Friday, Nov. 14, 2025
17th edition of the 13th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
Inside XPENG IRON Robot: Lifelike Moves, Solid-State Power, and a 2026 Mass-Production
Staff, Nov. 14, “XPENG’s IRON just turned a launch into a legend: after viewers claimed “there is a person inside,” the CEO cut open the robot on stage to show metal, actuators, and wiring. Beyond the viral moment, IRON pairs 82 degrees of freedom with 2,250 TOPS of compute and a solid-state battery to bring lifelike motion into human spaces. Watch More Hmmmm… Dr. Chenyi Chen*16 was my Special Seminar guest in my class last Wednesday. He is one of the key developers of what I suggested they name “Irene” instead of Iron. A much more appropriate name for human-oriented services that this humanoid could readily deliver to those that need home assistance as well as then many who need a ride. I’ll include his slides and videos in the next SDC. Alain
The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
Narrated by Fred Fishkin, Available now
Published in 2024 (but still relevant)!!! Go to Amazon.com…
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 402 / PodCast 402 w/ Alex Roy
F. Fishkin, Nov. 13, “ The past, present and future of self-driving! Entrepreneur, investor and Cannonball Run legend Alex Roy dives in with a reprise of his presentation at this month’s Florida AV conference. Join Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that and more: Tesla may pay owners of vehicles to utilize their compute power while not in use and Musk says FSD may soon allow texting while driving. And congratulations to ITN America’s 30 years of mobility service. Tune in and subscribe!
- 0:00 Open and welcome to Alex Roy
- 2:40 Alex Roy presentation on the Past, Present & Future of Self Driving
- 4:54 Alex presents The True History of Self Driving from Da Vinci to today
- 10:47 Could in vehicle humanoid robots be helpful
- 19:50 from DARPA on
- 31:30 In 2025 Waymo scales operations and Tesla robotaxis launch
- 34:00 Roy’s Razor -the test of what really is self-driving
- 40:30 SAE Levels should be done away with
- 44:55 A focus on affordability?
- 48:20 Tesla owners could be paid for use of vehicle compute power for AI
- 50:25 Elon Musk is saying drivers using FSD may soon be able to text and drive
- 54:55 Congratulations on ITN America’s 30 years of providing rides
November 10-12, 2025
Portland, Maine
Tesla releases detailed safety report after Waymo co-CEO called for more data
S. O’Keane, Nov. 14, “Tesla has published the most detailed look at the performance and relative safety of its advanced driver-assistance software, just a few weeks after Waymo’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana at TechCrunch Disrupt called on companies to release more data.
On a new section of its website, Tesla claims that in North America, owners using the company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software are driving around 5 million miles before a major collision and around 1.5 million miles before a minor collision.…” Read more Hmmmm… Excellent. Be sure to look at Tesla’s new section of their website. Impressive, as was Waymo’s presentation by Matt Walsh at NJ Senate’s Transportation Committee Hearing of the last Monday. (I brought 5 of my students with me) (See also Brad’s take).
My take: Both Waymo and Tesla have achieved impressive safety performances that, in my opinion, obligates us to use these technologies to fill the enormous mobility gap that exists for those for which their best available choice is to walk. If the walk it too far, then they don’t go. This latent demand for high-quality mobility is non-trivial (again IMO). My educated guess: minimum 10% of today’s personTrips (~1B/day in USA, thus >100M/day) and could be as high as 20% (~200M/day). With that much need by so many, who can argue that we shouldn’t be doing it today for whatever part of that “Min 100M/day” that can be done safely and deliver to them fundamental improvements in their quality-of-life that “not having to walk it” can be readily affordably delivered. That’s what Elizabeth and I are focused on making happen. Alain
Zwicker Bill to Establish Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Program Advances
Staff, Nov. 10, “The Senate Transportation Committee advanced legislation sponsored by Senator Andrew Zwicker that would require the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (NJ MVC), in consultation with the Department of Transportation (NJDOT), to establish a three-year pilot program allowing testers to operate fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the state.
“New Jersey has the opportunity to lead the nation in developing safe and efficient autonomous vehicle technology that will revolutionize how we travel,” said Senator Zwicker (D-Middlesex/Mercer/Somerset/Hunterdon). “By initiating this program, we will lay the groundwork for massive improvements to our transit infrastructure, building off of years of autonomous vehicle research to improve public safety and expand access to reliable transportation.” .…” Read more Hmmmm… The bill needs a lot of amendments, but it is a framework for us to get going in New Jersey to actually deliver the safe, affordable high-quality mobility that can substantially improve the quality-of-life of so many in New Jersey so desperately need. 65% of household in Trenton have access to one or fewer cars. 30% have access to none. NJ Transit does a good job for some, but simply can’t for most. Its paratransit services cost them $90/ride in 2023. Scaling that with current technology is simply a non-starter. We can easily begin by filling that void. Again, that’s what Elizabeth and I are focused on making happen. Alain
Elon Musk sees paying Tesla owners to create massive shared AI inference capacity
S. Schultz, Nov. 10, “Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk suggested last week at the company’s annual meeting that customers could be paid $100 to $200 a month to allow Tesla (TSLA) to do AI inference workloads when they are not using their vehicle.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas crunched the numbers on the potential implications of the shared AI workload scenario.
“There are more than 300 million light vehicles on the road in the United States and over 1.2 billion light vehicles in the global car ‘parc.’ If one were to assume 100% of these vehicles had 1 NVIDIA Blackwell GPU equivalent of compute power (currently around 9,000 TOPS) of inference compute. That’s over 300 million Blackwells in the U.S. alone. 1.2bn globally - a figure we estimate could reach 2bn over the next 15 years,” wrote Jonas.…” Read more Hmmmm… Interesting! But someone has to pick up the tab for the electricity. “Split it” is obvious. Let me use FSD in return am I’m all in. Alain
T. Chang, S. Dock & R. Castignoli, Oct. 10, “As of today we have SF, Austin and DC, three distinct AV deployment contexts and policy frameworks, each with their own set of challenges. Join us for a panel with representation from each of these cities, to see how Cities and AVs can best be prepared to ensure better mobility for all. What are the key debates and challenges in each city? What are the different policy contexts and different degrees of authorities?” View more Hmmmm… Excellent (especially Austin). Alain
Are we there yet? Assessing hazards for self-driving - Missy Cummings
Jinhua Zhao, Missy Cummings, Nov. 3, “As of today we have SF, Austin and DC, three distinct AV deployment contexts and policy frameworks, each with their own set of challenges. Join us for a panel with representation from each of these cities, to see how Cities and AVs can best be prepared to ensure better mobility for all. What are the key debates and challenges in each city? What are the different policy contexts and different degrees of authoritiesTen years ago, cities were energized by the promise of autonomous vehicles. In 2015, the buzz was loud. Cities ran pilots, hosted workshops, and published white papers. But the tech wasn’t ready. Cities grew disillusioned. Now the tech is here, and at scale. But most U.S. cities are not prepared. How should they? Please join Jinhua Zhao, Kara Kockleman and Robin Chase for a panel discussion on AV offering distinct solutions for mobility problems, Hell vs. Heaven of AV, Human agency in AV deployment, AV as a political excuse to introduce challenging policies, States Write the Laws but Cities Bear the Consequences, Integrating AV and Public Transit and crowdsourcing ideas - we will actively engage the audience to contribute your ideas With increasing self-driving car pilot deployments in the US and abroad, there is a tendency to claim that such operations are solved and ready for commercialization. However, self-driving trucking has experienced several setbacks and presently no self-driving cars are commercially operating on interstates. In addition, recent deployments have highlighted issues in remote supervision of self-driving cars, which is a back-stop risk management tool for all companies. This talk will highlight recent wins in self-driving but also areas of high risk and propose a technology roadmap to mitigate these risk.” View More Hmmmm… Good discussion on the Risk side; however, essentially no mention of the Benefit side. If no Benefit, then why incur any Risk. Unfortunately, reality seems to be very stingy in its delivering of Benefits without incurring any Risk. (I’m not actually aware of any ☹) And I agree, if the Benefit the only hole in the mobility landscape is getting to “Newark Airport”, then the Risks are really high relative to that hurdle. Some of us see way bigger holes in that landscape for which the Risks are containable ODD-wise such that the risks associated with filling of enormous voids are not really that great and more than worth it. So, as with most things… it depends. Both may be right. In one case… are you kidding! In the other, we really should do it!! Alain
Waymo’s driverless vehicles coming to 3 more American cities
S. Robles, Nov. 3 “….The company said on Monday that it has been testing its vehicles in the winter weather of Detroit to improve its driving on snow and ice.…” Read more Hmmmm… Interesting! How often does it snow in Detroit? Do they have snow plows? Is the objective that it must work 24/365.25 before a place is worthy enough to be served? Did NHTSA impose that high of a bar?
Let’s see, last year there were fires in Santa Monica for a while, yet they chose to provide service there without solving the “driverl;ess through fire problem” . In 2025 Buffalo had only 29 days of measurable snowfall (0.1” or more) and only 11 more days with “flakes observed but no accumulation). So Waymo could serve Buffalo really well throughout 24 hours of more than 320 days each year with what apparently works in Santa Monica, yet isn’t clamoring to do that? Excuse can’t really be snow! Alain
GM stuns with most advanced self-driving cars yet that blow Tesla out of the water
Ben Shimkus, Oct. 22, “On Wednesday, GM announced plans to debut ‘eyes-off’ self-driving in 2028 in its high-rolling Cadillac Escalade IQ. .…. “ …” Read more (at your own peril) Hmmmm… Wow! Total product placement by GM. Did Ben write any of this??? Not possible. First of all, can anyone believe what any company is announcing they will do in 2028. Will GM even last until 2028? Does the Daily Mail contain anything but paid placement noise. 23.1M facebook followers all derived from one bot. C’Mon Daily Mail. This isn’t even funny. Alain
HandyRides Update
Alain Kornhauser, Oct. 12, “Continuing to upgrade our AI inspired Real-time Operations Management Information Systems.” Hmmmm… Increased fleet-size by 50% 🙂. Alain
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