Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024

Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024

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Saturday, April 13, 2024

Summit-4/13/24

16h edition of the 12th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter

NJ AI Summit

Princeton University, April 11, “NJ AI Summit, hosted by Princeton in partnership with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and the NJ Economic Development Authority, takes place on April 11, 2024, on Princeton’s campus. The summit will convene leaders from the region and beyond to explore AI applications in health, finance, sustainable energy and technology, while also addressing the societal implications of AI and the opportunities to advance AI education and workforce development.

This is an invitation-only event. Recordings will be made available shortly after the event.

Program Schedule …

Read More

Hmmmm… What a fantastic event. This was the first event that I’ve attended in which the “dignitaries” (among them, Princeton President Eisgruber and Governor Murphy) not only gave substantive keynotes (right around noon), but also sat in the audience, front and center, from the start and absorbed all that was presented to the rest of the invited attendees. I am really pumped. Alain

Just Published!!! Go to Amazon.com… You can still be first on your block to have one J.

SmartDrivingCars
ZoomCast 367 / PodCast 367 NJ AI Summit-Tesla cuts price of Supervised FSD-& more

F. Fishkin, April 14, “The NJ AI Summit at Princeton University impresses. Tesla cuts the subscription price of Supervised FSD to 99 dollars as Musk posts about the 10 billion dollar investment. Cruise returns…with drivers. The 6th Smart Driving Cars Summit is coming at the end of May. Join Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that and more on episode 367 of Smart Driving Cars.

  • 0:00 open
  • 0:40 New Jersey AI Summit held at Princeton
  • 7:09 Tesla cuts price for Supervised FSD subscription- Alain’s take on The Verge report
  • 17:25 Release notes on latest Supervised FSD taking responsible approach as Musk posts on X about investment
  • 26:40 Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas looks to August 8th Tesla Robotaxi event
  • 27:29 Tesla settles Apple engineer fatal autopilot crash case
  • 36:19 Cruise resumes with manual driving
  • 37:05 Bern Grush reviews The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
  • 46:08 Upcoming 6th Smart Driving Car Summit

Cruise resumes manual driving as next step in return to driverless mission

Blog Post, April 9, “In October 2023, we paused operations of our fleet to focus on rebuilding trust with regulators and the communities we serve, and to redesign our approach to safety. We’ve made significant progress, guided by new company leadership, recommendations from third-party experts, and a focus on a close partnership with the communities in which our vehicles operate. We are committed to this improvement as a continuous effort.

Looking to the next chapter, our goal is to resume driverless operations. As we continue working to rebuild trust and determine the city where we will scale driverless, we also remain focused on continuing to improve our performance and overall safety approach. To that end, Cruise is resuming manual driving to create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix. This work is done using human-driven vehicles without autonomous systems engaged and is a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission. This will help inform where we ultimately will resume driverless operations.

Cruise has a strong history in Phoenix and it is home to a large number of Cruise employees. It’s a city that supports AV and transportation innovation, and Phoenix leaders strive to ensure the metro area is an incubator for advanced technology. We plan to expand this effort to other select cities as we continue to engage with officials and community leaders. …” Read More Hmmmm… Welcome back! Many in Phoenix, the rest of this country, and around the world can substantially improve their lives if only high-quality, affordable rides were readily available to them. 😊 Alain

Tesla Will Spend 10 Billion Training Full Self-Driving

R. Stumpf, April 9, “Tesla is just one of many automakers and third-party tech companies looking to solve self-driving. While some automakers have chosen to offload that responsibility to companies like Mobileye, others like Tesla have decided to tackle the problem head-on.

Now, after years of throwing money at its own hardware and training stacks, Tesla has amassed a gigantic multi-billion dollar investment. And in doing so, it figured out something that nobody should be surprised about: building a car that can drive itself is very, very expensive.

In a post on his social media platform, X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that Tesla is on track to spend more than $10 billion on computing, storage, and networking solutions used to train the model for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software.

Tesla has been aiming for autonomous driving capabilities for years. Since 2016, Musk has been promising a fully autonomous cross-country drive in one of its vehicles, though that has yet to happen. Now, as other automakers and autonomous ride-hailing services advance, Tesla will need to sharply increase its hold on the market or face the threat of its self-driving tech being bested by competitors.

Now, this number is cumulative, meaning that it’s the total amount that Tesla has spent over an unspecified period of time. It’s worth noting that the $10 billion figure likely includes legacy systems powered by Nvidia GPUs as well as Dojo, the automaker’s supercomputer running on custom Tesla silicon. Last year, Tesla said it expected to spend an estimated $1 billion on Dojo. …” Read More Hmmmm… Certainly not for the faint at heart, but this is how hard this challenge is turning out to be. Also, unless one is prepared to make such a commitment, one should just try something else. However, the value is still there. @ $100/month, the investment is paid back in full over 5 years with 2M customers. The market leader will be very happy. The rest will be doing something else. Alain

Tesla slashes price for monthly Full Self-Driving subscription

Andrew Hawkins, April 31, “Tesla is reducing the subscription fee for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver-assist software in a reflection of the company’s continuing financial hardships. The company slashed the price to $99 / month, down from $199 where it has been since at least 2021.

Tesla announced the price adjustment in a post on X, in which it described the Level 2 driver-assist system as “FSD (Supervised)” — a name tweak that’s meant to convey the fact that drivers are required to pay attention to the road and stand ready to take control of the vehicle. ….” Read More Hmmmm… What?? Reducing price is a reflection of what?? Financial hardship??? What??? Why is halving the price of something whose incremental cost is essentially zero that responds in more than doubling the number of items bought a sign of “financial hardship”? Sounds to me like both a brilliant fiduciary move and a substantive & welcomed sacrifice to one’s customers, especially since the app in this case not only improves the comfort and convenience of driving but also is shown to improve everyone’s safety.

[This reminded me about when 23andMe reduced the price of DNA Genotyping to $99 from whatever infinite amount it used to cost. I bought immediately. I’m wondering if Andrew wrote that the enormous price reduction was a reflection of “continuing financial hardships”? C’mon Andrew! Alain & Elizabeth]

Tesla’s Robotaxi unveiling event sets the tone for 2030 and beyond: Morgan Stanley

J. Klender, April 9, “Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed the automaker would bring its Robotaxi to light during an unveiling event on August 8.

“We first began writing about the investment considerations of a potential Tesla robotaxi business since we began modeling ‘Tesla Mobility’ back in 2015 when Tesla’s market cap was barely $30bn,” Adam Jonas, lead analyst for Morgan Stanley, wrote. “We had (mistakenly) expected the company to formally launch a highly automated ride-share service back in 2018. Nearly a decade later, we’re still waiting. August 8th will offer some important clues.”..” Read More Hmmmm… As usual, Adam is right on! August 8th will offer some important clues. In the meantime, I’m surprised that all of the images and descriptions seem to me to be a decade old, as if time has stood still. OK; Starship does look a little like the Falcon 9. 😊 Alain

The Real Case for Driverless Mobility

B. Grush, March/April 2024, “… A new book by Alain L. Kornhauser and Michael L. Sena… advocates for automated driving systems as a core component of public transportation- … This is sourced from Princeton University’s long-standing and highly regarded SmartDrivingCar effort, which has for years advocated the intelligent application of automated vehicles to improve equitable access for mobility disadvantaged populations…” Read More Hmmmm… Thank you Bern J Alain

Tesla settles case over fatal Autopilot crash of Apple engineer

A. Roy, April 8, “Tesla has settled a lawsuit over a 2018 car crash that killed an Apple engineer after his Model X, operating on Autopilot, swerved off a highway near San Francisco, court documents showed on Monday.

The settlement was made on the eve of the trial over the high-profile accident involving Tesla’s driver-assistant technology. Tesla faces a series of lawsuits over crashes related to the alleged use of Autopilot, putting the automaker at risk of large monetary judgments and reputational damage.

The settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed, came as Chief Executive Elon Musk is making major promotions of self-driving technology, which he has touted as key to the financial future of the world’s most valuable automaker.

The 2018 accident killed 38-year-old Walter Huang. His family had alleged that Autopilot steered his 2017 Model X into a highway barrier. Plaintiffs’ lawyers asked a Tesla witness whether the company knew drivers would not watch the road when using its driver-assistance system, Reuters reported last month citing deposition transcripts.…” Read More Hmmmm… It is good that a settlement was reached in this tragic situation among the family, Tesla and Apple. What is surprising to me is that the real culprit here may have been Caltrans. Look at the video contained in the ABC news report from March 30, 2018, when Dan Noyes returned to the scene of the crash. The lane striping approaching this high speed off ramp is essentially unintelligible. So much so that a few weeks earlier a human driver became disoriented and crashed into the arrestor that had existed in this location, as I reported in the SDC eLetter at the time.

  • Why isn’t Caltrans obligated to have lane markings that are easily seen and legible by human drivers?
  • Why wasn’t there cross hatching between the diverging lanes that would encourage human drivers to pick a lane and stay out of the surface between the lanes? This is a standard practice in such dangerous roadway designs.
  • Why wasn’t the crash absorber replaced in a timely manner after it saved the life of the previous person who got confused by the faulty lane markings?

All any of us in the driverless car business have ever asked of the public road builders are the same things that human drivers ask for: A smooth surface with good paint that properly delineates lanes of travel and readable signs that instruct humans about changing rules and conditions. Alain

2024.3.15 (FSD Supervised v12.3.4) Release Notes

Staff, April 10, “This update adds FSD v12 to the legacy Model S and Model X, as well as the new Model 3 for the first time. This update is also available for other vehicles which are already on FSD v12.

FSD (Supervised) v12 upgrades the city-streets driving stack to a single end-to-end neural network trained on millions of video clips, replacing over 300k lines of explicit C++ code.

Under your supervision, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) can drive your Tesla almost anywhere. It will make lane changes, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make left and right turns. You and anyone you authorize must use additional caution and remain attentive. It does not make your vehicle autonomous. Do not become complacent…” Read More Hmmmm… Impressive. Alain

6th SmartDrivingCars Summit Evening May 29 -> May 31, 2024

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 the business aspects…

Giving Oneself a Ride

  • Latest on ADAS Safety, Functionality, Regulation and potential Collaboration (given anti-trust relaxation), consumer value

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-Policy/Politics/Sociology” (Regulation + Opportunities for Collaboration on Safety (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-Policy/Politics/CorporateGovernance” (OSHA, Unions )

Workshop

  • MOVES – Style Deployments “anywhere”. (See Example)

  • Design, Analysis, Simulation, Animation & Business Case

….” Read More Hmmmm… Please see the registration and sponsorship 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. Hope you’ll be able to join in with us. Alain