2016-07-21

July 21, 2016Newsletter archive →

E. Musk, July 20 "...Integrate Energy Generation and Storage

Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app....

Expand to Cover the Major Forms of Terrestrial Transport...

With the Model 3, a future compact SUV and a new kind of pickup truck, we plan to address most of the consumer market. A lower cost vehicle than the Model 3 is unlikely to be necessary, because of the third part of the plan described below.

What really matters to accelerate a sustainable future is being able to scale up production volume as quickly as possible. That is why Tesla engineering has transitioned to focus heavily on designing the machine that makes the machine -- turning the factory itself into a product....In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla...With the advent of autonomy, it will probably make sense to shrink the size of buses and transition the role of bus driver to that of fleet manager. Traffic congestion would improve due to increased passenger areal density by eliminating the center aisle and putting seats where there are currently entryways, and matching acceleration and braking to other vehicles, thus avoiding the inertial impedance to smooth traffic flow of traditional heavy buses. It would also take people all the way to their destination. Fixed summon buttons at existing bus stops would serve those who don't have a phone. Design accommodates wheelchairs, strollers and bikes.

Autonomy

As the technology matures, all Tesla vehicles will have the hardware necessary to be fully self-driving with fail-operational capability, meaning that any given system in the car could break and your car will still drive itself safely. It is important to emphasize that refinement and validation of the software will take much longer than putting in place the cameras, radar, sonar and computing hardware.

Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators....I should add a note here to explain why Tesla is deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future. The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability....It is also important to explain why we refer to Autopilot as "beta"....

Sharing

When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination. You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on... Read more

July 18, "Germany plans new legislation to require manufacturers of cars equipped with an autopilot function to install a black box to help determine responsibility in the event of an accident, transport ministry sources told Reuters on Monday...Under the proposal from Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt, drivers will not have to pay attention to traffic or concentrate on steering, but must remain seated at the wheel so they can intervene in the event of an emergency.

Manufacturers will also be required to install a black box that records when the autopilot system was active, when the driver drove and when the system requested that the driver take over, according to the proposals..." Read more

R. Premack, July 20 "Not surprisingly, playing Pokémon Go while driving is a poor idea. That was demonstrated early Monday in Southeast Baltimore. Three police officers were standing outside their patrol car, parked nearby Patterson Park. About 3:30 a.m., according to body-camera footage, a Toyota RAV4 moving down the street side-swiped the parked police car..." Read more

M. Durr, July 18, "The Michigan Strategic Fund is closing in on a deal to buy the former Willow Run Powertrain site to convert it into a connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) research facility in Ypsilanti Township.

RACER Trust has agreed to sell the 311-acre site to the fund for a purchase price of $1.2 million and has committed to making other contributions toward making the center a reality. In turn, the MSF would allow the American Center for Mobility to develop and operate a facility where testing and research for CAV technology will be conducted..." Read more

K. Fehrenbacher, July 20, "Mark Rosekind, the administrator of auto safety regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ...Most importantly, he forcefully said, "No one incident will derail the Department of Transportation and NHTSA from its mission to improve safety on the roads by pursuing life-saving technologies." Read more

D. Cusack, July 19, "...We have run across only one policy so far that bills itself as a "Driverless Car" policy. Written by Trinity Lane Insurance Company (a Malta-based insurer) for the British market, it expressly agrees to cover the driver if the autonomous systems fail, or if the owner failed to install updates to the system software in a timely manner....Read more

J. Pavlus, July 18, "...Stephen Casner, a research psychologist in NASA's Human Systems Integration Division, puts it more bluntly: "News flash: Cars in 2017 equal airplanes in 1983."...Here are three things about how humans and automated vehicles behave together that NASA has known for years...THE LIMITS OF BEING "ON THE LOOP"... THE LIMITS OF ATTENTION...AUTOMATION AND AUTONOMY: NOT THE SAME THING..." Read more

B. Solomon, July 18, "...The milestone comes less than six months after Uber hit one billion cumulative rides at the end of 2015–a feat that took Uber more than five years to accomplish....Comparing Uber's numbers to those of its competitors is tricky. U.S.-only competitor Lyft told FORBES that in April it did 11 million rides, suggesting an annual trip run rate likely under 200 million, only 10% of Uber's probable yearly goal. To be fair, many of Uber's rides came outside the U.S. where Lyft doesn't operate....

This time, Uber declined to single out one ride as the one that pushed the company over two billion. Instead, Kalanick says 147 rides in 16 different countries began on the moment of 4:16:48 AM GMT on June 18. 54 of those trips were in China, 46 in the U.S., 13 in Mexico, and seven each in Brazil and India...." Read more

R. Mitchell, July 21, "...Some of the most enthusiastic proponents of autonomous vehicles and features are worried that autopilot — not the technology itself, but the very name, which some find misleading — might slow down the evolution of the driverless car. They say that would be a shame, as autonomous technologies are designed to make driving safer by preventing minor fender-benders as well as reducing the number of traffic fatalities. ..." Read more

http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/

K. Estiler, July 18, "Mercedes-Benz struck the fairway with a lavish concept golf cart last week and just recently, the German automobile manufacturer introduced its Future Bus that is seemingly a game-changer in the burgeoning world of public transportation. The kernel of this latest concept is Mercedes's CityPilot — an operating system for autonomous driving. The mechanization involves a network of various cameras that are placed all around the bus, GPS as well as two distinctive radar systems. The Future Bus works exactly how a normal bus would except it doesn't require a driver to help it traverse through city streets—touting streetlight recognition and the ability to stop and unload passengers by itself. However, there is a driver seat and wheel just in case human intervention is needed.(emphasis added) ..." Read more

T. Knox, July 18, "An advocate for integrated public transportation has started a petition urging Columbus to include light rail and other mass transit in its transportation plans.

Transit Columbus wants local leaders to not overly rely on driverless cars and other technologies proposed in its Smart City Challenge bid..." Read more

July 16. "...CEO Elon Musk, in a Twitter post Thursday night, said Tesla is working on improvements to the radar system....Experts say this means that the radar likely overlooked the tractor-trailer in the Florida crash...." Read more

July 14, 2016

S. Musil, July 12, "The most recent crash involved a Model X near the small town of Whitehall, Montana, on Sunday morning, according to the Detroit Free Press. Neither the driver nor the passenger was injured in the single-vehicle crash, the Montana Highway Patrol told the newspaper....The car failed to detect an obstacle in the road, according to a thread posted on the Tesla Motors Club forum by someone who said they're a friend of the driver. The thread included photos showing the damage to the vehicle.

Tesla said Tuesday that it appears the driver in the crash was using the system improperly.

"The data suggests that the driver's hands were not on the steering wheel, as no force was detected on the steering wheel for over 2 minutes after autosteer was engaged (even a very small amount of force, such as one hand resting on the wheel, will be detected)," a Tesla spokesman said in a statement. "This is contrary to the terms of use that are agreed to when enabling the feature and the notification presented in the instrument cluster each time it is activated.

"As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel. He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway," the spokesman said. He added that the Autopilot feature was being used on an undivided mountain road despite being designed for use on a divided highway in slow-moving traffic....Read more

Editorial Board, July 11, "A recent fatal crash in Florida involving a Tesla Model S is an example of how a new technology designed to make cars safer could, in some cases, make them more dangerous. These risks, however, could be minimized with better testing (

Such warnings aren't sufficient, though; some Tesla drivers, as shown in videos on YouTube, have even gotten into the back seat while the car was moving. Such reckless behavior threatens not just the drivers but everyone else on the road, too. (Absolutely!)... If that system (V2V) had been in place, Mr. Brown might have survived. (Sure, but Mr Brown would have had to wait more than his normal expected life span before that system would have been adopted by more than 70% of all vehicles for it to have better than a "coin flip" chance of helping him. What would have helped Mr. Brown is if the Automated Emergency Braking system worked on his Tesla, or if the truck driver had seen him coming (not become distracted) and had not "failed to yield". Federal officials could take lessons from the history of airbags and the lack of strong regulations. (This is a VERY appropriate and relevant lesson!)... The agency does not yet have regulations for driverless cars or cars that have driver assistance systems. But when officials do put rules in place, they will have to update them regularly as they learn about how the technology works in practice. Automation should save lives. But nobody should expect these vehicles to be risk-free. (This is very wise. They should also immediately focus on Automated Emergency Braking systems which are the foundation of any Self-driving or Driverless systems.) Read more

On May 7, 2016 at about 4:40pm EDT, there was a crash between a Tesla and a Class 8 Tractor-Trailer. The accident is depicted in the Diagram from the Police Report: HSMV Crash Report # 85234095. (1) Google Earth images from the site.
The driver of the Tesla was Joshua Brown. "No citations have been issued, but the initial accident report from the FHP indicates the truck driver "failed to yield right-of-way."" (2)
Hmmm....No Citations??? Did the truck have a data recorder? Was the truck impounded, if so, how is the truck driver making a living since the crash? Why was his truck not equipped with sensors that can warn him of collision risks at intersections? As I've written, driving is one of the most dangerous occupations. Why isn't OSHA concerned about improving the environment of these workers? Why doesn't ATRI (the American Trucking Association's research arm recognize the lack availability/adoption of "SmartDrivingTruck technology" as one of its Critical Issues? Why didn't his insurance agent encourage/convince him to equip his truck with collision risk sensors. If they aren't commercially available, why hasn't his insurance company invested/promoted/lobbied for their development? These low-volume rural highway intersections are very dangerous. Technology could help.

"...(the truck driver)...said he saw the Tesla approaching in the left, eastbound lane. Then it crossed to the right lane and struck his trailer. "I don't know why he went over to the slow lane when he had to have seen me," he said...." (2)

"...the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents..." (3). Not sure how Tesla knows what Joshua Brown saw or did not see. Events prior to the crash unfolded over many seconds. Tesla must have precise data on the car's speed and steering angle, video for those many seconds prior to the crash, as well as, what it was "seeing" from MobilEye's cameras and radar data. At no time prior to the crash did it see anything crossing its intended travel lane? More important, why didn't the truck driver see the Tesla? WHAT WAS HE DOING? What was the truck doing. How slow was it going? Hopefully there was a data speed recorder on the truck. Was the truck impounded, if so, how is the truck driver making a living since the crash?

"Problem Description: A fatal highway crash involving a 2015 Tesla Model S which, according to Tesla, was operating with automated driving systems ("Autopilot") engaged, calls for an examination of the design and performance of any driving aids in use at the time of the crash." (4). Not to be picky, but the initiator of the crash was the failure to yield by the truck driver. Why isn't this human failure the most fundamental "Problem Description"? If "driving aids" were supposed to "bail out" the truck driver's failure to yield, why isn't the AEB system's "design and performance" being examined. AutoPilot's responsibility is to keep the Tesla from steering off the road (and, as a last resort, yield to the AEB). The focus should be on AEBs. How many other Tesla drivers have perished that didn't have AutoPilot on, but had AEB? How many drivers have perished of other cars that have AEB? Seems as if this crash was more about an emergency automated systems failing to apply the brakes, rather than a driver not having his hands-on-wheel. Unfortunately, it is likely that we will eventually have a fatality in which an "AutoPilot" will fail to keep a "Tesla" on the road (or in a "correct" lane), but from what is known so far, this does not seem to be the crash.
"What we learn here is that Mobileye's system in Tesla's Autopilot does gather the information from the vehicle's sensors, primarily the front facing camera and radar, but while it gathers the data, Mobileye's tech can't (or not well enough until 2018) recognize the side of vehicles and therefore, it can't work in a situation where braking is required to stop a Tesla from hitting the side of another vehicle.

It seems that all of the other stuff about DVD player, watching movies, previous postings on YouTube is noise. Automated Collision Avoidance Systems and their Automated Emergency Braking sub-system MUST be more robust a mitigating "failed to yield right-of-way" situations irrespective of the "failure to yield" derived from a human action (as seems to have occurred in this crash) or an "autoPilot" (which doesn't seem to be the case in this crash). Alain

E. Griffith, June 24, "...Also, he's hit the decoy plenty of times. In 2012 he even did it in front of Ford's board of directors. Back then the idea of self-driving cars looked, to Ford's leadership, like a frivolous Silicon Valley moonshot. Four years later things have dramatically changed. Today Ford's vehicle lineup features more than 30 options for semiautonomous features, including the automatic brakes I tested, and the company is aggressively working on cars that fully drive themselves. By year-end the company expects to have the largest fleet of autonomous test vehicles of any automaker.

Ford is not alone. The entire automotive industry is in the midst of a radical transformation that is reshaping the very definition of what it means to be a car company. There is hype, hope, fear, and insecurity—and at the center of it all is the self-driving car. Thanks to cheap sensors, powerful machine-learning technology, and a kick in the butt from the likes of Google and Tesla Motors, driverless vehicles are becoming a sooner-than-you-think reality...." Read more

Public meeting of May 17 "... Executive Summary...This report addresses the following safety issues:

Crewmember situational awareness and management of multiple tasks....
Positive train control. In the accident area, positive train control had not yet been implemented at the time of the accident, but it has since been implemented. The NTSB found that the accident could have been avoided if positive train control or another control system had been in place to enforce the permanent speed restriction of 50 mph at the Franklin Junction curve.
...Read more

Chenyi Chen PhD Dissertation, "...the key part of the thesis, a direct perception approach is proposed to drive a car in a highway environment. In this approach, an input image is mapped to a small number of key perception indicators that directly relate to the affordance of a road/traffic state for driving....." Read more

K. Shea, April 19, "...The Robbinsville High School student who was driving the car that struck and killed the district's superintendent Tuesday morning was late for a school trip when the crash occurred, according to two sources involved in the investigation...." Read more

March 23

Press Release, Mar 17, NHTSA & IIHS "announced today a historic commitment by 20 automakers representing more than 99 percent of the U.S. auto market to make automatic emergency braking a standard feature on virtually all new cars no later than NHTSA's 2022 reporting year, which begins Sept 1, 2022. Automakers making the commitment are Audi, BMW, FCA US LLC, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Tesla Motors Inc., Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo Car USA. The unprecedented commitment means that this important safety technology will be available to more consumers more quickly than would be possible through the regulatory process...The commitment takes into account the evolution of AEB technology. It requires a level of functionality that is in line with research and crash data demonstrating that such systems are substantially reducing crashes, but does not stand in the way of improved capabilities that are just beginning to emerge. The performance measures are based on real world data showing that vehicles with this level of capability are avoiding crashes..Watch NHTSA video on AEB Download AEB video from IIHS Read more

Press Release Feb 16 "With continued lower gasoline prices and an improving economy resulting in an estimated 3.5% increase in motor-vehicle mileage, the number of motor-vehicle deaths in 2015 totaled 38,300, up 8% from 2014.

The 2015 estimate is provisional and may be revised when more data are available. The total for 2015 was up 8% from the 2013 figure. The annual total for 2014 was 35,398, a less than 0.5% increase from 2013. The 2013 figure was 3% lower than 2012. The estimated annual population death rate is 11.87 deaths per 100,000 population, an increase of 7% from the 2014 rate. The estimated annual mileage death rate is 1.22 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, an increase of 5% from the 2014 rate. Read more

M. Bergen, Jan 14 "The Obama Administration has seen the self-driving future, and it's jumping aboard. At the Detroit auto show on Thursday morning, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will unveil a plan to develop a national blueprint for autonomous driving technology within the next six months. He will also announce that President Obama is planning to insert $4 billion into the 2017 budget for a 10-year plan to support and "accelerate" vehicle automation projects.

"We are on the cusp of a new era in automotive technology with enormous potential to save lives, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and transform mobility for the American people," Secretary Foxx said in a statement. ...But here's the part of Foxx's talk that really matters for Google: These national rules will allow fully driverless cars..." Read More

J. Hyde & S. Carty, Dec. 21 "Google and Ford will create a joint venture to build self-driving vehicles with Google's technology, a huge step by both companies toward a new business of automated ride sharing, ...According to three sources familiar with the plans, the partnership is set to be announced by Ford at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. By pairing with Google, Ford gets a massive boost in self-driving software development; while the automaker has been experimenting with its own systems for years, it only revealed plans this month to begin testing on public streets in California....

Google already has several links to Ford; the head of the self-driving car project, John Krafcik, worked for 14 years at Ford, including a stint as head of truck engineering, and several other ex-Ford employees work in the unit as well. Former Ford chief executive Alan Mulally joined Google's board last year.

And Ford executives have been clear for years that the company was ready to embrace a future where cars were sold as on-demand services. Ford CEO Mark Fields has repeatedly said Ford was thinking of itself "as a mobility company," and what that would mean for its business" Read more

2016-07-21

Some other thoughts that deserve your attention

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

C'mon Man! (These folks didn't get/read the memo)

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

Recent Highlights of:

May 7 Crash