2014-03-30

March 30, 2014Newsletter archive →

Introduced by Senator Monning, Feb. 12, 2014 "... the bill would require a manufacturer of any new motor vehicle sold or leased in this state on or after January 1, 2016, that generates or collects vehicle information, as defined, to make certain disclosures to the registered owner regarding the generation and collection of that information. The bill would require the manufacturer to provide the registered owner of the vehicle with access to the vehicle information and the ability to securely transmit that information to a 3rd party selected by the registered owner, as specified. The bill would prohibit a manufacturer from limiting, impairing, or otherwise restricting, by any means, the ability of the registered owner to access, use, or transmit his or her vehicle information, and would further prohibit the manufacturer from taking any adverse action against the registered owner for accessing or using or transmitting his or her vehicle information, as specified. The bill would prohibit vehicle information from being downloaded, transmitted, or received by a person other than the registered owner, except as specified..." Read more

By Jeff Green and Keith Naughton Feb 24, 2014 " ...

Peak Car is at odds with the ambitious expansion plans of global automakers, which IHS says are gearing up to produce more than 120 million vehicles by 2016 -- almost 50 percent more than last year's worldwide sales mark of 82 million. The dynamic also threatens the business plans of parts producers, suppliers of raw material and oil companies.

Driving this upheaval is a rapidly emerging reality: The vehicle that ushered in an unparalleled era of personal mobility in the last century is, in many cases, no longer the most convenient conveyance, particularly as more of the world's population migrates to big cities....

There's a counterargument to predictions that sales could peak: Chinese consumers continue to have a voracious appetite for automobiles, as more of the country's 1.3 billion people climb the economic ladder and many demand the freedom and status a car conveys. China helped drive global auto sales up 46 percent since 2000, and in 2009 the country surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest auto market. Chinese consumers bought 22 million vehicles last year, a mark that automakers and analysts forecast will hit 30 million by 2020....

Ultimately, urban (and sub-urban dwellers, Alain) will order a ride to work on their phones, get picked up by a driverless car and whisk through traffic controlled by satellites and sensors that get them to the office safely and quickly, said Thilo Koslowski, auto analyst for researcher Gartner Inc. of Stamford, Connecticut. U.S. regulators said this month they've begun working on rules to let vehicles communicate via wireless chips while on the road.

For the world's automakers and suppliers, that means making cars won't be enough anymore, Ryan said. They have to transform into transportation-service providers that cater to consumers who don't want the hassle and expense of owning a car and instead just want to rent one that comes when summoned (they actually do that today with their fleet sales and subsidiaries in that space, Alain)..." Read more

Hmm...Although I almost put this in the half-baked section because of some of the numbers, for example... car-sharing => a car replacement of 32 personal cars. That can't happen even with ride-sharing & car-sharing. Probably off by almost a factor of 10. What is not discussed is the role of walking as a trip mode in megacities as well as the whole concept of mobility as an element of quality of life in megacities. It is certainly different than "Levittown".

The key is the average number of non-walking trips per day to provide a desirable quality of life as a function of "urban form" ranging from rural to megacity centers. Once known, then one can begin to assess the transportation supply that best enables that urban form. Alain

"...millennials, with their relative propensity for urban lifestyle components (whether they live in cities or in suburbs), dexterity with technology, while starting careers during economically constrained times can leave a lasting impact on society...." Read more

by Wendell Cox 03/20/2014 "The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is out with news of higher transit ridership. APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy characterizes the new figures as indicating "a fundamental shift going on in the way we move about our communities." Others even characterized the results as indicating "shifting consumer preferences." The data shows either view to be an exaggeration. .." Read more

JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Posted March 22 "... That process began Tuesday, when the DMV held an initial public hearing in Sacramento to puzzle over how to regulate the vehicles that haven't been fully developed yet.

Among the complex questions officials sought to unravel:

How will the state know the cars are safe?

Does a driver even need to be behind the wheel?...

California's law requires autonomous vehicles to log records of operation so the data can be used to reconstruct an accident.

But the cars "must not become another way to track us in our daily lives," John M. Simpson of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog said at the hearing. Simpson called out Google, saying the Internet giant rebuffed attempts to add privacy guarantees when it pushed the 2012 legislation mandating rules on testing and public operation....

Ron Medford, Google's director of safety for its "self-driving car" project, suggested that manufacturers should be able to self-certify that their cars are safe. He cautioned that it would get complicated quickly if the state tried to assume that role....

Representatives of automakers suggested they shouldn't be asked to guarantee the capability of owners. John Tillman of Mercedes-Benz said the DMV could test owners on basics such as starting and stopping the automated driving function..."Read more

Hmm... You Tube of 3/11/14 meeting (All 4 hours worth). This is the real information about the meeting. A bad video of a bad user taken by Jerome Lutin :-) Alain

By Kellie Woodhouse, Mar. 21, 2014 "Merge lanes, roundabouts, gravel roads, a four-lane highway and street lights might feel like the "real world," but the University of Michigan knows better.

These are just a few of the elements in a $6.5 million track the school is building to simulate everyday driving conditions for the testing of connected and automated vehicles.

U-M's eight-member Board of Regents approved the track's design during a March 20 meeting at the Michigan Union. The architectural firm Mannik Smith Group designed the facility..." Read more

Hmm... It is great that M has found $6.5M to simulate reality for "connected and automated" vehicles. This is indeed better than the classical around & around test tracks; however, simulated environments are not real and it seems to continue Michigan's bias towards connected rather than automated. It is a good start, but likely insufficiently "real". At some point, the industry is going to have to bite the bullet and do what the disruptor, Google, is doing: Test in the real world and focus on automation. The marketplace will gladly do the communications. (CoPilot|Live has used V2I to enhance turn-by-turn navigation for almost 10 years now and delivered it to the marketplace without a penny of public money. :-) )

With respect to accelerating the evolution of NHTSA's Level 2 through 4 what may well be needed is the creation of an environment between "simulation" and "full reality", a kind of "half-way house". CityMobile2 is doing this effectively for low speed pedestrian environments. Princeton University is investigating the creation of such an environment for cars, buses and trucks. More later. Alain

Jason Kobler, March 27. "...the vehicle, called the Navia, isn't exactly a car—it's more of a trolley or shuttle and looks a bit like an oversized golf cart. It's made by a French company called Induct and is already operating at Oxford University, in city centers in Singapore, and in a couple small European cities such as Strasbourg, France. ... The all-electric Navia holds eight passengers and can go as fast as 28 mph, but it normally operates at about 12 mph in city centers...The Navia costs $250,000..." Read more

From Alan Pisarsky:

Sorry Alain have to disagree re transit. The APTA hyperbole was picked up without questioning by most of the press and printed verbatim from the press release. There has been a strong counter blast to what is basically fraudulent stuff. See the article below (linked). There have been other such commentary. In my interview in USA Today I told them that the share of transit for work in '60 was 12% now under 5%. All of the net growth was in NY. In my new Commuting in America series I note that the share of total national transit in NY metro area continues to rise.

I note that the Wash Metro doesn't recommend using cell phones in metro because of the theft problems. Alan (without the i!) Read more

noon UTC-5 (Eastern Daylight Time (NYC))

"Don't miss the opportunity to learn the technical specifications and features of the 3DV, a stereoscopic vision system able to provide the full 3D reconstruction of the scene framed by its two embedded cameras. Thanks to VisLab's proprietary algorithms developed throughout the years, 3DV is able to provide a dense 3D map of the surroundings (a 3D point cloud of up to 3 millions 3D points per second) in real time thus a quick interpretation of the environment detecting and tracking obstacles and estimating the terrain surface and slope.... Read more You should tune into this one! Alain

Sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society

http://www.auvsi.org/avs2014/register

March 21, 2014

By BILL VLASIC and MATT APUZZO MARCH 19, 2014 "Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, talked in impassioned tones on Wednesday about Toyota's behavior in hiding safety defects from the public, calling it "shameful" and a "blatant disregard" for the law. A $1.2 billion criminal penalty, the largest ever for a carmaker in the United States, was imposed. Read more

March 14, 2014

By DANIELLE IVORY and HILARY STOUT MARCH 13, 2014 "As lawmakers press General Motors and regulators over their decade-long failure to correct a defective ignition switch, a new review of federal crash data shows that 303 people died after the air bags failed to deploy on two of the models that were recalled last month...Read more

March 7, 2014

A.L. Kornhauser, et al March, 2014 ".... Examined are the rail ridership opportunities that NJ Transit (NJT) might enjoy if autonomous Taxis (aTaxis) were available to readily bring customers to or from its rail stations. Such collection and distribution services would not only shower NJT with new customers but they would enable NJT to redevelop its parking facilities to more profitable "Transit Village" uses. Read more

February 28, 2014

Issue 641 Feb 2014 Scott Le Vine, Centre for Transport Studies: "...Autonomous cars, driverless cars, automated cars – whatever you call them (and yes, it does make a difference) they are the hot topic in transport today. Carmakers are investing millions of pounds in research & development, mock towns are being built to test automation concepts, fact-finding hearings are taking place, laws are being passed – even international treaties are being re-opened..." Read more This is a lead/summary of the next item. Alain

February 21, 2014

BY Sarah Silbert @sarahsilbert February 20th, 2014 at 2:25PM ET "Google's just announced Project Tango, a 5-inch Android smartphone prototype equipped with Kinect-like 3D sensors and other components to track motion and map your surroundings. ..." Read more

February 14, 2014

Eric Jaffe Jan 13, 2014 "...The problem with buying the drink today, says Kornhauser, is that the labor cost of on-demand taxi service is enormous. As a result, we buy the bottle just in case we want a drink. Driverless cars change the whole equation. Read more

February 9, 2014

I prefer to call this: Volvo's "Texting Machine" concept video. It demonstrates very clearly that it is the "NHTSA Level 3" feature that will be needed to make the car as good as transit; otherwise everyone is simply going to take transit. Who cares about far the walk, how long the wait and the ride and the crowded conditions. I can be in my own world doing what I want to do during that whole process. Without Level 3 I have to be off the grid focused on keeping the hulk between two white lines and not running into things. Transit wins. Play video Alain

February 4, 2014

European Commission agreed upon the demonstration schedule Adrianon Alessandrini

By far the BEST Super Bowl Commercial Play video Alain

January 26, 2014

by Emily Badger, Jan 17, 2014 "...The great promise of autonomous cars is not that we could each own one in our own driveway – the 21st century's version of owning your own Model T, or your own color TV, or your own bulky Macintosh – but that no one would need to own one at all..." Read more In fact read the whole thing as well as the 266 Comments.

January 17, 2014

by James M. Anderson, Nidhi Kalra, Karlyn D. Stanley, Paul Sorensen, Constantine Samaras, Oluwatobi Oluwatola

This report is excellent

January 6, 2014

Jan. 2, 2014 "Accident rates will plunge to near zero for SDCs, although other cars will crash into SDCs, but as the market share of SDCs on the highway grows, overall accident rates will decline steadily". Self-driving cars (SDC) that include driver control are expected to hit highways around the globe before 2025 and self-driving "only" cars are anticipated around 2030, according to an emerging technologies study on Autonomous Cars from IHS Automotive, driven by Polk. Read more

December 27, 2013

2014-03-30

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Half-baked stuff that probably doesn't deserve your time:

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