a city autonomously. But since then, the company has been mired in a lengthy regulatory process before it can begin mass production.

The vehicle’s lack of traditional human controls means that Cruise needs an exemption from the federal government’s motor vehicle safety standards, which require vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals. The Origin has neither.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) only grants 2,500 such exemptions a year. There is legislation to increase that number to 25,000, but it is currently stalled in the Senate.

Monday, August 21, 2023

GM Cruise and Lidar Robotaxi’s Business Model Is Go Through $100 Billion in Losses to Try to Reach Profitable Scale

B. Wang, Aug. 15, “GM’s Cruise robotaxi service has expanded from 70 to 300 robotaxis operating in San Francisco and will soon expand to Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin and Dubai. GM Cruise had increasing losses of $561 million in the first quarter of 2023. This will be over $2 billion in losses in 2023. GM Cruise will having increasing billions in net losses until they reach profitable scale. IF GM Cruise grows revenue by 1000 to 2000 times (100,000% to 200,000%) by 2030 and achieves operational and financial efficiency then it would become very profitable. Robotaxi’s must continue to undercut Uber, taxi and public transit pricing to get the market share. This will take perhaps $100 billion or much more cumulative losses to finally reach profitability.

Waymo financials is in Google Other Bets and were a lot of the Other Bet losses of $4.8 billion in 2020 and $5.2 billion in 2021 and $6B in 2022. Morgan Stanley analysts valued Waymo at $175 billion in 2018, $105 billion in Sept 2019 and the Waymo valuation estimate in 2023 is $30 billion….” Read more Hmmmm… All the more reason that focusing on serving the folks whom Uber/Lyft serve amounts to chasing the wrong customers. Those customers are simply too diffuse spatially and too needy to justify their high price. Being marginally cheaper (~20% discount) isn’t sufficiently disruptive to expand this customer base and is inconsequential to the bulk of valued ride-hailing customers - those taking longer trips who tip well. Even if Cruise & Waymo got’em all, the financials aren’t pretty. Too few, too needy to end up contributing anywhere near enough to have any hope for profit, even after bankruptcy, let alone an RoI on the initial investment.

Proof-of-market only makes sense when the fundamental advantages of driverless’ on-demand, spatial land temporal flexibility can be leveraged to offer really good mobility at a very low price within sufficiently concentrated areas to people who need a ride within that concentrated area and are willing to put a little shoe leather into the game.

Such market disruptions happen every day in even not-so-tall buildings. Just think: if getting around in tall buildings required a “ride-hailing” service model, we would have no tall buildings. You’d need an app, an elevator operator, a rating system, layers of public oversight, … but, you could go directly from the front door to your room… maybe??? No reason why the elevator service (easily accessible pick up and drop off, on-demand 24/7, casual rid-sharing attendant/driver-free service) model can’t be enormously disruptive in attracting the loyalty of the vast number of people who need a ride and, also, to the many who find themselves forced into giving themselves a ride and even some who can readily give themselves a ride.

In case I haven’t been clear, the ride-haling service model is not a sufficiently disruptive business model to afford the investment that driverless requires. Had it been easy to do driverless and the Elaine Herzberg crash had not occurred, then maybe Uber/Lyft would be financial darlings. Unfortunately, driverless has proven to be really tough and Uber/Lyft are but taxis with a really nice app, but are forever burdened with providing a living wage to an individual who services but one rider at a time, not only for that ride, but also the time waiting around for that rider and the time getting to that rider. The driver has very little opportunity to be more productive, since, apparently, ride-sharing destroys ride-hailing’s service concept to an extent that is greater than can be restored by a cheaper price to the valued ride-hailing customers. Thus, no ride sharing, Moreover, the non-constant demand throughout the day induces a substantial amount dead time further challenging driver productivity. Thus, as with taxis and limos, Under/Lyft ride hailing can’t be less substantially less expensive than taxis/limos and given the expected returns and life-styles of the Silicon Valley inventors of ride-hailing it is not the right disruptive business model for driverless. The elevator business model of making it easy for anyone to get a ride any time from and to many places, with or without others, no app required and is such a good way to go that those benefiting from that equitable accessibility might be willing to pitch in an make it even free because in the end it is so inexpensive to deliver. Now that’s disruptive!

If you want to learn more about the wrong business model for driverless, see Brian being interviewed in Tesla Expert: Why Cruise and Waymo Will Go Bankrup t Alain

Monday, August 07, 2023

Tampa adds fleet of Tesla SUVs for new mobility option around city

Andrew Harlan, July 31, “The Tampa Downtown Partnership announced the launch of DASH, a new service featuring Tesla SUVs that will carry folks to 20 different spots around Tampa. The trip will cost just a few dollars, and an official route map will be revealed later in August.

DASH is described as an innovative new option to travel around fast-growing Downtown Tampa. This service will zip passengers through the city with low-cost shared rides between more than 20 different hubs located across Downtown….” Read more Hmmmm… Fantastic!! Tampa becomes the first MOVES-style mobility system in the world to ”…zip passengers through the city with low-cost shared rides between more than 20 different hubs located across Downtown…” providing “Safe, Affordable, Equitable, Sustainable, High-quality” rides. Hopefully, Trenton can become the 2^nd where We’ve caledl the Hubs “Kiosks” (or “Hubs” or ??) with a vision to evolve to driverless operation so that the cost to operate the service becomes truly Affordable. 😊 Alain

Monday, July 24, 2023

Exclusive: Disability advocates push for robotaxi expansion

M. Dickey, July 21, "San Francisco's LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired is among a group of community organizations urging state regulators to approve Waymo's permit that would enable the self-driving car company to receive payments for its around-the-clock service in San Francisco.

Why it matters: Community organizations that advocate on behalf of people with disabilities argue autonomous vehicles are safer and provide more accessibility and independence than traditional ride-hailing services, and hope the permit will encourage expanded services.

What's happening: In an open letter posted Friday, more than a dozen community advocacy groups urged the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to "approve Waymo's permit at the earliest possible opportunity," arguing driverless cars "can ensure this next generation of transportation is more inclusive than ever."

In addition to LightHouse, other groups include the San Francisco LGBT Center, Self-Help for the Elderly and the Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California. Read more Hmmmm… Excellent! Thrilled to see that communities are advocating for MORE Waymo/driverless services, and that their requests are getting at least some media attention. We are hoping that many more groups follow suit. Wouldn’t it be great if companies like Waymo focused on the needs of similar community groups AND did a better job publicizing their progress in terms of delivering safe, affordable demand-responsive/high-quality rides? All too often the stories intended to catch the public eye are written by those who don’t actually need a ride and who don’t seem to care about the potential of driverless services to disrupt the giving rides market for the betterment of society [see below]. The fact that “more than a dozen” advocacy groups are joining to lobby for Waymo’s permitting is proof that they (and Cruise) meet the Caudill Corollary: “Proof-of-Community Value & Sustainability”. Alain

Friday, July 14, 2023

Editorial: Cruise and Waymo have passed the “Turing (Kornhauser) Test” for Proof-of-Technology

A. Kornhauser, July 14,”Happy Bastille Day! ” What a day for me to write my first editorial. Fane 24 begins its Bastille Day: A brief history of France’s July 14 national holiday… “Bastille Day” is known in France simply as “le Quatorze Juillet”, a reference to the date on which it is held. July 14 became an official national holiday in 1880 to commemorate key turning points in French history. … Today, July 14, 2023, commemorates for me the turning point in autonomousTaxi (aka aTaxi, roboTaxi) history to commemorate aTaxi’s passage of the “Turing (Kornhauser) proof-of-technology” test, as written in Wikipedia… “The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950,[2] is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. …” …

Kornhauser’s "Proof-of-Technology” version of the Turing Test, as it might appear in Wikipedia, would be “… a machine's ability to give a ride equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Kornhauser proposed that a human evaluator would judge rides given in an Operational Design Domain between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like rides given in that Operational Design Domain. …”

After spending three days in San Francisco listening to and engaging in discussions describing the testing of driverless cars by Cruise and Waymo, and getting rides given by humans and by machines designed to give human-like rides, I've come to the conclusion that, if I kept my eyes closed, I could not tell if a human or a machine was giving me the ride. Rides were indistinguishable. Furthermore, since their simulations and data-supported real-world testing experience have more than satisfied the safety equivalence condition by exceeding it, I can declare that both Cruise and Waymo have passed the “Turing (Kornhauser) Proof-of-Technology Test”

That is an enormous accomplishment. I for one/many/most/essentiallyAll New Jerseyians can’t wait for Cruise and/or Waymo to assemble sufficient machines, adjust them to address some of the quirks of a Trenton/Mercer County ODD, a Perth Amboy/Middlesex County ODD, a Patterson/Pasaic County ODD, a Newark/Essex County ODD… and offer human-like rides to us. I’m certain Cruise and/or Waymo will find us grateful, thankful, appreciative of the improved quality-of-life that they’ll be able to profitably deliver to so many of us in New Jersey. By coming to New Jersey, they'll go beyond the “Turing (Kornhauser) Proof-of-Technology" test to pass the “Kornhauser Proof-of-Market" Test. Alain

Monday, June 26 2023

Should your car prevent accidents, period?

F. Fishkin, July 4, “Would you want to own a car that would simply stop most accidents from happening? What about having that kind of car for your children? At Princeton University, the faculty chair of autonomous vehicle engineering, Alain Kornhauser, my co-host on the Smart Driving Cars podcast…says many vehicles today are equipped with enough technology or could be equipped with enough technology, to simply not permit excessive speeding, tailgating and other forms of reckless driving and could prevent the vast majority of collisions…along with the associated deaths, injuries and costs. The question to ponder is….is that something we want as a society? The technology is ready and waiting. The many who have suffered injuries or lost loved ones…would likely say yes. What about you? What about regulators and carmakers? …” Read more Hmmmm… Of course. Fred and I have for years said there are 3 groupings of SmartDrivingCars:

* SafeDrivingCars… exactly what Fred is talking about. Their value proposition is they keep the driver from misbehaving if that misbehavior is likely to lead to a crash of any kind.

* SelfDrivingCars… that perform the driving functionality when the driver remains engaged in overseeing the automated driving and remains completely capable of reengaging in the driving process within very short notice. Their value proposition is the delivery of comfort and convenience to the driver.

* DriverlessCars… that performs all of the driving functionality. No assistance is required or desired to be done by any of the vehicle occupants. These operate as well with or without any person in them. Everyone inside is a passenger. Their value proposition is purely an economic one in which no human labor expense is incurred in the provision of mobility. This economic benefit can be profound in not only substantially reducing the cost of mobility but also enabling levels of service and vehicle utilization that are substantially better than can otherwise be achieved. Alain

Wednesday, June 21 2023

A Driverless Contest for Mid-Size Cities

K. Pyle, June 14, “A benefit of travel is the random conversations with strangers that cause one to look at the world in a slightly different way. For instance, standing in the airport security line this week, a lady from Little Rock, AR explained that Uber and Lyft no longer serve the hometown of the Bill Clinton Presidential Library.

[Fact check, according to its website, Lyft and Uber, as well as other local providers serve the Clinton National Airport.]

She said their apps indicated that their respective services were not available. She believes this happened as a result of the pandemic.

[Fact check; Perhaps there still is a dearth of drivers as reported in 2021.]

She described the taxi service in the Little Rock area as “awful”. It takes an hour and a half to get one. She also doesn’t feel safe in a taxi especially compared to Uber/Lyft…

If her perception of the limited mobility choices is representative of the population, perhaps Little Rock would be a great use case for a driverless service. I forwarded this question to Princeton Professor Kornhauser and Michele Lee of Cruise for them to ponder and look forward to any feedback they might have (Kornhauser comments about this in the latest SmartDrivingCars podcast).

As background, the three of us serendipitously converged at CES2023 and talked about mobility challenges. In a soundbite from that interview, Lee explains the challenges and opportunities for improving mobility and questions whether she could make the journey to Alain’s house. There are glimpses of her entering and securing her wheelchair in the Cruise, driverless Origin vehicle….“ Read more Hmmmm… Check out ZoomCast322 below. Be sure to also look at Ken’s embedded video with Michelle. Alain

Friday, June 2, 2023

NHTSA Proposes Automatic Emergency Braking Requirements for New Vehicles

Press release, May 31, “The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would require automatic emergency braking and pedestrian AEB systems on passenger cars and light trucks. The proposed rule is expected to dramatically reduce crashes associated with pedestrians and rear-end crashes.

NHTSA projects that this proposed rule, if finalized, would save at least 360 lives a year and reduce injuries by at least 24,000 annually. In addition, these AEB systems would result in significant reductions in property damage caused by rear-end crashes. Many crashes would be avoided altogether, while others would be less destructive.

“Today, we take an important step forward to save lives and make our roadways safer for all Americans,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. “Just as lifesaving innovations from previous generations like seat belts and air bags have helped improve safety, requiring automatic emergency braking on cars and trucks would keep all of us safer on our roads.” …” Read more Hmmmm… This is substantial and you must read Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which contains the details, especially page 14 (interesting that it states:”… all speeds above 10 km/h (6.2 mph), even if these speeds are above the speeds tested by NHTSA…”. Does this mean that If I’m doing x over the speed limit, say 100mph, the system must remain functionable and very rarely suffer from false positives. Fantastic!

Also pay attention to the phase “imminent collision” that is supposed to trigger into action such a system. One must be very precise in the definition of “imminent” (is it really “1.6 seconds to collision” or ???). I might suggest that nothing is imminent. There is a physical process that evolves over time from a state in which everything in “hunk-dory” to a time when one is between the “rock & hard place”. Maybe the Advance Driver Assistance System (ADAS, intelligent cruise control, et al) should be communicating with the AEB so as to avoid, as much as possible, ever getting to that magical “imminent” point. The more that can be done to prepare and begin to do things as one passes through 2.0, 1.9, 1.8, 1.7, 1,65, 1.625, … so as to raise back up the time to collision to 1.65, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9. 2.0, .. infinity, the better!

If this is done well, the driver may not even be aware that it is happening. Then: No complaints! No taking the car back to the dealer and claiming it is a lemon! No or greatly reduced “false imminent train wrecks” (especially when traveling at high speeds!!!). Doing this well delivers enormous value to the driver and society!

Here is what Neal Boudette of the NY Times and Andrew Hawkins of Verge wrote about this. Alain

Thursday, May 4, 2023

S&P Dow Jones Indices to Calculate The Road to Autonomy Index Tracking Autonomous Vehicles and Logistics

The Road to Autonomy, April 25. “The Road to Autonomy®, a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles and logistics, has selected S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) to be the custom calculation agent for The Road to Autonomy Index (ticker: AUTONOMY) and The Road to Autonomy Total Return Index (ticker: AUTOMYTR). The Road to Autonomy Index, comprised of 38 publicly-traded companies, measures the performance of the autonomous vehicle and logistics ecosystems, including autonomous vehicles, trucks and off-road specialty vehicles, as well as transportation, technology, industrial and services companies that have identified autonomy as a key component of their growth strategies.

"The Road to Autonomy Index provides a comprehensive view into this dynamic sector that is poised to shape the future of how we live and work," said Grayson Brulte, founder and chief executive officer of The Road to Autonomy. "Our unmatched knowledge of the industry and the influences that drive it give us unique perspective into its potential, and our partnership with S&P DJI provides a foundation of integrity and transparency for the Index."… “ Read more Hmmmm… Very interesting. See ZoomCast 316/PodCast 316 below Alain

Thursday, April 20, 2023

As Appears in the NY Times (& CNN)

April 20, 2023, "..." Read more Hmmmm….. Check out the guy in the Orange shorts. My 2nd live launch. My 1st was July 16, 1969, Cape Kennedy, Apollo 11. 😎

Thursday, April 6, 2023

While On-Road Driverless Slows, Ag-Tech Autonomy Players Are Plowing Ahead

R. Bishop, March 30, “The John Deere Company wowed the crowds at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in January with their high-tech agricultural equipment. At their exhibit, heads craned upward in awe to take in the 120 ft boom of their precision spraying technology, straddled atop a massive tractor. At the CES 2022, Deere & Company introduced a fully autonomous tractor.

In the months since CES, we’ve seen multi-faceted challenges for companies seeking to transform road-running Automated Driving Systems (ADS) into a profitable business. ADS developer Embark announced a shutdown and Locomation appears to be on the same path. The mood of investors is uncertain, especially given troubles in the banking sector.

Against this backdrop, the off-road world is becoming increasingly interesting for companies developing autonomy. Caterpillar and Komatsu brought the first commercial ADS’s to mining operations well over a decade ago. At that time, although the tech was very expensive, a business case could be made for equipping the huge mine-hauling trucks at open pit mines.

Since that time, thanks to the tidal wave of AV development for passenger cars, trucks, robo-shuttles, delivery robots, and more, the tech cost has now come down to reasonable levels for other types of industrial operations. Plus, the tech robustness has progressed by leaps and bounds. The result? Use cases are expanding rapidly in areas such as agriculture and construction. For this article, I’ll dig into the Ag space to examine the linkages with on-road autonomy….” Read more Hmmmm….. Right on, Dick! Such a timely and excellent post.

As I wrote last week in SmartDrivingCar.com/11.13-AutomotiveAI-033123 and is repeated below… “ The objective of the 6^th SmartDrivingCars Summit will be to put the eventual manufacturers of driverless passenger vehicles together with the eventual operators of transportation services to decide if there is a business to be made from delivering affordable mobility to a large segment our societies who are underserved by the current options: private cars and public transport.

It’s already happening with military and work vehicles”... ! Alain

Monday, March 13, 2023

SpaceX Continues Rapid Development of Starship Infrastructure - Starbase Weekly Update #53

LabPadre, March 12, “This week at Starbase Raptor installation begins on Booster 9, construction continues on Ships 28 and 30, Ship 26 is parked at the ring yard and the nosecone test article is set to Massey's test site, while at Cape Canaveral SpaceX maintains a blinding pace of launch and recovery operations, ULA's first Vulcan rocket begins testing, and we review a new batch of flyover photos courtesy of Greg Scott….” Read more Hmmmm….. Watch video. Excellent weekly update. Alain

Starbase Live: 24/7 Starship & Super Heavy Development From SpaceX's Boca Chica Facility

MasaSpaceflight, Live, “Starship is SpaceX's fully reusable launch system which is being developed at Starbase in Cameron County, Texas. Starbase LIVE provides 24/7 coverage of the exciting developments and testing progress….” Read more Hmmmm….. Watch LiveStream 24/7. Alain

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

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

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

Friday, January 13, 2023

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

Saturday, December 17, 2022

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

Saturday, November 19, 2022

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. …

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

Sunday, November 6, 2022

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

Sunday, October 30, 2022

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

Argo AI shuts down as Ford, VW pull backing from autonomous-vehicle startup that raised more than $3 billion

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

Andrew 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

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.

Friday, February 4, 2022

Trenton MOVES

W. Skaggs, Feb. 3,"We are excited to invite you to join Mayor Gusciora, N.J. Department of Transportation (NJDOT) Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, and Trenton Public Schools Superintendent James Earle to celebrate a $5 million award from the NJDOT Local Transportation Projects Fund for an unprecedented public transportation project right here in the Capital City. The project is called the Trenton Mobility & Opportunity: Vehicular Equity System (MOVES) initiative.

Originally announced by Governor Murphy and Commissioner Gutierrez-Scaccetti in December, TrentonMOVES seeks to provide a safe, equitable, and affordable high-quality on-demand mobility service to Trenton residents. The effort is a collaboration between the Governor’s Office, NJDOT, the City of Trenton, and Princeton University.

The $5 million award is a huge milestone for the project. This will be the first large-scale urban transit system in America to be based entirely on self-driving shuttles. Each vehicle will carry four to eight passengers at a time. The AVs will be low-cost to users in underserved neighborhoods. The high school will be one of the central destinations on the first routes.

The event will take place at 11:00 a.m. 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, *69, *71, P03, P27

Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering
Director of Undergraduate Studies, ORFE
Director, Transportation Program
Faculty Chair, Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering

229 - Sherrerd Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
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609-980-1427 (c)

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Alain L. Kornhauser, *69, *71, P03, P27

Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering
Director of Undergraduate Studies, ORFE
Director, Transportation Program
Faculty Chair, Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering

229 - Sherrerd Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
[log in to unmask]
609-980-1427 (c)

[log in to unmask]" alt="Princeton Shield">