[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A book cover of a book
Description automatically generated" title="" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_6">Just
Published!!! Go
to Amazon.com… You can still be first on your block to have one
J.
https://www.amazon.com/Real-Case-Driverless-Mobility-Vehicles/dp/0443236852/ref=sr_1_1
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 361 /
PodCast 361 Waymo in Buffalo, NVIDIA GTC, Apple, Cruise, Tesla & more
F. Fishkin, March 9, Waymo brings driverless vehicle to the University of Buffalo, NVIDIA GTC coming soon, Apple's Doomed Car Project, GM Cruise, Tesla and more. Episode 361 of Smart
Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin.
0:00 open
0:23 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility and upcoming Smart Driving Cars Summit
1:30 Waymo self driving vehicle pays visit to the University of Buffalo
15:15 NVIDIA GTC coming up soon
17:30 NY Times report-Behind Apple’s Doomed Car Project
31:30 Motley Fool headline…Things Have Gone From Bad to Worse for GM’s Cruise and Tesla may benefit
32:33 Jalopnik column… We’ve Wasted Nearly 50 Billioin Dollars on Self Driving Cars
36:36 Self Driving vehicle bill nears final passage in Kentucky
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="6th Princeton SmartDrivingCars Summit May 29 -> 31, 2024, Princeton NJ" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_5"> 6th
SmartDrivingCars Summit
Alain Kornhauser, March 8, “We promise civil and lively discussions as to how to improve the Quality-of-Life (QoL) for many while disrupting the QoL to as few
as possible. Focus will be on…
Giving Oneself a Ride
- Latest on ADAS Safety, Functionality, Regulation and potential Collaboration (given anti-trust relaxation)
Getting a Driverless Ride
- By people and goods using public roads
- “Proof-of-Concept” (Safety Update and Last “50 feet” delivery concepts )
- “Proof-of-Market” (Arizona, California, Texas, ... rural & beyond)
- “Proof-of-Politics” (Regulation + Opportunities for Collaboration (given anti-trust relaxation.))
- By people and goods on private property.
- “Proof-of-Concept” (Safety Update)
- “Proof-of-Market” ( Return-on-Investment (RoI) focus on: Private “ways”, Manufacturing, Ports, Terminals, Warehouses, Mining,
Farms)
- “Proof-of-Politics” (OSHA, Unions )
Workshop
- MOVES – Style Deployments “anywhere”. (See Example)
- Design, Analysis, Simulation, Animation & Business Case
….”
Read More Hmmmm…
Please pencil in the dates. We are putting together the sponsorship and registration pages. Given the success that we’ve had with the past Summits and the quality of the program that we’ve been able to assemble to date, we fully expect to be sold out. Some
sponsorship opportunities remain available. If interested, please simply contact me
via email for now while we allow those that have “penciled-in commitments” complete their opportunity to fully commit. Hope you’ll be able to join in with us. Alain
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_4">
AI’s Hottest Ticket: NVIDIA GTC Brings Together Automotive Leaders and Visionaries Transforming the
Future of Transportation
M. Labrie, Feb. 16, “Generative AI and software-defined computing are transforming the automotive landscape — making the journey behind the wheel safer, smarter
and more enjoyable.
Dozens of automakers and NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem partners will
be demonstrating their developments in mobility, along with showcasing their next-gen vehicles at GTC, the conference for the era of AI, running from March 18-21 in San Jose, Calif., and online. These include the Mercedes-Benz Concept CLA Class, the new Volvo
EX90, Polestar 3, WeRide Robobus, Nuro R3 autonomous delivery vehicle and more.
Explore myriad sessions to learn about the latest developments in mobility — from highly automated and autonomous driving, generative
AI and large language models to simulation, safety, design and manufacturing.
Featured sessions include: ….”
Read More
Hmmmm… Can’t wait. Go experience & learn. Alain
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_3">Behind
Apple’s Doomed Car Project: False Starts and Wrong Turns
B. Chen, Feb. 28, “For the last decade, many Apple employees working on the company’s secretive car project, internally code-named Titan, had a less flattering
name for it: the Titanic disaster. They knew the project was likely to fail.
Throughout its existence, the car effort was scrapped and rebooted several
times, shedding hundreds of workers along the way. As a result of dueling views among leaders about what an Apple car should be, it began as an electric vehicle that would compete against Tesla and morphed into a self-driving car to rival Google’s Waymo.
By the time of its death — Tuesday, when executives announced internally that the project was being killed and that many members of the team were being reassigned
to work on artificial intelligence — Apple had burned more than $10 billion on the project and the car had reverted to its beginnings as an electric vehicle with driving-assistance features rivaling Tesla’s, according to a half dozen people who worked on the
project over the past decade.
The car project’s demise was a testament to the way Apple has struggled to develop new products in the years since Steve Jobs’s death in 2011. The effort had
four different leaders and conducted multiple rounds of layoffs. But it festered and ultimately fizzled in large part because developing the software and algorithms for a car with autonomous driving features proved too difficult….”
Read More
Hmmmm… I don’t agree. I have no inside information but this analysis seems way too simplistic. Yes, the software
is turning out to be very much more difficult than many of us expected; however, building the vehicle that runs the software is no easy task. Waymo tried and threw in the towel. Apple tried to make a deal with Elon, but Elon rightfully knew that making the
car may actually be way harder than making the software. The only thing that makes the car practical is that, as Elon has proven, one can start with a roadster for the ultra-rich, an S for the rich, a 3 and Y for the upper class and maybe work one’s way down
to the “Model T” for the masses. With the Driverless software revolution, one doesn’t seem to have a similar evolution opportunity unless one starts with the car…. Even then we have one that threw in the towel (Ford), one that is on the ropes (GM), no hope
coming from Germany or Japan, and China is an absolute non-starter strategically. Only Tesla is left, and that engagement collapsed years ago.
Given how hard the software is, no potential car partner, no appetite to start a car company, Apple has been DoA
for some time now. Absolutely no surprises here. Alain
[log in to unmask]">
Rivian pauses plan to build $5B Georgia factory
Z. Hansen, March 7, “Rivian, the electric vehicle upstart that announced more than two years ago plans to build a $5 billion vehicle and battery plant with
7,500 promised jobs east of Atlanta, is halting the mammoth project.
The California company, which promised in late 2021 to build what was then considered Georgia’s largest-ever economic development project, said Thursday at an
event introducing new models that it will now start production of its anticipated R2 crossover at its sole factory
in Illinois instead of in the Peach State..” Read
More Hmmmm…
Can’t be good news. Alain
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A blue and red logo
Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_10"> Bill
allowing self-driving cars and trucks in Kentucky is nearing final passage
M. Vanderhoff, March 7, “Supporters say autonomous vehicles will bring new freedom to the disabled and those who can't drive while helping companies that struggle
to find truck drivers.
But critics fear a tide of job losses and question how safe they are.
Despite the debate, self-driving cars and trucks appear to be headed for Kentucky's roads.
House Bill 7, which would allow and regulate autonomous vehicles, passed out of a Senate committee on Thursday, paving the way for a final vote on the Senate
floor. ….” Read
More Hmmmm…
OK. Nice to see progressive views in Kentucky. Alain
Return of
C’mon Man Section
(in case you are wondering, yes, I did stumble upon the following Click-bait Journalism)
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A green and white logo
Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_9">
We've Wasted Nearly $50 Billion On Self Driving Cars. Here's Where That Money Should Have Gone
S. DaSila, March 7, “The race for fully autonomous passenger cars is a
dumb one. Businesses are playing with technology that offers massive downsides for little
gain, and just end up clogging up streets with their often-confused
computerized vehicles. But there’s more to the story than mere Sisyphean endeavors of trying to teach human behavior to computers: These companies have also wasted tons of money on the whole thing. ….”
Read More
Hmmmm… It would be tough to write a more ridiculous initial sentence.
Our existing systems don’t have any ‘low hanging fruit” that $50B could pick. Things aren’t that simple. If we
had really good improvements to the systems that we have, we would have made them years ago. What remains with existing mobility systems are only tough things that even $50B could substantially improve the world with a positive RoI . We are going to spend
between $15B and $20B for just two new rail tunnels. There is nothing on the horizon that has the opportunity to provide more affordable and flexible mobility that driverless cars. Nothing close! If there was, we’d be doing it.
C’mon Man! Alain
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" alt="A purple exclamation mark and a black background
Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_11">
Things Just Went From Bad to Worse for General Motors and Self-Driving Start-Up Cruise. Here's Why I Think Tesla Is the Big Winner
A. Spatacco, March 7, “The automobile market is going through something of a renaissance right now. Car manufacturers worldwide are
investing significant sums into battery-powered vehicles -- perhaps the bedrock of the green energy movement.….”
Read More
Hmmmm… Total click bait. So bad!
C’mon Man! Alain
*****
[log in to unmask]" alt="A black and orange shield
with white text
Description automatically generated">
6th SmartDrivingCar
Summit
https://summit.princeton.edu/
May 29 (evening) ->
May 31, 2024
Princeton, NJ
Save The Date!!
Preliminary Program
We promise civil and lively discussions as to how to improve the quality-of-life (QoL) for many while disrupting that quality to as
few as possible.
Giving oneself a Ride:
Latest on ADAS Safety & Functionality
Getting a Ride:
Latest on Driverless
“Proof-of-Concept” (Safety Update),
Proof-of-Market” (Arizona, California & beyond) &
“Proof-of-Politics”
Workshop:
MOVES – Style Deployments “anywhere”
Design, Analysis, Simulation, Animation & Business Case
********************
Previous SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast/PodCasts
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 360 /
PodCast 360 w/
the co-authors of The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
F. Fishkin, Feb. 29,
“
What were the motivations for The Real Case for Driverless Mobility? On episode 360 of Smart Driving Cars, co-author Michael Sena joins the other co-author,
Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus ...from The Dispatcher...car dealers send another letter to the White House on the EV issue...and more. Tune in and subscribe!
0:00 open
0:38 reasons for new book-The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
9:29 Car dealers have sent another letter to the White House
15:48 Letter from Michael Wells about The Economist and Chinese EVs
30:38 The Musings section of The Dispatcher- What else can we put in our tanks?
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 359 /
PodCast 359 NVIDIA soars, robotaxi woes, a step climbing delivery robot & more
F. Fishkin, Feb. 24,
“NVIDIA logs a one day market cap jump of 272 billion dollars, robotaxi woes continue for Waymo while Cruise may resume in Texas. Plus the little delivery robot from Princeton spin-off Vault Robotics and a lunar landing. Join
Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 359 of Smart Driving Cars.
0:00 open
0:38 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility available now and Ken Pyle’s interview
with Alain about the book
3:00 NVIDIA adds 272 billion dollars in market value… in a day!
5:16 Waymo, California headlines.. robotaxi wrangling
8:55 Stellantis CEO saying Waymo partnership for self driving delivery vans
is still alive
14:35 Princeton spinoff Vault Robotics featured in WSJ…designing delivery
robots that can negotiate curbs and steps
18:15 Automotive News reports GM’s Cruise nearing resumption of robotaxi
testing….looking at Texas
27:58 Self driving cabs on rails in Germany..
31:35 META chief AI researcher Yan LeCun reportedly critical of OpenAI’s
SORA
36:00 NASA/Intuitive Machines land on the moon
46:30 More on The Real Case for Driverless Mobility and the upcoming Smart
Driving Cars Summit in Princeton
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 358 /
PodCast 358 GM looks to unlock Cruise Value- One Week since Waymo burning in SF
F. Fishkin, Feb. 16,
“The CEO of GM looks to unlock the value of the Cruise self driving unit. No arrests yet a week after the burning of a Waymo vehicle in San Francisco. Plus Tesla, EV sales, The Real Case for Driverless Mobility and the upcoming
Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit. Tune in to episode 358 of Smart Driving Cars with Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin.
0:00 open
0:28 GM CEO looks to unlock value of Cruise
6:05 A week since burning of Waymo vehicle
in SF
9:25 Two Waymo vehicles hit same truck being
towed in December
13:05 California DMV’s latest list of driverless
vehicle permit holders
15:05 Forbes headline- American Innovation
Can Counter Russia’s New Threat
17:45 L.A. Times reports California EV
sales declined in second half of last year
19:50 Hertz to stop buying from Polestar
29:35 New reporting on Tesla crash that
killed employee
32:00 6th Smart Driving Car Summit scheduled
for May 29-31
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 357 /
PodCast 357 Waymo vehicle burned in S.F.
F. Fishkin, Feb. 11,
“The burning of a Waymo vehicle in S.F. may be shocking, but not surprising according to Princeton's Alain Kornhauser. In the latest Smart Driving Cars with co-host Fred Fishkin, Alain again points to The Real Case for Driverless
Mobility (new book co-authored with Michael Sena). Plus..Waymo collision with a cyclist investigated, Apple Vision Pro headsets behind the wheel (Tesla), MOVE mobility for rural areas and Ken Pyle's Texas EV rental adventure.
0:00 open
0:45 Waymo vehicle burned in S.F.
22:40 Waymo vehicle cyclist collision under
investigation
29:00 Apple Vision Pro headset being worn
behind the wheel by some Tesla drivers?
40:20 Is MOVES style mobility for rural
areas disruptive?
52:20 Ken Pyle’s Texas EV rental adventure
59:50 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
book in perspective”
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 356 /
PodCast 356 E-scooter insurance, GM Cruise return,
Aptiv, Volvo, Tesla.
F. Fishkin, Feb. 4,
“
An E-Scooter insurance battle in NJ, GM says Cruise will return, Aptiv abandons Motional, Volvo, Tesla, Bill Bradley and... The Real Case for Driverless Mobility.
Join Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 356 Smart Driving Cars.
0:00 open
0:31 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
3:45 NJ Supreme Court to hear case of injured
E-scooter rider seeking no fault auto insurance coverage for injuries
9:45 Princeton University begins confiscated
-E-scooters after banning them restricted zones
11:25 Princeton’s Bill Bradley new Rolling
Along documentary is streaming on Max
11:44 GM plans for return of Cruise….but…
and it is cutting the budget for Cruise
16:25 Aptive pulls support for Motional
joint venture
19:49 Geely announces low earth satellites
for autonomous naviation
21:19 Volvo is breaking up with Polestar
23:25 Tesla “recall” to fix font size will
be over the air update
26:14 Role of dealerships in over the air
updates”
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 355 /
PodCast 355 w/ Michael Sena
F. Fishkin, Jan. 27,
“With the publication of the new book The Real Case for Driverless Mobility, co-authors Alain Kornhauser and Michael Sena join co-host Fred Fishkin. The book, the latest news on driverless mobility from The Dispatcher and the
Smart Driving Cars newsletter -Tesla, Volvo, GM/Cruise, Waymo-and more on episode 355 of Smart Driving Cars.
0:00 open
0:39 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
published
10:46 from The Dispatcher-The Business of
Delivering Transport
23:30 NHTSA has finally stood up to Tesla
28:00 Volvo cars rate of return
32:00 The Crew comments section of The
Dispatcher
34:15 from the Smart Driving Cars Newsletter-Cruise
says hostility to regulators led to grounding of its autonomous cars
40:13 San Francisco suing state over “unsafe”
self driving cars
46:19 Tesla new Dojo supercomputer coming
to Buffalo, TuSimple, Apple electric vehicles and Forbes piece Waymo expansion plans
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 354 /
PodCast 354 Sunnyvale & More
F. Fishkin, Jan. 20,
“In Sunnyvale, not far from Silicon Valley, officials are looking for ride sharing solutions for students. On episode 354 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin, Alain asks why aren't
the tech neighbors stepping up? Plus… Why are American Drivers So Deadly, big American carmakers avoiding the Super Bowl, Driverless Trucks in Dallas and more. Tune in and subscribe.
0:00 open
0:40 Sunnyvale considers ride share service
for students
5:12 Why are American Drivers So Deadly?
22:55 Biggest American car makers won’t
be running Super Bowl ads
23:40 Driverless trucks coming to Dallas
28:50 GM may be canceling Ultra Cruise
31:40 L. A. Times report-As EVs gain traction,
how will California pay for road repair?
39:45 CNBC reports German startup Vay will
use teledriving to bring vehicles to customers in U.S.
42:25 D.C. city officials seek more say
in how autonomous vehicles are deployed
43:40 Alphabet’s Wing unveils larger drones
for heavier packages
48:50 Rob Mauer ends Tesla Daily
51:00 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
book almost her
SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 353 /
PodCast 353 Danny Shapiro, VP Automotive, nVIDIA, CES 2024 and more
F. Fishkin, Jan. 13,
“NVIDIA VP for Automotive Danny Shapiro joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and Viodi's Ken Pyle for an interview from CES 2024. With AI, Kia, LG and more making headlines at CES, Alain and Fred look at the innovations, plus Hertz,
a letter to the editor of the NY Times from Alain and more. Tune in and subscribe.
0:00 open
0:40 Interview with NVIDIA's Danny Shapiro
11:00 Alain's letter to the editor of the
NY Times
15:00 A look at the Las Vegas Loop
19:35 Kia PBV at CES
20:10 Hertz unloading many electric vehicles
23:55 Skwheel One electric skis at CES
25:40 AI everywhere at CES with Rabbit
and more
26:20 Smart glasses and Apple Vision Pro
27:50 LG shows transparent OLED screen
31:00 The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
arriving this month
33:00 More thoughts on CES
ZoomCast 352 /
PodCast 352 Aurora-Mobileye-Cruise-Tesla
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
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”
Link to previous 326 -> 350 SDC PodCasts & ZoomCasts
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,
March 2, 2024
The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
M. Sena, March 2024, “HE BOOK, THE REAL CASE FOR DRIVERLESS MOBILITY, sums up everything its two authors have been doing and thinking about professionally for the past 55
years. Alain L. Kornhauser and I were fortunate enough to find a publisher, ELSEVIER, who let us put our thoughts into print. Now the work begins to put the words into action. There were many contributors to this book. All of those readers of THE DISPATCHER
who have sent me their comments over the past eleven years have helped me to formulate my own thoughts. The articles they sent, I read. I clicked on the URLs they passed on. Many of these readers were clients I have had during my forty years of consulting,
and we have continued the journey together when the assignments ended. Participants in the
SmartDrivingCars Summits organized by Alain for the past seven years have all been involved in one way or another in preparing the groundwork, planting the seeds, and nurturing the growing the ideas included in the
book.
It turns out that our book was released at the same time as both WAYMO and CRUISE, two companies at the forefront of driverless technology, experienced setbacks in San Francisco.
The latest, the torching of a WAYMO vehicle stuck in traffic with no driver or passenger, highlighted the fact that many people see them as playthings for the rich, serving no purpose for the common man or woman. WAYMO chose to have its vehicles in the same
city that blocked their private buses carrying their employees from affordable housing in the city to their premises in Silicon Valley. They should have understood the importance of everyone seeing value in what they were doing. This is our point. You and
I don’t need driverless vehicles because we have a car or two (or three) at our disposal. The only thing a driverless car has that cars with drivers have is something they don't have: the cost of the driver. It's not a riddle; it’s not rocket science; it's
basic economics. Driverless cars are not for the wealthy, or even the moderately well off. They are for those who need rides but cannot afford them. That is the message in our book, and that is why it is timely.….”
Read More Hmmmm…
Read all of the March 2024 issue of The Dispatcher and Read the book! J. Alain
Disposition
of Waymo Advice Letter 002
T. Curtis, March 1, “Dear Daniel C. Smith:
Pursuant to Decision (D.) 20-11-046, as modified by D.21-05-017, and Resolution TL-19136, the Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division (CPED)
of the California Public Utilities Commission approves Waymo LLC’s (Waymo) Advice Letter 0002. Waymo’s updated Passenger Safety Plan (PSP), submitted in connection with its expanded operational design domain (ODD) for deployment approved by the California
Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), is approved. A status certificate is attached for your records. ….
Sincerely, Terra Curtis…
Advice Letter Subject: Waymo-0002, Requesting approval of Waymo’s updated Passenger Safety Plan in connection with Waymo's expanded deployment
ODD
Division Assigned: Consumer Protection and Enforcement
Date Filed: 01-19-2024
Disposition: Approved Effective Date: 03-01-2024…
Attachment 1: Staff Review and Disposition…
Disposition of Waymo’s Advice Letter
…
CPED finds that Waymo has complied with the requirements of the Deployment Decision. Its updated PSP is complete relative to the requirements
described in the Deployment Decision and is reasonable for its planned service. Therefore, CPED approves Waymo’s updated PSP and authorizes expansion of Waymo’s Driverless Deployment service to the areas of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula it has
requested. Waymo may begin fared driverless passenger service operations in the specified areas of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula, effective today.”
Read
More Hmmmm… Congratulations Dan! You now have the right to Give Rides to people who really need a ride
because they can’t afford Uber/Lyft or Taxi. For them, you’ll be appreciated and used every day instead of being, at best, one&doned by the Uber/Lyft/Taxi faithful.
Uber/Lyft/Taxi service proposition is so good for those who can afford their fares + tip (or have someone else
picking up the tab) that you have essentially zero chance of retaining a customer who gave you a shot. You have to find the new customer that Uber/Lyft/Taxi can’t serve effectively because they are too expensive. You serve them affordably; you have a customer
for life! Alain
Saturday,
Feb. 24, 2024
Nvidia Added
$272 Billion in Market Value Thursday, the Largest One-Day Gain Ever
C. Laidley, Feb. 22, “Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) recorded the largest-ever single-day
jump in market capitalization on Thursday, one day after the chipmaker announced quarterly earnings and a sales outlook that soared past analysts’
expectations amid a boom in demand for artificial intelligence (AI).
Nvidia rose 16.4% to close at $785.38, adding $272 billion to its market capitalization. That blew out of the water the prior record set just two weeks ago by Meta Platforms Inc. (META),
which added $205 billion in market cap after it beat
earnings forecasts and announced its first dividend.
Before Meta, no company had added more than $200 billion in market
cap in a single session, but Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
had come close. They each gained slightly more than $190 billion on separate days in 2022. ….”
Read
More Hmmmm… Hats off! That’s impressive! The fundamentals…See also:
Nvidia Touches 800 After Earnings; Is Nvidia A Buy?
Data Center upgrades?! They don’t even bother to mention the “mini data centers” that will be part of every (robo) car. Whew! Congratulations Danny Shapiro’87 & Marie Labrie
J.
Alain
In the Driverless Seat with Dr. Kornhauser
K. Pyle, Feb. 21, “Giving people rides who need rides is the message of the book, The
Real Case for Driverless Mobility. That is, there is a large segment of the population that cannot engage in, as the book co-author, Alain Kornhauser, calls it, “A do-it-yourself approach to transportation.”
Kornhauser argues that the opportunity for companies promoting driverless mobility is to serve this segment. In doing so, it will improve the quality of life for those who cannot drive themselves
for reasons of age, affordability, skills, or other reasons.” Read More Hmmmm…
Watch & Listen to a description of the fundamentals of “The Book”. Ken: Thank you for making this more than just a shameless promotion.
J Alain
Saturday,
Feb. 17, 2024
GM looking
at the best path to unlock value at Cruise, CEO Barra says
Staff, Feb. 15, “General Motors (GM.N), opens new tab Chief Executive Mary Barra
said on Thursday that the automaker was looking at the best path to unlock value at its self-driving unit Cruise.
Shares of GM rose about 2%.
Cruise is an "incredibly valuable asset", Barra said at an event hosted by Wolfe Research.
The Detroit automaker will focus on relaunching the unit this year, she added while reiterating her support for the unit. ….”
Read
More Hmmmm… She should make The Book required reading inside Cruise & GM. Just sayin’. Alain
Is
MOVES-style Mobility for Rural Areas Disruptive? The Tuscarora Reservation Opportunity…
A. Kornhauser, Slides used in his class Feb. 7, “…Total Addressable Market is 3,165 personTrips per day…,”.
Read
More Hmmmm… (and be sure to watch the video on the last slide). Not that much, but the area is really rural,
and many of those rides are really needed. What these slides and the end video reveal explicitly is that 1,000 of these rides could actually be given most days at a very good demand-responsive level-of-service (less than 5 minute wait, direct to destination
with minimal circuity in the few ride-share opportunities) achieving vehicle productivities of >40 personTrips/Vehicle-day (>12,500personTrips/Vehicle year, implying that capital costs for such a system could be financed by less than $2/personTrip and break-even
fares of >$3/ride. Now that’s what I call affordable high-quality mobility. All we need is a Vehicle that works and we or almost any franchise could offer Mobility within even some of the most rural settings in the nation. Now that’s interesting!! Alain
[and thanks, Bryce Rasmussen’25 , for getting the analysis system and simulation to work!!]
Saturday,
Feb. 17, 2024
A Waymo driverless car didn't see the person on a
bike it hit, company says
J. Serrano, Feb. 8 “One of Waymo’s driverless cars collided with a cyclist in San Francisco this week because it apparently didn’t see the human
until it was too late.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at a four-way intersection while the self-driving vehicle was at a complete stop, Waymo, which is owned by
Google, told local outlet ABC7. The car was waiting for a large truck to pass and drove into
the intersection when it was its turn. That was when it hit the cyclist, who was riding close to the tail end of the truck. The unnamed victim suffered no serious injuries, according to Waymo, and walked away on their own.”...”
Read More
Hmmmm… OK, a 4- way stop. Traffic laws dictate that all vehicles must stop, and whoever stopped first then proceeds
first after the others have stopped. So, if the Waymo was stopped to let the truck go, the other human operated object behind the truck (the bicycle) got to its stop sign after the Waymo, and hence should have allowed the Waymo to proceed. If that’s the case,
then, again: human driver misbehavior contributed to this mishap.
Waymo, however, is not off the hook entirely. Apparently, Waymo was not able to sufficiently detect what was following
behind a truck and it struck that entity. That is not good irrespective of that entity being identified as a human-operated bicyclist, scooter or even some small object that the truck was pulling. Since we should all be cooperating on safety, irrespective
of what anti-trust law or government regulations might or might not permit, it is imperative that Waymo makes all the data and simulation results of this incident available to everyone. And it seems as though they are doing just that - it looks like one important
lesson of the Oct2 GM/Cruise SF incident is yielding value. Making this information available will help everyone avoid not only cyclists surfing behind trucks be also avoid objects that a truck might be towing.
That accomplished, we’ll now have to wait to see what the press/public response is to this incident. If this characterizes
Waymo as being insufficiently safe to operate in San Francisco or any other jurisdiction, then Waymo and much of the Driverless car industry needs to Start Over! They are unable to solve the problem they have stated as the problem they are singularly focused
on solving: safety. They need to read “The
Book” (it’s only $100, while they’ve spent $300 Billion not understanding what they are trying to fix.)
Read the book!
More.. If one wants to look at human behavior at stop-controlled intersections one may start with M. Woldeamanuel,
fall 2012: “Stopping Behavior of Drivers at Stop-Controlled Intersections:
Compositional and Contextual Analysis”.
Also see Andrew Hawkin’s take on this incident:
Waymo
driverless car strikes bicyclist in San Francisco, causes minor injuries. Alain
Waymo driverless
car vandalized, set on fire in San Francisco's Chinatown
Staff, Feb. 11, “A Waymo autonomous vehicle was set on fire Saturday night after it was vandalized by a group of people in Chinatown, San Francisco firefighters said.
The vehicle was traveling on Jackson Street, between Stockton and Grant, about 9:25 p.m. when it was surrounded by about 10 to 15 people, Lt. Mariano Elias with San Francisco fire said.
Several social media videos showed a group of people vandalizing the self-driving car. While another video showed the Waymo vehicle going up in flames….”
Read
More Hmmmm… I had titled this edition of the SDC eLetter “Start Over”, before this happened. I’m speechless,
but watch the ZoomCast and Read the Book!!!. Alain
Saturday,
Jan. 27, 2024
New Jersey High Court to Hear E-Scooter
Rider’s Bid for No-Fault Auto Benefits
Andrew Simpson, Oct. 16 “David Goyco says he was like a bicyclist when he was injured while riding his low-speed electric scooter and hit by
a car. Thus, he contends, he is entitled to personal injury protection (PIP) benefits from his auto insurer, Progressive Insurance Co., under a New Jersey state law that treats bicyclists like pedestrians.
However, Progressive and New Jersey courts, thus far, disagree with him. They say he was not a bicyclist or pedestrian as defined in state law
while riding his scooter and thus is not eligible for the insurance benefits. However, the state’s high court has agreed to hear his latest appeal.
In November 2021, Goyco was operating a Segway Ninebot KickScooter Max when he was struck by an automobile. As a result of the accident, he
sustained injuries and incurred medical expenses for his treatments. He filed for PIP benefits.
Under New Jersey law a “low-speed electric scooter” means a scooter with a floorboard that can be stood upon by the operator, with handlebars,
and an electric motor that is capable of propelling the device with or without human propulsion at a maximum speed of less than 19 miles per hour. His Segway has a maximum speed of 15 mph.
Under New Jersey law, every standard automobile liability insurance policy offers no-fault PIP benefits for bodily injury as a result of an
accident “while occupying, entering into, alighting from or using an automobile, or as a pedestrian, caused by an automobile…
Last week the state Supreme Court agreed to hear his final appeal.
[log in to unmask]">
Pedestrians
Goyco argues that New Jersey law recognizes bicyclists as pedestrians for purpose of no-fault coverage. He maintained that, by extension, a
low-speed electric scooter like his Segway should be considered the equivalent of a bicycle under the law that states that most laws and regulations that apply to bicycles should apply to low-speed scooters,…
A trial court found Goyco’s reasoning “misplaced” because the law on low speed scooters is not a part of the no-fault statute and is not controlling.
The no-fault insurance statute contains zero reference to “bicycles,” and defines what constitutes a “pedestrian” for purposes of the no-fault benefits. The law clearly excludes from the definition of a pedestrian “any person who is not occupying, entering
into, or alighting from a vehicle propelled by other than muscular power and designed primarily for use on highways, rails and tracks.”
The judge said “muscular power’ is the operative phrase in this statute.”...”
Read More
Hmmmm… The NJ Supreme Court is not considering “what is a pedestrian”. The meter is running. Alain
Feature: The
Business of Delivering Transport
M. Sena, Jan. 24 “Melting ICE is proving to be a big challenge
WE ARE REMINDED often that 2024 is a big year for voting. One-half of the people in the world will go to the polls. It is a presidential election
year in the U.S., and control of the Senate and House of Representatives is once again anyone’s guess. European Union parliamentary elections will be held in June, and the current European Commission President (not elected by popular vote) will attempt to
be chosen to continue in her position. Taiwan has already voted, and they did not vote for the China-friendly candidate. Elected officials set the agenda for their country’s (or region’s in the case of the EU) climate policies, often without revealing those
policies before they are elected, or giving just a broad brush picture of what they will do once they are safely in the leader’s chair. One U.S. president, state governor, EU Commission leader, or parliamentary majority after the other has made significant
changes to legislation in the name of stopping climate change, often without a democratic mandate to do so.
These actions have had consequences, and those consequences are now materializing, coming out in the open for all to see and, more importantly,
to experience. Their impacts on the passenger car industry, both for those who make and sell them and those who purchase them, are now clear. Reckoning day for the global passenger car industry will soon arrive. The showdown has been gestating for years, but
now all the forces have aligned to bring it to a head. No, my next sentence is not going to be: “Musk wins! The car industry throws in the ICE towel.” Far from it. I believe the big bets made on battery electric vehicles by western governments—and by China—are
already backfiring on their car companies. Why? They forgot that consumers decide, with their feet and with their money..….”
Read
More Hmmmm…. Another excellent edition. A really good presentation of the challenges of going from ICE
to EV and approaches to Net Zero emissions. The Musing about Hybrids is absolutely wonderful. Read it all, front to back!
J.
Alain
REPORT
TO THE BOARDS OF DIRECTORS OF CRUISE LLC, GM
CRUISE HOLDINGS LLC, AND GENERAL MOTORS HOLDINGS LLC REGARDING THE OCTOBER 2, 2023 ACCIDENT IN SAN FRANCISCO
Staff, Jan. 25, “….”
Read
More Hmmmm…. You really should read the whole thing. Three enormous lessons we must learn from this.
- As we all should already know from numerous other instances:
- 1. The cover up is worse than the crime!,
- 2. We all must cooperate, NOT compete on safety. One should not
look at safety as a private Intellectual Property Asset. It needs to be a public asset protected from “anti-trust” and “collusion” infractions and MUST be shared among all. As one trips over “corner cases” and discovers elegant and ingenious ways to improve
safety, those findings should be treated as “best practices” and shared in detail among all; else, all lose in the long run. Waymo also lost on Oct. 2. The Citizens of San Fransisco lost big time!, and
- 3. On must look in the very front as well as under the car before on begins to
move- every time. Give all the compute cycles one goes thorough to do any of this, a few cycles should be allocated to making sure the surface ahead is free of obstructions that can’t be readily passed over. What would it take, one more camera? There are
really only two things that these cars need to do…
- a. pass under any obstruction that might lay ahead and
- b. pass over any obstruction that might lay ahead.
- It must do these things not only when it is moving but also when it is starting
to move. Starting to move occurs rarely, but it is different than when moving because looking ahead and anticipating (which is really hard) doesn’t cut it. Looking at what exists (which is easy) is critical.
-
- A long time ago, I ran over my dog, Benny, because I didn’t look right in front
of my car before I put the car in drive and hit the gas. Yipes! [he survived, thank goodness.].
One of the best Advanced Driver Assistance Systems in new cars are Rear/Reverse Emergency Braking Systems. IIHS
reported in 2022: “Autobrake
slashes rear-end crash rates for pickups, but few are equipped”. Then there is this in Princeton 2 months ago: “Man
crushed to death by car in driveway of Princeton home, police say”.
Maybe now we can readily fill this seemingly innocent gap in our Driverless AI. Alain
Saturday,
Jan. 20, 2024
Sunnyvale
considers ride-share service for commuting students
B. CAnnestra, Jan. 18, “Sunnyvale is looking to fill accessibility gaps in existing public transit options for residents to travel around the city, and one ride-share
service is taking center stage.
The Sunnyvale City Council is considering signing the city up with Silicon Valley Hopper (SV Hopper), a multi-city ride-share service that operates in Cupertino
and Southern Santa Clara. Residents spoke in support of the program at a Jan. 9 council meeting, highlighting the ways it could benefit students, seniors, disabled residents and businesses. Advocates and a handful of students from Fremont and Homestead high
schools spoke about transit inequities they face from living in North Sunnyvale, a historically underserved low-income
community.
“All of our students and those further away have to travel great distances just to get to school and … participating in activities … is really difficult for these
students if there isn’t reliable and safe transportation,” Peggy Brewster, founder of Sunnyvale Equity in Education, told San José Spotlight.….”
Read
More Hmmmm…. Seems
like an excellent opportunity for Waymo to step up and say, “We can do that safely and very affordably”. This looks like it is ideal for a “Sunnyvale MOVES” right next door. What a way to be of real value!
Cecelia, Shlok and Tommy: let’s add Sunnyvale to the ORF467F24 Final Report that you are preparing. Alain
Saturday,
Jan. 13, 2024
Letter to the Editor NY Times: (Sent,
but who knows if they’ll publish it)
Jan. 12, Since November 8, 2016, my wife and I have ceased to watch news on TV, for obvious reasons, but have continued to rely mostly
on the home delivery and the digital version of the New York Times. We try to ignore its absolutely unrelenting coverage of a certain former president and other more minor shortcomings. However, it would be nice if the NYT were more accurate in the portrayal
of topics for which we actually know something about. The latest occurred on January 10 in Brian Chen’s “The Tech That
Needs Fixing in 2024, and What Got Fixed Last Year”.
Yes, 2023 was an up and down year for driverless cars. They finally happened for real without smoke & mirrors (a high point), but to
characterize the low point as “… a Cruise vehicle struck a San Francisco pedestrian and dragged the victim for 20 feet” completely misses the real substance of the incident, if this incident is to contribute substantively to the title of the article “… Fixing
in 2024…”
What actually happened, based on available reporting, was that a human driver struck a pedestrian and fled the scene. The impact was
sufficient to fling the pedestrian in front of the low-speed driverless car that was in the adjacent lane. The driverless car braked “instantly” and came to a complete stop, but unfortunately, not before striking the pedestrian a second time. Given that
the driverless car was blocking traffic, a decision was made to pull over. Most unfortunately, that decision was made without the knowledge that the pedestrian was under the car, so it dragged the victim at very low speed for 20 feet. Tragic! And one wonders,
where is the reporting on the criminality of the human driver? Were they ever apprehended? Were they distracted by texting? Talking? Under the influence? While I have not seen follow-up reporting along these lines, I do see stories like this of Mr. Chen. So,
my focus here will be on his purported interest in improving autonomous vehicles.
Details do matter here if the intent is “… Fixing Tech in 2024…”. In new situations, our challenge is always “we don’t know what we
don’t know”. While we hypothesize, theorize, imagine, test, anticipate, … some unknowns may still trip us up. The important point is that once we encounter them, they are no longer unknowns, so now we can focus on the fix. This terrible accident has demonstrated
the need for all driverless cars to “check under the vehicle” before they start moving. Since these cars have many cameras, one of potentially many solutions may well be, just add one more that looks under the car and checks every time. Certainly seems trivial
and likely an easy “fix” for 2024.
Another fix that this incident could catalyze is a serious focus on ending misbehaviors of human drivers. This incident was sparked
by a human driver who first hit the pedestrian. That driver took off. Had that driver not doubled-down on their potentially lethal misbehavior by running from the scene, they might have noticed that the victim was under the Cruise car, and could have prevented
the driverless car from pulling over, or even helped the victim out of the way.
I also notice that in the Sunday January 7, Letters section “Danger
Ahead: Pedestrians and Cars at Night” NY Times readers, eight of them, highlighted the misbehavior of human drivers that result in pedestrian deaths. It is not hyperbole to claim that 90% of traffic deaths involve
human driver misbehavior in the forms described by these readers. It also should be noted that driverless cars don’t misbehave in these ways.
Last comment on Mr. Chen’s assessment of self-driving cars. He ends by sharing his own experience riding in Waymo vehicles and makes
no mention of any unsafe operation. Instead, he is irritated by how they “can struggle to find pickup zones, stop abruptly and take inefficient routes - but then again, many human drivers can be just as annoying.” No mention of how anyone who actually needs
an affordable ride might gladly accept an inefficient route over missing a doctor’s appointment or reliable transportation to and from a job.
In characterizing Waymo’s foibles as “annoying” and not commenting on the deadly misbehaviors of human drivers, Mr. Chen misses the
fundamental benefit of driverless cars: their ability to provide high quality rides to a broad population of people for whom getting an affordable ride from near where they are to near where they want to go at about the time they wish to go is simply not
available. Hopefully in 2024 the driverless car industry will realize that this is indeed their opportunity to be of real value to our society.
Alain
Saturday,
Jan. 6, 2024
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
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:
-
No real system is perfectly safe, or even comes close to being perfectly safe.
Elevators “kill” about 25 people per year in the US.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Today, about 50% of people who need a ride get a ride from someone else, be it a parent, sibling, relative, friend or stranger.
-
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.
-
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 Bankrupt 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 2nd 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 6th 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
|