12.21 - Nyc battle for streets
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Sunday, May 19, 2024
21st edition of the 12th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
The Battle for the Streets of New York
D. Stewart, May 13, "On a recent morning, the intersection of East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue presented a vivid illustration of the tumult.
A taxi trying to make a left turn had to maneuver around a Verizon crew digging up the asphalt. A box truck was parked in the bus lane, and the M102 bus, with its accordionlike belly, was forced to change lanes and snake around it.
Dozens of people streamed out of the subway and into the crosswalk. A man pushing a double stroller navigated between the subway entrance and a sidewalk compost box. A woman's shopping cart wheels got stuck in a crack in the sidewalk. CitiBikes and delivery bikes whizzed by. A cargo bike stopped in front of a FedEx truck that was unloading packages next to a bike lane.
Lively, energetic streets make city living attractive — people to watch, windows to browse, benches to sit on, trees for shade.
But lately, New York City streets are teetering between lively and unlivable. Residents clash over traffic, noise, parking, 5G towers and heaps of trash. Most years, far fewer pedestrians get killed by motorists than in generations past, but last year was the deadliest year for cyclists since 1999.…"
Read More
Hmmmm… Waymo wants to play on these streets in this context? Is no one in the room going to raise their hand and ask: "We want to do what?? Doesn't anyone recall Napoleon's invasion of Moscow?"
Is Waymo as clueless as Apple, when nobody in any room during any meeting raised their hand and ventured: "Doesn't Crush! embody the perfect antithesis of our brilliant 1984 Superbowl ad? What are people thinking around here???" Alain
Just Published!!! Go to Amazon.com… You can still be first on your block to have one J.
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 372 / PodCast 372 Streets of NYC-Tesla-Cruise & more
F. Fishkin, May 19, "The Battle for the Streets of New York, Tesla FSD, the Smart Driving Car Summit, Uber, Cruise and more. Tune in to episode 372 of Smart Driving Cars with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. And subscribe!
- 0:00 open
- 0:30 The Battle for the Streets of New York
- 8:46 Comments about Apple crush campaign snafu
- 11:37 6th Smart Driving Car Summit less than two weeks away
- 21:20 Car Charts newsletter Fast China Factoid
- 25:36 Warren Buffett says Tesla achieving Full Self Driving would be good for society but bad for insurance companies volume.
- 29:20 Bloomberg piece ..Tesla's Full Self Driving Struggled Soon After Leaving My Driveway
- 35:00 Uber looking for AV partner..reportedly says Tesla FSD looks like great product
- 41:00 The Verge report on Crue is back
- 42:15 Another from The Verge: For Self Driving Cars the Free Ride is Over
- 47:40 Cruise founder Kyle Vogt is back with a robot start-up
- 49:18 Toyota press release on 2025 Corolla doesn't headline the vehicle's stellar automatic emergency braking capability as much as it sh
Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
Alain Kornhauser, May 12 ". .."Read more
Hmmmm.... Our intention is to hold lively, honest exchanges in which all participants feel comfortable sharing as candidly as is reasonable. Please see the registration and sponsorship pages. Registration closes on the 22nd. Hope you'll be able to join in with us. Alain
Fast China Factoid … It's not always about the EVs...
G. Mercer, May 18, We have a longer more substantive post in the works, but for now just one simple chart on the Hot Topic of the Day, Chinese EV Exports. We've all read the stories (including some posts on this blog) about excess Chinese EV manufacturing capacity, the wave of Chinese EV exports, the tariff walls designed to block Chinese EV exports coming up in Europe and the USA, the incredible pace at which Chinese EV models are updated, etc.
All of this is important stuff and the core observation that these EVs will represent a massive challenge to "Western" incumbent car companies is very accurate.
But one small corrective to the narrative as it stands today: most Chinese light-duty vehicle exports at present are gasoline powered (aka ICE, internal combustion engines). From the Economist: Link …"
Hmmmm… Be prepared for deja vu all over again. We may be at the 60 years ago (1964) version of this chart. Yipes! Alain
Warren Buffett Says Tesla Achieving Full Self-Driving Would Be "Good For Society And Bad For Insurance Companies Volume"
J. Mathews, May 13, ".…Specifically about Tesla, Buffett says, "If accidents get reduced 50%, it's going to be good for society but it's going to be bad for insurance companies' volume. But good for society is what we're looking for."" Read More
Hmmmm… What??? I'm assuming "volume" = "top-line" = "revenue"...
But since when does Warren even look at "volume"? I thought he was a "bottom-line" = "profit" guy. The beauty of accidents (aka "human misbehavior induced crashes") get reduced by 50% is "volume" goes down 😭, but... so much less of that "volume" ever gets spent. Insurance gets to "keep more, longer". Wow!!! 🙂Profits go up!!! Warren is no dummy. He knows that VERY well. 😎Alain
Cruise is back driving autonomously for the first time since pedestrian-dragging incident
Andrew Hawkins, May 8, "Cruise's autonomous vehicles are officially back on the road and driving autonomously.… the company is deploying only two autonomous vehicles with safety drivers behind the wheel...." Read More
Hmmmm…About the only non-negative partial sentences in the article. Andrew gets in every dig. So bad!
I guess we should call this supervised autonomous driving. Nice to have Cruise back on the road preparing to give rides to those who really need a ride. Alain
The Sporty Toyota Corolla Hatchback Shifts into 2025
Staff, May 14, ".. Safety & Convenience
The 2025 Corolla Hatchback comes with the robust Toyota Safety Sense 3.0. This safety suite includes:
Pre-Collision System with Pedestrian Detection: Pre-Collision System with Pedestrian Detection (PCS w/PD) is designed to help detect a vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist, or motorcyclist and provide an audible/visual forward-collision warning under certain circumstances. If you don't react, the system is designed to provide automatic emergency braking.." Read More
Hmmmm… Nice!! Alain
GM-owned Cruise reached a more than $8M settlement with pedestrian who was dragged by robo taxi J. Mathews, May 6, "The accident itself took place late in the evening on Oct. 2 when a pedestrian who was crossing the road in San Francisco was struck in a hit-and-run by another vehicle, then subsequently dragged for 20 feet by one of Cruise's autonomous robo-taxis. Regulators determined Cruise had not been forthcoming enough with them about the incident, and ordered Cruise to halt its taxi service in San Francisco. Cruise subsequently pulled all of its vehicles off the road across the U.S., and it is just now starting to reintroduce its robo taxi fleet back on the roads.
The current condition of the pedestrian remains unknown. A representative from Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where the pedestrian was taken after the incident in critical condition, said that the pedestrian had been discharged, but declined to share any further information. The San Francisco Police Department said it continues to investigate the incident.…" Read More
Hmmmm… What a relief that the pedestrian is seemingly ok enough to have been discharged! But what about the person who ran them down? Has the perpetrator of the hit-and-run been brought to justice??? Alain
For self-driving cars, the free ride is over
Andrew Hawkins, May 8, "For years, autonomous vehicles have operated in relative obscurity. With few vehicles on the road and a laissez-faire attitude among government regulators, automakers and big tech firms have been free to test — and even commercially deploy — with little oversight.
Well, those days are done. In rapid succession, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened investigations into almost all the major companies testing autonomous vehicles as well as those that offer advanced driver-assist systems in their production cars. Tesla, Ford, Waymo, Cruise, and Zoox are all being probed for alleged safety lapses, with the agency examining hundreds of crashes, some of which have been fatal.…" Read More
Hmmmm… I guess that is all good, but how many crashes are there every day and have been since before "safe @ any speed"? Further, Andrew includes a video of a vehicle that is being very careful to not collide with a contingent of unlicensed road users, which should be heartening. Instead, he suggests the Waymo is at fault for unsafe behavior. For all we know, there was a very cautious driver in that vehicle, and if there wasn't, then kudos to the software for responding safely to challenging and unusual human behavior.
Reminder: 40k die every year on our roadways. That's 40k. And a human hit-and-run -and-as-yet-apprehended driver struck the pedestrian to initiate the cascade that may put an end to Cruise (as per above). What is NHTSA doing about these tragedies? Andrew, I'd love to have you report on that. Alain
Uber Wants to Partner with AV Companies and Says Tesla FSD Looks Like a Great Product
B. Wang, May 9, "In the Q1 earnings call, Uber says Tesla FSD looks like a great product and they also said startup Wayve looks good.
Uber stated they want to partner with autonomous vehicle companies. Uber says they will provide demand for autonomous vehicles..." Read More
Hmmmm…That's how Waymo and Cruise got themselves into trouble in SF, trying to give rides to Uber users. Plus, Uber can't be allocating the most profitable or otherwise desirable rides to AV companies to the detriment of their human drivers, so the AV companies will get the leftovers. Not a great way to treat a partner. After successfully developing the AV, something that Uber spectacularly failed to do, I'm sure that any AV company can readily develop a more than competitive customer-facing app and use what they would have had to pay Uber to crush them in the marketplace. Also, the AV companies can focus entirely on serving its customers. Uber has to make its drivers happy, and their happiness is not necessarily aligned with that of its customers. Not the most admirable position for a company. Lucky for Uber, there are some things that AVs can't do so well. So, their niche market is safe, and niche. Alain
Cruise founder Kyle Vogt is back with a robot startup
K. Koresec, May 13, "Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on household chores.
Vogt announced Monday that the new startup, called the Bot Company, has raised $150 million from former GitHub CEO and investor Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabeel Hyatt, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison and Quiet Capital.
Vogt founded the startup with Paril Jain, who led the AI tech team at Tesla, and former Cruise software engineer Luke Holoubek. ..." Read More
Hmmmm… Congratulations Kyle!!! I'm so happy for you. Alain
One last C'mon man:
Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' Struggled Soon After Leaving My Driveway
E. Ludlow, May 17, "In late March, I leased a Model Y, meaning I was one of the Tesla customers offered a 30-day free trial of what the company calls Full Self-Driving, or FSD. I drove several hundred miles with this system engaged, and while I lived to tell about it and was impressed at times, I can confirm that it doesn't live up to the name. In fact, FSD tended to have trouble assisting me almost immediately after leaving my driveway.…" Read More
Hmmmm…
Unfortunately, I see little substance in this post other than cynicism that generates eyeballs for the embedded advertisers.
This is my last C'mon Man. They're not funny anymore, if, indeed, they ever were. We need to put all jokes aside and get serious. This technology, which has the real potential to improve the lives of so many people who need a ride, is in trouble. Enough with the "reporting" and testing by people who have many, many options to give themselves a ride. We've expended hundreds of billions and are not yet above zero. Cruise just paid out $8M to cover someone else's bad behavior. Has Cruise + Waymo combined revenue-to-date exceeded $8M? Alain
SmartDrivingCars Summit Evening May 29 -> May 31, 2024
Alain Kornhauser, May 5, "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
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By people and goods using public roads
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"Proof-of-Concept" (Safety Update and Last "50 feet" delivery concepts)
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"Proof-of-Market" (Arizona, California, Texas, ... rural & beyond)
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"Proof-of-Policy/Politics/Sociology" (Regulation + Opportunities for Collaboration on Safety (given anti-trust relaxation.))
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By people and goods on private property.
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"Proof-of-Concept" (Safety Update)
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"Proof-of-Market" (Return-on-Investment (RoI) focus on: Private "ways", Manufacturing, Ports, Terminals, Warehouses, Mining, Farms)
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"Proof-of-Policy/Politics/CorporateGovernance" (OSHA, Unions)
Workshop
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MOVES – Style Deployments "anywhere". (See Example)
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Design, Analysis, Simulation, Animation & Business Case
…." Read More