Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013

August 29, 2013Newsletter archive →

August 22, 2013 at 2:43 pm PT " According to a Delaware filing by Uber Technologies, it has sold stock in the fast-growing privately held transportation service to private equity giant TPG. In addition, according to sources who have seen other stock documents, Uber has also taken a major investment from Google Ventures.... The ensuing months have been fruitful. Sources said Uber is now on track to bring in about $125 million in total revenue this year, much higher than had been projected, and that number is growing quickly." Read more also Uber's Restated Certificate of Incorporation and From Google, Uber Gets Money and Political Muscle and video Without self-driving technology Uber is simply a labor intensive limousine/taxi service that bucks up against taxi & limousine commissions on one end and established black car entities on the other end. Given that the average ride on Uber is somewhere between $12.50 and $125.00/trip, indicates that Uber serves only on the order of 10,000 trips per day. While the software scales, the capital cost of the vehicles and, as of now, labor, track proportionately. Alain

By Matthew Yglesias | Posted, at 4:15 PM "... The real potential is for something quite different: ubiquitous taxis—summoned via smartphone or weird glasses—that are so cheap they make car ownership obsolete. That's the kind of social and technological revolution that could justify the lofty valuation granted to Uber. It explains why the same company that's invested in the technology to drive the cars is now investing in the technology to hail them. It's a world in which algorithms for matching cabs with passengers and user interfaces for summoning taxis will become crucial elements of everyday transportation, the way gas stations and parking lots are today. ...

Most trips, after all, are short. But the big problem with electric vehicles is that building a battery big enough for long trips is extremely expensive. In a world of vehicles for hire, this is easily solved—take light, cheap, short-range electric vehicles for the short-range trips that constitute the vast majority of driving. Save the internal combustion engines for the rare cases when they're genuinely needed.

Cities based on cheap autonomous cabs would be much greener than today's cities. Without the parking, they'd also be denser and more productive, but people wouldn't have to sacrifice their large homes. It would be a true economic game-changer. But to get there we don't just need the technology—we need the rules to allow it. Cars for hire, just like regular cars, need to be safe but shouldn't face arbitrary numerical caps or other rules designed to repress competition. We need local transportation regulation to emphasize the needs of consumers, not producers, and to encourage innovation, not fear it." Read more

I agree, the rules will be very important. Anyone with the capital to buy a fleet will be competing with Google/Uber. How to manage that gold rush of competitors will be challenging. One can't expect each of the existing car rental companies, let alone the emerging car-sharing companies to sit by and let Google/Uber get the nuggets. What is making Uber interesting today is not the "summoning" App, that's the trivial part. It is the human-to-human deals they are making with the drivers to actually deliver the transportation function. Once one removes the driver, one not only removes the labor cost, but also the human-to-human headaches associated with the carrying out of the transportation function. Now anyone with capital to invest in a fleet can be out there digging and panning. And Google won't have a monopoly either. Alberto Broggi, Adriano Alessandrini, Mercedes, Nissan and many others will be out there with the driverless technology. So, the gold rush will be very interesting to watch. I'm getting my pan and shovel ready, or better yet, producing some of the pans and shovels. Alain

"...With this feature, the E-Class, theoretically, can drive itself. But sensors in the steering wheel detect when a driver's hands aren't on the wheel. After a few seconds of hands-off driving, the car issues a visual warning in the instrument cluster, and if that isn't heeded, it sounds a subtle beep, at which point the Steering Assist is disabled and the car is no longer steered automatically back into its lane..." Read more Great!! At least we get a few seconds and the Safety Option cost $2,800! Alain

"...The automaker says the system, called "Super Cruise," uses radar and cameras to steer the car and keep it between lane lines. Also, the radar keeps the car a safe distance from cars ahead of it, and it will brake to a complete stop if necessary... With the system, people will be able to take their hands off the wheel on a freeway and let the car do the work, he said. GM is aware that the system could make drivers complacent, turning over control to the car even though the system isn't designed for that, said Charles Green, an engineer who studies driver performance with the systems. So before it gets to market, GM will have a feature that makes sure drivers are paying attention, he said..." Read more Hmm...steering isn't work. The work is the need to be constantly vigilant. What good is having a system that does the non-work for you only to then have to need another system that forces you to continue to do the real work to make sure that the first system is doing non-work properly. Go figure?? How about a system that jumps in and says: "Hey, I got this one for the time being, go ahead and relax. I'll let you know when I need you."

Alain

"...Pickrell and Pace have identified some new, likely causes of reduced VMT. Gasoline prices have risen sharply since 2005 and are much more volatile compared to the late 1990s, when it hovered at about $1.00 per gallon. "Also, young people have more education debt now, so it's harder for them to afford a car," explained Pace. "This situation is exacerbated by the difficulty of finding a job."

The decline in VMT does not appear to be a result of shifting to other modes: gains in transit, biking or walking, and teleworking each account for only about 1% of the recent decline in VMT, and e-shopping has reduced vehicle use by less than expected because it requires more truck travel to deliver purchases.

The economy's effect on VMT is seen by the fact that declines in driving for all ages mirror recent declines in the employment rate for each age group, although even employed people are driving slightly less than they did a decade ago. The sharpest declines in income since the early 2000s have been concentrated among lower-income households, whose driving habits are most sensitive to income changes." Read more Mobility is changing even without SmartDrivingCars. What is even more interesting are the slides from their presentation Alain

The car will be at the Smart Road on Tuesday, September 3, as Virginia Tech announces a partnership with developer Google

August 27, 2013

Nissan will be ready with revolutionary commercially-viable Autonomous Drive in multiple vehicles by the year 2020
Program underway in Japan to construct first dedicated, purpose-built autonomous drive proving ground
The goal is availability across the model range within two vehicle generations
Video of Nissan Announcement
Video of Interview with EVP Andy Palmer about announcement

Read more This announcement certainly raises the bar for the auto companies. First we have Mercedes introducing "Intelligent Drive" with automated lane keeping in today's 2014 S-Class, followed by Google reaffirming at last month's TRB/Stanford Vehicle Automation Conference that they will have driverless ("Level 4") cars commercially available by 2018. Now today, a major auto manufacturer, Nissan, announces that they will have "commercially-viable Autonomous Drive in multiple vehicles by the year 2020" and the NTSB head says that collision avoidance systems should be required. Next week Alberto Brioggi will show his video of his PROUD car and show that he has a car today that can drive itself. This is really getting serious. What are BMW, Volvo, Cadillac, Tesla, Ford, Subaru, Lexus, Hyundai, VW... going to do to leapfrog these initiatives? Alain

Prof Broggi's presentation is essentially the only presentation at the whole conference on Smart Driving Cars. There is a DoT workshop but it seems to be focused on connected vehicles and one panel session on Wednesday "Releasing the Steering Wheel: Learning to Let the Car Drive by Itself" Oh well! At least there is Alberto's talk and his participation in the one panel. Alain

August 20, 2013

Available for Download (15M) Slide Presentations (123M ppt)

My students and I have been conducting a quantitative assessment of the mobility implications of autonomous Taxis (aTaxis), the ultimate in Smart Driving Cars. The task was simple: How well could a truly safe fleet of self-driving cars serve the demand for personal mobility? Rather than just focus on the mobility needs of cities, or suburbs the decision was to assess the full spectrum of today's land uses. New Jersey was selected not only because we live here, but also because it embraces essentially all uses of land from extremely rural farms and preserved spaces, through a wide variety of suburban developments to both old and new high density urban living….Table 1 summarizes how each and every of the 32+ million person trips that take place on a typical weekday can be served efficiently and effectively. Short trips (a 10 minute walk or less) are served by Walking & Cycling (with Door2Door aTaxi service is provided to elderly and handicapped). All other trips are served by the appropriate combination of aTaxis and NJ Transit's existing commuter rail lines. To appropriately serve all of the 30+ million daily non-walk/cycle trips, a fleet of about 1.8 million aTaxis would be needed. (In 2010, 3.9 million cars were registered in NJ plus an additional 2.5 million trucks.) At peak hours state-wide average vehicle occupancies reach the 3.0 level while during most off-peak times average vehicle occupancies are very close to 1.0. In those off-peak times few people wish to travel between the same places at the same time so that there is very little opportunity for trips to coincidentally share an aTaxi. Because the aTaxis provide excellent demand-responsive service to and from NJTransit rail stations, many trips (almost 5 million) are best served by aTaxi <-> Rail multi-modal combinations. In fact NJ Transit's rail system plays a part in serving over 6 million trips each day, more than 20 times what it currently served today. This is a reflection of the large amount of activity that takes place within a short walk of NJT's train stations, if only there existed an efficient system, like aTaxis, to bring passengers to/from the station at the other end of the trip.

Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013

Distronic Plus system with Steering Assist maintains speed relative to traffic in front and keeps the car centered in its lane – as long as drivers keep their hands on the wheel. See Video!

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

Prof. Alberto Broggi, Univ. of Parma will present the PROUD2013 event on Sept 3, 2013 in Las Vegas, NV, as the plenary opening of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference. See the updated video!

Draft Final Report "Uncongested Mobility for All NJ"