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 [log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="6" alt="A book cover of a book
Description automatically generated" title="" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_12">Just
Published!!! Be first on your block to have one J.
https://shop.elsevier.com/books/the-real-case-for-driverless-mobility/kornhauser/978-0-443-23685-3
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
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_11">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.
1.
As we all should already know from numerous other instances:
2.
1. The cover up is worse than the crime!,
3.
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
4.
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…
5.
a. pass under any obstruction that might lay ahead and
6.
b. pass over any obstruction that might lay ahead.
7.
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.
8.
9.
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
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Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_10"> Cruise
Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars
T. Mickle and Cade Metz, , Jan. 25, “Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, said in a report on Thursday that an adversarial
approach taken by its top executives toward regulators had led to a cascade of events that ended with a nationwide suspension of Cruise’s fleet and investigations by California and federal authorities, including the Justice Department.
The roughly 100-page report was compiled by a law firm that Cruise and G.M. hired to look into whether Cruise’s executives had misled California
regulators about an October crash in San Francisco in which one of its vehicles dragged a woman 20 feet. The review found that while the executives had not intentionally misled state officials, they had failed to explain key details about the incident. .….”
Read More Hmmmm….
The NY Time’s take on the above, which I’ve encouraged you to read for yourself. Alain
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Tesla announces new $500 million Dojo supercomputer coming to
New York
L. Lambert, Jan 26, “Tesla has announced a new $500 million project to build a giant Dojo supercomputer cluster at Gigafactory New York in Bufallo.
Dojo is a new supercomputer designed from the ground up by Tesla specifically to train AI with videos.
The project suffered significant delays, but it seemed to be getting some momentum last year as the first
Dojo cluster came online in the summer. However, we also learned that Tesla let go of some of the program’s top leadership last month.
Furthermore, CEO Elon Musk described the project during Tesla’s earnings call this week as a “long shot” with a “not a high probability” of
success
Musk quickly confirmed the news, but he added that Tesla is investing even more in NVIDIA hardware:
“The governor is correct that this is a Dojo Supercomputer, but $500M, while obviously a large sum of money, is only equivalent to a 10k
H100 system from Nvidia. Tesla will spend more than that on Nvidia hardware this year. The table stakes for being competitive in AI are at least several billion dollars per year at this point”.
….” Read More Hmmmm
…. Very interesting!
Steve S. … how about going over and talking with them? Alain
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_8">Tesla
Safety Research Day
·
Staff, Jan. 19, “Join us for our first Safety Research Day and learn about Tesla's industry-leading, advanced vehicle safety technology.
Hear from the Tesla Safety Team and Lars Moravy, VP of Vehicle Engineering, about Tesla’s data-driven safety philosophy, ADAS innovation, high-voltage safety and more….” Join us for our first Safety Research Day and learn about Tesla's industry-leading, advanced
vehicle safety technology. Hear from the Tesla Safety Team and Lars Moravy, VP of Vehicle Engineering, about Tesla’s data-driven safety philosophy, ADAS innovation, high-voltage safety and more….”
Read
More Hmmmm…. It was a most interesting and informative day. I learned a lot. It is very welcomed that Tesla is
beginning to more openly share their accomplishments and to seek cooperation with others to advance safety in mobility. As noted above, more needs to be done cooperatively so that we all drive & ride more safely. Alain
·
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Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led
to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars
M. Richtel, Jan. 26, “Cellphones can track what we say and write, where we go, what we buy and
what we search on the internet. But they still aren’t being used to track one of the biggest public health threats: crashes caused by drivers distracted by the phones.
More than a decade after federal and state
governments seized on the dangers that cellphone use while driving posed and began enacting laws to stop it, there remains no definitive database of the number of crashes or fatalities caused by cellphone distraction. Safety experts say that current
estimates most likely understate a worsening problem.
The absence of clear data comes as collisions are rising. Car crashes recorded by the police rose 16 percent from 2020 to 2021, to 16,700 a day from 14,400 a day, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration. In 2021, nearly 43,000 Americans died in crashes, a 16-year high..…
In 2021, only 377 fatal wrecks — just under 1 percent — were reported as having involved a cellphone-distracted driver, according to the traffic agency. About
8 percent of the 2.5 million nonfatal crashes that year involved a cellphone, according to the highway agency’s data.
…C’Mon NHTSA! This is embarrassingly bad!...
But those figures do not capture all cellphone distraction; they include only crashes in which a police report specifically mentions such distraction.
Often, safety experts said, cellphone use goes unmentioned in such reports because it typically relies on a driver to admit distraction, a witness to identify it or, in still rarer cases, the use of cellphone records or other phone forensics that definitively
show distraction….” Read
More Hmmmm… I keep claiming that > 90% car crashes involve human mis-behavior, of which a substantial percentage,
>25% ?, involve cell phone use. But who’s counting?!. Alain
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Federal judge blocks overseas move by autonomous
trucking company
S. Ribakoff, Jan. 24, “After mulling it over for a day, a federal judge in San Diego granted a temporary restraining order to prevent a company
that develops self-driving freight truck technology from selling off its assets and moving overseas, amid claims it's trying to escape charges of misappropriating trade and national security secrets.
·
Stockholders of TuSimple Holdings, a company that develops technology for the self-driving, long-haul trucking industry, filed a lawsuit
against the company’s co-founder and other defendants claiming that they took trade secrets, some of which were deemed national security secrets by the U.S. government, and started a similar company with those secrets. ...”
Read More
Hmmmm…. How bad was TuSimple?! Was it ever worthy! Alain
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Downgraded
and Delayed
Staff, Jan. 24, “Apple has pivoted to a less ambitious design with the intent of finally bringing an electric vehicle to market.
After previously envisioning a truly driverless car, the company is now working on an EV with more limited features, people with knowledge of
the project told Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. ...”
Read
More Hmmmm…. Called it! But it wasn’t difficult. No way Apple was ever going to become a “car maker”. Alain
[log in to unmask]" align="left" hspace="12" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_4">San
Francisco sues California over ‘unsafe,’ ‘disruptive’ self-driving cars
T. Thadani, Jan. 24, “In the most aggressive attempt yet to reduce the number of self-driving vehicles in this city, San Francisco filed a lawsuit
against a state commission that allowed Google and General Motors’ autonomous car companies to expand here this summer, despite causing a pattern of “serious problems” on the streets.
The lawsuit, which has not been previously reported and was filed in December, sends a strong message from the nation’s tech capital: autonomous
vehicles are not welcome here until they are more vigorously regulated.
·
...”
Read More
Hmmmm…. This is what happens when you go into a community and fail to focus on serving folks who actually ‘need a ride’.
It seems so obvious; so simple. But No! They go in there and focus on serving folks who can readily give themselves a ride or can already get a ride that they like and appreciate. Your focus is to get them to switch and use you?? And what enticement do
you have for them besides a big “LiDaR”??? Not faster, Not easier, Not cheaper, Not safer, Not… But a “thrill ride!? A “Selfie”!? How long is that going to last?? We are seeing how short… They earned this by having a failed business case focused on the
wrong customer! Alain
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Description automatically generated" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_3">Waymo
Plans Massive Robotaxi Service Area, But Not Massive Enough
B.
Templeton, Jan. 22, “Waymo has filed a request
to the California Public Utilities Commission to expand robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles region. In the SFBA, it grows from just San Francisco to the whole peninsula, all the way to Sunnyvale but not including Marin, the East
Bay and Santa Clara/Cupertino/San Jose. The LA area includes everything north and west of Compton, but not the San Fernando valley….
To go beyond being another Uber, Robotaxi services
must convince people to give up ownership of a car (possibly the 2nd or 3rd car in a household) and replace it with use of a combination or robotaxi, robotaxi-enhanced
transit, taxi and other modes. That’s where the real money is, and where the world-changing is. ….”
Read
More Hmmmm…. Wow! How many “3 car households” are there in California? How many trips does that 3rd
car give in a day? Assume you got’em all, what do you got? Not nearly enough to show an RoI on your investment. And how are you going to entice these folks to get rid of that “3rd car”? Is it your LiDaR and Selfie again? You learned this from
your focus group meetings with 3rd car owners? They yearn for thrill rides? Wow. Did you also think that the Princeton Bubble was the ideal representative sample. I guess that California has way too many STEM folks and not enough sociology and
behavioral psychology folks. (Don’t look to Florida.)
Plus, California has “enhanced transit”? What? Where? In New Jersey we wouldn’t expect California 3rd
car owners go anywhere near transit. Whew. I’ve got to go back to school and learn. Alain
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Elon Musk: automakers don’t believe Tesla
Full Self-Driving is real
L. Lambert, Jan 25, “Elon Musk says that other automakers don’t believe Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) is “real” as Tesla tries to sell FSD
licenses.
Back in 2021, Musk did say that he
had early discussions with other automakers about licensing self-driving technology, but that didn’t lead to anything.
Last year, the CEO made an announcement that Tesla
would be open to licensing Autopilot and FSD to other automakers.
During Tesla’s Q4 conference call that followed the release of the earnings, shareholders asked Musk about talks with other automakers about
licensing FSD.
The CEO confirmed that Tesla had conversations about it with other automakers, but they don’t believe it’s “real”
Musk then called again for CEOs of car companies to engage with Tesla about licensing FSD.….”
Read More Hmmmm
…. FSD is not real, but neither is anything else that is substantially better than FSD that they could license to an OEM to put on their cars to be driven by humans. Not MobilEye, Wayno, Cruise, or the “TuSimples” of this world. What is interesting here
is that Tesla has a published “MSRP” for theirs, which puts a ceiling on MSRPs that others might place on their “FSD equivalent”. Recall… none are better, so $12K is the ceiling! Doesn’t leave much room for anyone to do an RoI given that the $12K must cover
sensors, actuators, processors, software and RoI. Alain
*****
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with white text
Description automatically generated">
6th SmartDrivingCar
Summit
May 29 (evening) ->
May 31, 2024
Princeton, NJ
Save The Date!!
********************
Previous SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast/PodCasts
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,
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
M. Nayak, Dec. 15, “Tesla
Inc.’s biggest vehicle recall ever threatens to hurt the company’s defense in several high-profile lawsuits it faces over crashes linked to Autopilot.
The automaker’s recall of 2 million cars comes after a top US auto-safety regulator found its driver-assistance program failed to ensure drivers stay attentive….Tesla’s
biggest vehicle recall ever threatens to hurt the company’s defense in several high-profile lawsuits it faces over crashes linked to Auto…”
Read More Hmmmm….
What??? Did M. Nayak actually read the NHTSA Safety recall, or just talk with ambulance chasers? Read it for yourself (below) and decide. Alain
Part
573 Safety Recall Report
Staff, Dec. 12, “The subject population includes certain MY 2012-2023 Model S that are equipped with Autosteer and were produced between October 5, 2012,
and December 7, 2023, and all MY 2016-2023 Model X vehicles, all MY 2017-2023 Model 3 vehicles and all MY 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles that are equipped with Autosteer and were produced through December 7, 2023…
Description of the Defect : Basic Autopilot is a package that
includes SAE Level 2 advanced driverassistance features, including Autosteer and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC), that drivers may choose to engage subject to certain defined operating limitations. Autosteer is an SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance
feature that, in coordination with the TACC feature, can provide steering, braking and acceleration support to the driver subject to certain limited operating conditions. Autosteer is designed and intended for use on controlled-access highways when the feature
is not operating in conjunction with the Autosteer on City Streets feature. When Autosteer is engaged, as with all SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance features and systems, the driver is the operator of the vehicle. As the vehicle operator, the driver is
responsible for the vehicle’s movement with their hands on the steering wheel at all times, remaining attentive to surrounding road conditions, and intervening (e.g., steer, brake, accelerate or apply the stalk) as needed to maintain safe operation.
…It is surprising that NHTSA requires “hands
on wheel”, rather than “hand near wheel, since Autosteer is steering, and the responsibility of the alert driver is to override Autosteer, and says nothing about “feet
near brake/accelerator,” which is needed if the alert driver is to intervene by braking or accelerating…
In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, the prominence and scope of the feature’s controls
may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse of the SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature.
Description of the Safety Risk: In certain circumstances when
Autosteer is engaged, if a driver misuses the SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature such that they fail to maintain continuous and sustained responsibility for vehicle operation and are unprepared to intervene, fail to recognize when the feature is
canceled or not engaged, and/or fail to recognize when the feature is operating in situations where its functionality may be limited, there may be an increased risk of a collision.
Description of Remedy Program : At
no cost to customers, affected vehicles will receive an
over-the-air software remedy, which is expected to begin deploying to certain affected vehicles on or shortly after December 12, 2023, with software version 2023.44.30. Remaining affected vehicles
will receive an over-the-air software remedy at a later date. The
remedy will incorporate additional controls and alerts to those already existing on affected vehicles to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged, which includes keeping their hands
on the steering wheel and paying attention to the roadway. Depending on vehicle hardware, the
additional controls will include, among others, increasing the prominence of visual alerts on the user interface, simplifying engagement and disengagement of Autosteer, additional checks upon engaging
Autosteer and while using the feature outside controlled access highways and when approaching traffic controls,
and eventual suspension from Autosteer use if the driver repeatedly fails to demonstrate continuous and sustained driving responsibility while the feature is engaged. Tesla does not plan to include
a statement in the Part 577 owner notification about pre-notice reimbursement because there are no out-of-warranty repairs related to this condition.
Identify How/When Recall Condition was Corrected in Production :
Beginning midday on December 7, 2023, Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Model Y
vehicles in production received a software release that incorporates the software remedy….”
Read More Hmmmm….
This is what I call a fantastic working relationship between a regulator and a producer to address a safety concern. 1. Identify the problem: driver misbehavior. 2 Work together to construct a software solution imposed by the regulator so that it is now
the regulator that has taken responsibility for the proposed solution. 3. Implement instantaneously using over-the-air updating. Perfect!
TL;DR Seems to me NHTSA has found driver misbehavior to be the root cause of crashes. Seems like an enormous win for Tesla with respect to past crashes,
and a safety endorsement for the system in the future via the expected near-elimination of driver mis-behavior. Insurance should follow suit by voiding coverage if the driver explicitly circumvented ay of NHTSA remedies. Alain
Want more Alain analysis (Alainalysis? J)? Here it comes!
NHTSA has a full page ad in the Sunday NY Times appealing to drivers to pay attention while driving. Actually, NHTSA should be out front and appeal to
drivers to stop mis-behaving while driving. Stop completely disregarding not only the basic rules of the road like speed limits, not tailgating, not running redlights and not drinking and driving. What is being missed here is the cooperative agreement between
NHTSA and Tesla that it is the mis-use of AutoPilot by drivers that is the safety challenge, and an agreement by Tesla to actively enforce compliance in the use of the feature. No company wants its product to be used in such a way so as to cause injury
to its customer/the public. One would also like to respect the intelligence of one’s customer. Unfortunately, the way cars have been sold over the last 70 years, if not since day one, is the freedom to go from anywhere to anywhere at any time in any way.
I am certain every reader of this newsletter can instantly conjure up any number of striking commercials showing speeding vehicles, vehicles being driven where they should not, and the teeny tiny print at the bottom of one’s TV screen admonishing “Do not attempt”
etc. The central car design principle seems to have been, nothing should be put in the way of using the car however the owner wishes to use the car. If it were not that, then every car would have an engine interlock system that required the driver to be sober
and attentive. Cars would have speed limiters that wouldn’t allow the car to be driven at speeds greater than the speed limit. We would have automated emergency braking systems that worked instead of collision warning systems. And lane keeping systems rather
than lane departure warning systems. Again, I am sure you have other ideas for improving our collective safety as drivers and pedestrians.
What happened here is that NHTSA investigated for more than 2 years numerous crashes involving AutoPilot, must have concluded that the fault in those crashes
was not that AutoPilot failed to work properly when the driver was paying attention, as is clearly articulated by the Tesla owner’s manual; else, NHTSA’s recall directive would have instructed Tesla to either fix those AutoPilot shortcomings or remove
the AutoPilot functionality from all of its vehicles as a safety hazard. NHTSA did not do that because it found that driver mis-behavior was the root cause of the crashes and worked together with Tesla to enhance AutoPilot to more actively enforce the requirement
that the driver remain attentive, and responsible, in its use of AutoPilot. Else, the feature must be turned off. This is a fantastic negotiated recall that allows Tesla to monitor the driver’s use of the system without worry about privacy issues (NHTSA made
me do it) and the taking away functionality that was rightly purchased by a customer, for misuse, as defined and specified by the ultimate safety regulator (NHTSA made me do it). Thus, no class action suit about “give me back my money because you constrained
my use …” This is great.
Plus, the icing on the cake being, Tesla trivially complied with a recall of essentially all of its cars by simply executing an over-the-air update. Something
that would have had substantial financial implications for any other car manufacturer was executed at essentially zero cost by Tesla. Moreover, NHTSA and Tesla can jointly monitor the effectiveness of the recall to ensure the greatest effectiveness at making
sure that drivers remain attentive while AutoPilot is being used. For example, if allowing 5 warnings before disabling AutoPilot for 30 days are not effective at inducing better driver behavior in the use of AutoPilot, then Tesla and NHTSA can do some A/B
testing to determine better values than {5,30}.
On could/should also test the “hands on the steering wheel” requirement versus “foot near the brake”, especially given that newer Teslas have eye trackers
that are a better indicator that a driver is paying attention and the assistance that AutoPilot tends to need for an observant driver to “hit the brakes” and slow down, rather than turn the wheel and swerve in order to avoid/mitigate a crash. I’m surprised
that NHTSA hasn’t encouraged that drivers “keep foot near brake” in addition to, or really in preference to “keep hands on wheel”.
Thanks for sticking with me J Alain
Read More Hmmmm….
See especially 19:44
Autopilot / NHTSA resolution:
Wild
Tesla Bot Update, Tax Credit Changes, Autopilot Resolution, Musk’s University
R. Mauer, Dec. 13, “
0:00 TSLA
0:51 FOMC / interest rates
4:39 Tesla bot updates
8:56 Tax credit changes
12:54 Uber incentives
14:33 Hotel adds Tesla chargers
15:58 Giga Mexico approval
16:46 Cybertrucks at Giga Texas
17:24 Carwow Cybertruck review
19:44 Autopilot / NHTSA resolution
24:16 Musk's university.” Alain
Friday,
Dec. 8, 2023
Who Will Operate Driverless
Vehicle Services
M. Sena, Dec. 6, “ I cannot say for sure whether the timing of the behave-and-clean up your mess “Mom Reminder” and the UBER announcement were
related, but I suspect they were. Together they set in motion a great deal of speculation in the ether about what it all meant for WAYMO, UBER, and EVERYTHING.
The answer is not 42.…”
Read More
Hmmmm…. Read on and watch
ZoomCast 348. The Waymo deal with Uber is very troubling for many reasons. One, is it even legal with respect to issues of collusion, price fixing? (I’m obviously not a lawyer.) More troubling is
that it reinforces the perception that Waymo is focused on giving rides to people who relish Waymo’s novelty as the attribute that makes it the winning mode in the user’s choice process. Compared to classical 5-star Uber service. It isn’t faster, cleaner,
easier, friendlier, … It is just more novel.
For Waymo, that’s fine, because they’ll gain “HumanRevenue (minus their finder’s fee to Uber) while expending RoboOperatingCosts” since
Uber, at some point, is going to have to start charging HumanRevenue (LivingWage plus Expenses and its finder’s fee) in order to remain a viable ride provider using its gig workforce.
It’s an OK deal for Uber and its gig workers because they only lose these customers as long as the novelty shines. Once that wears off,
their service level is a decisive winner, thus Waymo basically gets the “one & done” and Uber gets the repeat customer. The only thing that could upset this apple cart would be if Waymo started to use its substantial RoboOperatingCost advantage (plus the
profit margin built into Uber’s finder’s fee that Waymo could keep on its books). Competing on price, Waymo could easily keep the novelty customers well after the novelty completely wore off while remaining extremely profitable even if their profit margin
isn’t quite as big as “HumanRevenue minus RoboCosts”. Such price competition certainly wouldn’t go well for Uber nor its gig workforce.
What seems really disappointing is that Waymo isn’t focused on the societal benefit of giving rides to people for whom a ride that actually
took them from where they are to, where they want to go, when they want to go would substantially improve their lives because that quality ride is affordable and is simply not available with conventional public transport systems. This market is enormous.
It is not only a substantial portion of half of today’s rides, roughly 500 million personTrips per day, but an unknown number of “latent rides” that aren’t going to be taken today by all the people that couldn’t find a ride and stayed home. Not only is their
improved quality of life not realized, but also the stimulation to the economy by having them go to the places where they wanted to go but couldn’t because they couldn’t get a ride, let alone an affordable ride.
That’s the real market and societal opportunity, which seems to be completely irrelevant to Waymo and most media outlets. Now with Cruise
on the ropes, the two entities that can technologically unleash this opportunity are becoming a pipe dream. We may now need to have to wait for Tesla to get their driverless system to work well enough and be willing to engage and support technically a partner
that can profitably deliver safe, affordable, equitable, sustainable high-quality rides to people who need rides, plus, without compromise, those that today give themselves a ride should they so desire. It’s difficult to remain optimistic. Alain
Wednesday,
Nov. 29, 2023
Cruise
is taking a bruising
M. Sena, Nov.26, “IT HAS BEEN a rough couple of months for CRUISE LLC after it reached a high point in August this year. That was when CRUISE,
along with WAYMO LLC, received approval from the CALIFORNIA DIVISION OF MOTOR VEHICLES to operate round-the-clock paid ride-supplying services in the state with their driverless vehicles, that is, with no human primary or back-up driver in the vehicle. CRUISE’s
license was for 300 vehicles. Then the wheels began to come off the cart, figuratively speaking. On Sunday evening, the 19th of November, CRUISE founder and CEO, Kyle Vogt, announced that he was throwing in the towel. Is this the beginning of the end for CRUISE?
Or is this just the end of the beginning, as most of the Pollyannaish opinion pieces on the subject have opined?
Spoiler: It’s not the end for CRUISE, but it should
be the end for GM’s skunkworks project with CRUISE, and the start of a more serious approach toward driverless vehicles by the automobile industry and investors. How it began to unravel.…”
Read
More Hmmmm…. Read on and watch
ZoomCast 347 and let’s start picking up the pieces. Alain
Tuesday,
Nov. 21, 2023
Cruise
CEO Kyle Vogt Resigns After Weeks Of Crisis
C. Farivar, Nov.20, “Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt resigned Sunday night less than a month after the struggling robotaxi company lost
its license to operate in California and paused
operations of its autonomous fleet across the country. The subsidiary of General Motors has been widely criticized for an aggressive expansion plan that did not adequately consider safety.…”
Read More
Hmmmm…. Such a shame! How is it that a totally misbehaving hit and run driver begins a chain reaction that so changes the lives of so many innocent by-standers
by creating such a bizarre previously unimaginable situation, when everyone else is trying to do the right thing? We’d better learn as much as possible so that this situation is not repeated ever again.
Some takeaways:
1.
No real system is perfectly safe, or even comes close to being perfectly safe.
Elevators “kill” about 25 people per year in the US.
2.
This industry has to stop selling itself as the cure to the human-driven automobile’s safety challenge as the justification for not only its
existence, but more importantly, as viability that is required to achieve market dominant and worthy of investment.
1.
GM without Cruise has a better chance of making substantive progress in addressing today’s safety challenge by not allowing the cars that it
sells in its showrooms to even start if the driver is impaired by drugs or alcohol, or, if lucid, enabled to speed excessively, run red lights or stop signs, or text or otherwise get distracted with Apple CarPlay or other add-on distractions. GM (and their
competitors) has had these capabilities for years. We know why they haven’t made changes to improve safety along these lines: they wouldn’t be able to sell those cars.
2.
This reality tells us that in this democratic society where the customer, who is also the voter, is king, the positive attributes of the car’s
conventional technology overwhelmingly outweigh its safety challenges to such an extent that it is still able to completely dominate today’s rides market, both the ‘give myself a ride’, as well as the ‘give someone else a ride’ markets. It achieved this market
dominance even in competition with other mobility systems whose safety record is substantially better. Unfortunately for the also-rans is that their appeal in giving of rides nets out to be so poor in comparison, that whatever great advantage they might
have in safety isn’t sufficient to make them anything more than a niche player in the ‘giving people rides’ marketplace. That’s what
Joe Shumpeter might try to teach us as we observe the reality of today’s mobility marketplace.
3.
Furthermore, Shumpeter might suggest that for a new technology to become successful disruptive, it needs to have a cost and/or quality advantage
that is substantially better that of today’s technology. In the past, GM’s original technology did it well over the horse and buggy, the electric trolley, and the bus. It was their superior service qualities with comparable safety that enabled them to
poach most of the customers of all of the competitors, existing or imagined, to achieve ultimate market dominance. It was a
service disruption while remaining sufficiently safe and not a safety disruption while offering comparable service. Similarly today, Waymo, Cruise and maybe others in the driverless mobility space
can deliver vastly superior service at comparable safety levels to many who today need a ride. If only they focused their deployment strategies on serving those customers who would most appreciate those superior services, they might have a chance at
disrupting the rides market place and earning success.
3.
Today, about 50% of people who need a ride get a ride from someone else, be it a parent, sibling, relative, friend or stranger.
4.
For some of these rides, all is fine and current ride providers can’t be disrupted. A business professional traveling on an expense account where
affordability is not an issue, Uber/Lyft/taxis really can’t be beaten. Coming home from going almost anyplace when affordability is a personal issue, the availability of an affordable driverless ride makes all the difference in deciding to go in the first
place. That’s life-changing. That’s disruptive. Focus should be on deployments that learning and then serving the mobility needs these folks where these systems have a golden opportunity to actually earn their glory.
4.
For the other 50% that have a car that they can and do drive themselves converting them to be substantial customers will be challenging except
in situations that involve parking and affordability. Parking, other than at home, is rarely convenient and becoming less free. Providing somewhat convenient accessibility and having the certainty of a return-home service because of on-demand comparably
safe 24/7 operation can become a disruptive concept that can convince many to leave their cars at home. It ca get really expensive to ensure oneself that a return home will be available which ends up justifying an individual to drive themselves in the first
place. If one looks back to what really made turn-by-turn navigation so disruptive to using paper maps and even to those who stayed home was the fact that it could get you home from wherever it ended up taking you.
My point here is that safety is important, but being safer is NOT and should NOT be paramount for this system any more than it
has not been paramount for NHTSA to make GM and other car makers install speed governors, breathalyzers, etc. Driverless systems can deliver so much value to those who need rides from someone else as well as even those that can and do dive themselves rides
while being safe that they shouldn’t be unfairly burdened by unattainable safety hurdles.
The other enormous lesson that we all must learn, or re-learn, is that “the
cover up ends up being worse than the crime”. Alain
Cruise
Cofounder Dan Kan Resigns Following CEO’s Departure
C. Farivar, Nov.20, “On Monday morning, Cruise’s cofounder and chief product officer Dan Kan resigned from the company, less than 24 hours
after his fellow cofounder and CEO Kyle Vogt announced his resignation. …”
Read More
Hmmmm…. Final thought on this: wonder what he and Kyle will do next! Alain
Friday,
Nov. 18, 2023
UPCOMING
LAUNCH: STARSHIP'S SECOND FLIGHT TEST
Staff, Nov. 17, “The second flight test of a fully integrated
Starship is set to launch Saturday, November 18. A twenty-minute launch window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT.
A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 35 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on
X @SpaceX. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates. …” Read
More Hmmmm…. Can't wait. Here with Elizabeth and 9 of my students. :-) See
Pre-Launch ZoomCast below . Alain
Friday,
Nov. 10, 2023
Under Fire Over Robotaxi Safety, GM Halts Production Of Cruise Driverless Van
C. Farivar, Nov. 6, “Reeling from a month in which the California DMV yanked Cruise’s
permits for its self-driving robotaxis and the
company paused all operations, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt held an all hands meeting Monday to explain how the company was planning to address concerns that its autonomous vehicles are not yet safe enough to operate. One of the very first announcements: pausing
production of a fully autonomous van called the Origin, which Cruise parent company GM was planning to ramp up in the imminent future.
According to audio of the address obtained by Forbes, Vogt remarked
on the company’s recent decision to halt driverless operations across its entire autonomous vehicle fleet, telling staff that “because a lot of this is in flux, we did make the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin.”? …” Read
More Hmmmm…. Pausing is fine and likely a good decision; although, pauses necessarily incur additional cost; else,
we would all pause all of the time. What is fundamentally troubling here is that one incident that could easily be characterized as a situation in which “the good actors”, while doing everything right, unfortunately tried to do even a little more good, which
unpredictably set off a chaotic effect, well-known in the mathematics of non-linear dynamical systems as Chaos
theory.
What just happened? What have we learned? The ironies abound.
San Francisco is turning into THE “Training Set” of both what to do
and what not to do for those building AI models for “The
Real Case for Driverless Mobility” and for those struggling to do good for society.
The biggest lesson that is staring us in the face is that it is really
important for all in this business to be able to collaborate and share as much as possible and safety related information including safety scenarios and approaches to being able to safely address those scenarios. These companies should NOT be competing on
safety, because safety is a necessary condition. Unsafeness of one reflects poorly on all. The first legislation that Congress should pass of this technology should focus on anti-trust immunity to this industry related to safety. Safet is everyone’s responsibility.
We’ve benefited enormously by cooperating on safety in the airline industry. Alain
Friday,
Nov. 3, 2023
THE
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2023 ISSUE IN BRIEF
M. Sena, Oct 28, “, Oct. 25, “Two-and-a-half months after I came home to Sweden
from my May “Searching for America” trip, which took me through New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, I returned for a second tour of duty. This one was during the last two weeks in July, and it took me from Sweden to Boston, up to Canada, and back. I was carried
in cars (mostly SUVs and pick-up trucks, all ICEs), buses, planes (including the kind that land on water), boats, all terrain vehicles, and my own two feet (mostly clad in wading boots) to my many destinations. The trains got me to and from Copenhagen, my
point of departure from Europe. The main purpose of this trip was to go fishing with my good friend and fishing partner for the past forty-nine years, whom I had not seen in five years. We went to a river in Labrador where we had fished together between 1986
and 1996. We decided to give it one last try. I found that everyone I met on this trip is still making their choice of transport based on their own particular needs and desires, and not being influenced by either climate change activists or climate change
deniers. They are asking themselves what is the best transport option that satisfies the combination of lowest cost, most convenience, greatest comfort, and fastest speed of arrival, and which fits with current conditions of time of year, weather, and time
of day? I am fully aware that I didn’t need to travel to the U.S. and Canada to spend a few days fishing in the wilderness of Labrador. People do a lot of things they do not NEED to do. Do I feel better for having done it? Yes, for more reasons than I can
list or explain, even to myself. I am happy to have spent the money for this trip in a way that gives people work, and to have had the experience of seeing in person my dearest friends. What else is life for? …” Read
more Hmmmm….
Another wonderful issue, especially the lead article “The Business if Transport Systems. Enjoy reading and tune into my discussion with Michael in ZoomCast 342 Alain
Sunday,
Oct. 30, 2023
Cruise’s
San Francisco Suspension Expose People’sAbleism And Underscores Abled Privilege Enjoyed By Most
S. Aquino, Oct. 25, “ … As someone who has covered both Cruise and Waymo
for this column on multiple occasions, and especially as someone who has low vision, I fully admit to feeling frustration over the myopic viewpoint dominating this issue. It should be obvious safety is an important aspect of developing, deploying, and ultimately
riding in an autonomous vehicle. Of course people want to be as safe as possible. The problem is nobody accepts safety is but one side of the coin; there is another consideration to take into account that people are predictably—infuriatingly so—missing.
That consideration, as ever, is accessibility.
While
members of the disability community have raised safety concerns, the strident opposition by many in City Hall (and, again,
residents) to autonomous vehicles overlooks the very real, and very valid, accessibility benefits of using so-called “robotaxis.” The reality is, to claim the concerns are paramountly about safety helps obfuscate any general ignorance towards how disabled
people get around. The protestors and naysayers yell and scream about how awful companies such as Cruise are because they can—they’re able to drive their cars or walk down the street or take the bus or otherwise get here and there about town
with resistance. Their lifestyle, and more pointedly, their privilege, is such they believe there are other, friendlier, more feasible modes of transportation that ostensibly “everyone” can access in equal favor…” Read
more Hmmmm….
Thank you Forbes for publishing this perspective. Recall it was a human driver who hit the pedestrian and then drove away. Human drivers kill an average of more than 100 people every day in the USA. [see below for another recent tragedy] Alain
Sunday,
Oct. 15, 2023
SPIA
Reacts: Crisis in the Middle East
Staff, Oct. 7, “…” Read
more Hmmmm….
Another most informative panel. If you haven’t, also watch: The
Outbreak of War In Israel- A Geopolitical Update, was
given earlier this week by former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt & Israel, Daniel C. Kurtzer.
Tuesday,
Sept. 12, 2023
Waymo’s
autonomous vehicles are significantly safer than human-driven ones, says new research led by Swiss Re
Company News, Sept 6, “Waymo and Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurers, partnered
in 2022 to advance risk assessment methodologies and approaches to evaluating safety of autonomous vehicles.
Today, we’re sharing new research led by Swiss Re which shows Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are significantly safer than those driven by humans. In the over 3.8 million miles that Waymo drove without a human behind the steering wheel across San Francisco, CA
and Phoenix, AZ, there were zero bodily injury claims and a significant reduction in the property damage claims frequency.
While the research community and general public have long asked whether an autonomous driver is safer than human drivers, the industry has faced challenges in developing a robust and well-calibrated human performance benchmark for comparison. This study addresses
these challenges by establishing a comparison baseline based on liability insurance claims data.
The study compares Waymo’s liability claims data with mileage- and zip-code-calibrated private passenger vehicle (human driver) baselines established by Swiss Re. Based on Swiss Re’s data from over 600,000 claims and over 125 billion miles of exposure, these
baselines are extremely robust and highly significant.
The findings indicate that in comparison to the Swiss Re human driver baseline, the Waymo Driver — Waymo’s fully autonomous driving technology — significantly reduced the frequency of property damage claims by 76% (a decrease from 3.26 to 0.78 claims per million
miles) when compared to human drivers. Furthermore, it completely eliminated bodily injury claims, a drastic contrast to the Swiss Re human driver baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles….” Read
more Hmmmm… Compelling
findings from folks whose livelihood is focused on assessing safety. As the San Francisco deployment has demonstrated, Waymo passes the proof-of-concept “Turing Test” for safety. However, they have yet to demonstrate that they can pass a proof-of -market
test. Alain
Wednesday,
August 31, 2023
Tesla
FSD v12: Breakthrough We've Been
Waiting For?
Rob Mauer, Aug. 28, “➤ Elon
Musk livestreams Tesla’s FSD Beta v12 ➤ Tesla
compute capacity updates ➤ Hardware
4 information ➤ Highland
/ Cybertruck updates ➤ Tesla
lithium refinery progress ➤ Megapack
price reduction ➤ Piper
Sandler issues note on TSLA ➤ Calendar." Read
more Hmmmm… Very
perceptive perspective on FSDv12. Is FSDv12 close to passing Kornhauser’s “Turing Proof-of-concept” for driverless mobility? Alain
Elon
Musk Livestream of his FSD v12 drive
Brighter w/Herbert, Aug. 25, “"Elon Musk just livestreamed his Full Self
Driving of V12 around Palo Alto Ashok Elluswamy Director of AI was with him”. Read
more Hmmmm… Interesting
commentary on Elon’s LiveStream of FSDv12.. Alain
GM-backed Cruise is “just days away” from regulatory approval to begin
mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, the company’s CEO, Kyle Vogt, said at an investor conference Thursday.
Cruise first unveiled the Origin robotaxi in early 2020 as a bus-like vehicle built for the sole purpose of shuttling people around in a city autonomously. But since then, the company has been mired in a lengthy regulatory process before it can begin mass production.
The vehicle’s lack of traditional human controls means that Cruise needs an exemption from the federal government’s motor vehicle safety standards, which require vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals. The Origin has neither.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) only grants 2,500 such exemptions a year. There is legislation to increase that number to 25,000, but it is currently stalled in the Senate.
Monday,
August 21, 2023
GM
Cruise and Lidar Robotaxi’s Business Model Is Go Through $100 Billion in Losses to Try to Reach Profitable Scale
B. Wang, Aug. 15, “GM’s Cruise robotaxi service has expanded from 70 to 300
robotaxis operating in San Francisco and will soon expand to Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin and Dubai. GM Cruise had increasing losses of $561 million in the first quarter of 2023. This will be over $2 billion in losses in 2023. GM Cruise will having increasing
billions in net losses until they reach profitable scale. IF GM Cruise grows revenue by 1000 to 2000 times (100,000% to 200,000%) by 2030 and achieves operational and financial efficiency then it would become very profitable. Robotaxi’s must continue to undercut
Uber, taxi and public transit pricing to get the market share. This will take perhaps $100 billion or much more cumulative losses to finally reach profitability.
Waymo financials is in Google Other Bets and were a lot of the Other Bet losses
of $4.8 billion in 2020 and $5.2 billion in 2021 and $6B in 2022. Morgan Stanley analysts valued Waymo at $175 billion in 2018, $105 billion in Sept 2019 and the Waymo valuation
estimate in 2023 is $30 billion….” Read
more Hmmmm… All
the more reason that focusing on serving the folks whom Uber/Lyft serve amounts to chasing the wrong customers. Those customers are simply too diffuse spatially and too needy to justify their high price. Being marginally cheaper (~20% discount) isn’t sufficiently
disruptive to expand this customer base and is inconsequential to the bulk of valued ride-hailing customers - those taking longer trips who tip well. Even if Cruise & Waymo got’em all, the financials aren’t pretty. Too few, too needy to end up contributing
anywhere near enough to have any hope for profit, even after bankruptcy, let alone an RoI on the initial investment.
Proof-of-market only makes sense when the fundamental advantages of driverless’
on-demand, spatial land temporal flexibility can be leveraged to offer really good mobility at a very low price within sufficiently concentrated areas to people who need a ride within that concentrated area and are willing to put a little shoe leather into
the game.
Such market disruptions happen every day in even not-so-tall buildings.
Just think: if getting around in tall buildings required a “ride-hailing” service model, we would have no tall buildings. You’d need an app, an elevator operator, a rating system, layers of public oversight, … but, you could go directly from the front door
to your room… maybe??? No reason why the elevator service (easily accessible pick up and drop off, on-demand 24/7, casual rid-sharing attendant/driver-free service) model can’t be enormously disruptive in attracting the loyalty of the vast number of people
who need a ride and, also, to the many who find themselves forced into giving themselves a ride and even some who can readily give themselves a ride.
In case I haven’t been clear, the ride-haling service model is not a
sufficiently disruptive business model to afford the investment that driverless requires. Had it been easy to do driverless and the Elaine Herzberg crash had not occurred, then maybe Uber/Lyft would be financial darlings. Unfortunately, driverless has proven
to be really tough and Uber/Lyft are but taxis with a really nice app, but are forever burdened with providing a living wage to an individual who services but one rider at a time, not only for that ride, but also the time waiting around for that rider and
the time getting to that rider. The driver has very little opportunity to be more productive, since, apparently, ride-sharing destroys ride-hailing’s service concept to an extent that is greater than can be restored by a cheaper price to the valued ride-hailing
customers. Thus, no ride sharing, Moreover, the non-constant demand throughout the day induces a substantial amount dead time further challenging driver productivity. Thus, as with taxis and limos, Under/Lyft ride hailing can’t be less substantially less
expensive than taxis/limos and given the expected returns and life-styles of the Silicon Valley inventors of ride-hailing it is not the right disruptive business model for driverless. The elevator business model of making it easy for anyone to get a ride
any time from and to many places, with or without others, no app required and is such a good way to go that those benefiting from that equitable accessibility might be willing to pitch in an make it even free because in the end it is so inexpensive to deliver.
Now that’s disruptive!
If you want to learn more about the wrong business model for driverless,
see Brian being interviewed in Tesla
Expert: Why Cruise and Waymo Will Go 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
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