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  Tesla debuts new car insurance that uses Texans’ real-time driving behavior

M. Moon, Oct. 15, “Tesla now offers car insurance in Texas, its new home state, a couple of years after launching the product in California. According to Electrek, though, the insurance available to Texans is quite different than the one owners can get in The Golden State: It calculates for a customer’s insurance premium using their real-time driving behavior. Their credit, age and gender that are typically used by other insurance providers apparently don’t matter to Tesla. The automaker says it won’t even look at customers’ claim history and driving records.

Instead, Tesla will look at their “safety scores,… “ Read more Hmmmm…  Key here is that Tesla, knows how well Autopilot/FSD mitigate each driver’s propensity to mis-behave.  Since unmitigated mis-behavior may well be responsible for the overwhelming majority of crashes, this gives Tesla an enormous advantage to properly price insurance. Alain

  Here’s How VW Wants Autonomy to Change City Life

J. Ramey, Oct 14, “.This week Volkswagen is giving the world a preview of its robotaxi tech in the city that will be the first to host the company’s autonomous ride-pooling service…

While our previous glimpses of the ID. Buzz have focused on the autonomous tech, relatively less attention has been paid to Volkswagen’s mobility arm, launched in 2016. In these short five years, MOI has already launched Europe’s largest all-EV ride-pooling fleet, transporting millions of passengers in that time. And as a part of Hamburg’s planned launch of an autonomous ride-pooling service, MOI is the third major component of this effort.

“Cities all over the world want to make their traffic more efficient and more climate-friendly. Autonomous ride-pooling improves urban mobility, increases road safety, and make cities more attractive. Hamburg will be the first city to offer autonomous ride-pooling,” MOI says….

At the moment ride-pooling is not a well-known term in the US, even though there is no shortage of ride-hailing apps. Ride-pooling, on the other hand, combines the concepts of a shared taxi service with an app-based ride-hailing service, with passengers requesting to be picked up by a passenger van with others traveling in the same direction…..

The next step in this evolution is making the ride-pooling service autonomous. The automaker, along with Argo AI and MOI, will be testing the Level 4 prototypes on the streets of Hamburg starting this year. Argo AI has begun 3D mapping of the streets in the test area of Hamburg, using mapping vehicles to create a very detailed representation of the streets. After mapping is completed, VW, Argo, and MOI will conduct test drives with and without passengers…”  Read more Hmmmm… This service looks very similar to what Via offers. I’d like to understand the similarities and the differences. Also, it is nice that the next step is to make the service autonomous.  Unfortunately, no reasons are given as to why this next step is needed. What shortcomings of the existing service is autonomy going to improve? We need to understand why autonomy is important in our Trenton initiative.  Hopefully VW will participate in our 5th Summit so that we can learn from them. Alain

  For Uber and Lyft, the Rideshare Bubble Bursts

G. Bensinger, Oct. 17, “Piece by piece, the mythology around ridesharing is falling apart. Uber and Lyft promised ubiquitous self-driving cars as soon as this year. They promised an end to private car ownership. They promised to reduce congestion in the largest cities. They promised consistently affordable rides. They promised to boost public transit use. They promised profitable business models. They promised a surfeit of well-paying jobs. Heck, they even promised flying cars.

Well, none of that has gone as promised (but more about that later). Now a new study is punching a hole in another of Uber and Lyft’s promised benefits: curtailing pollution…..”  Read more Hmmmm… Please take a look at the ‘New Study’: “Air Pollution, Greenhouse Gas, and Traffic Externality Benefits and Costs of Shifting Private Vehicle Travel to Ridesourcing Services“.  Two fundamental issues… 1. Uber/Lyft have failed miserably at achieving any Ride-sharing and their “’empty vehicle repositioning algorithm” doesn’t seem to be sufficiently focused on minimizing empty vehicle miles. 

2.  The only incentive for Ride-sharing is the political halo of the term.  Drivers aren’t for it because it make for fewer customers to pass around, lowers the probability of surge pricing and any incentive offered by Uber/Lyft doesn’t sufficiently compensate for the customer dissatisfaction induced by having to share a ride. 

The challenge may even go as far as having a driver earns less from ride sharers than would have been earned from serving just one of them.  The  {revenueShare + Tip} earned from one rider may be greater than {revenue Share + muchSmallerTip} from two riders riders!   Ouch!  

As was obvious from the very beginning,  a necessary condition for Uber/Lyft to be successful is driverless operation.   Its business model has no chance of becoming an “internet business” or achieving any scale/network/viral economy as long as a paid individual to be involved for the duration of each trip.  Not only does the operation have to accommodate the interests of the driver in deference to the interests of the customer and or the environment, but the driver is an expensive fixed cost.  T

I’ve written many times: without driverless operation, the Uber/Lyft ‘Ride-Hailing business model can not become substantially greater than the conventional taxi business.  Their App is nice and better way to summon the service, but it doesn’t transcend the business model’s fundamental omnipresent labor cost burden.  To have a hope of becoming disruptive the mobility must be delivered without a driver/attendant.  The personal car became a disruptive mobility force when the customer of its mobility didn’t need to pay a driver.  The ultimate “Do it Yourself (DiY)”. Alain

5th Annual SmartDrivingCars Summit:  Deployment of Equitable Affordable, High Quality Mobility throughout New Jersey

Date Change:   Thursday evening, May 5, through Saturday May 7, 2022.  Live in Trenton, New Jersey. 

“Everything” was going well wrt the 5th Summit Nov 18->20; however…

Time is very short, we must focus on the election and the realities of where we remain with Covid really put cold water on some aspects of our vision for November.

Consequently. I’ve become convinced that it is very much better, that we take our time and reschedule for the first week on May 2022 rather than rush for what isn’t as good as could be. 

By May we will have received responses to our upcoming RfI for “Equitable … Mobility in Trenton”.  We will thus have a better idea on “Who”,  from the “What & How” communities, “Want & Can” Deploy “Equitable … Mobility” starting in Trenton with real expectations of scaling throughout New Jersey.

In May the 5th Summit can better achieve its fundamental purpose by allowing all of us in New Jersey to better learn from others around the world  the “Whats & Hows” and have the possible “Whos” get a better appreciation of the “Equitable … Mobility” desires of Trentonians and other New Jersians. 

Rescheduling the Summit to be between the RfI and the RfP steps of our Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) Deployment Process, will better enable our Community Engagement initiative to shape our ultimate  deployment.  We’ll thus deliver even better mobility equitably and best improve quality-of-life in Trenton and throughout New Jersey.   

Please pencil into your calendar the new dates of  May 5 (Thursday evening) though May 7 (Trenton Mobility Festival Saturday). 😎   Please let me know if these dates work for you.

Sorry about the delay, but many will be relieved by this change. Plus, early May is really nice in NJ.😁

Alain

 Or, does this behavior give insight into Waymo’s evolving strategy and decision making. Individuals and institutions only do what they think/believe is best for them from their perspective.  With that in mind, this behavior suggests that Waymo is investing substantial testing resources to  make sure that they can make K-turns in real dead-end streets in addition to testing “K-turn-ability” in their testing facility and in simulation.  Seems that in order for such testing to be justified, Waymo must think that San Franciscans who live on dead end streets need to be picked up and dropped off at their door step rather than at the corner.  Seems like a substantial investment to provide a marginal improvement in level-of-service that is likely to be appreciated by few, if any, real Waymo customer(s). Why does Waymo covet such customers to such an extent?  Has it really nailed the service to less needy customers?  If so, why isn’t it offering that service someplace if it can do it so well?  Is Waymo really that unconstrained, resource wise.  If so, then they should easily be able to afford to serve Trentonians without ever having to go down dead end street.  Alain

  Aptera Alpha Develop  ment Vehicle | Jay Leno’s Garage

J. Leno, “If you really want to save energy and make a truly efficient vehicle, it can’t look like anything else on the road—and that’s the Aptera. The new Aptera electric-solar hybrid offers unique styling and really unique performance—it gets 1000 miles per charge, and they claim the solar panels make it so you never even need to charge it! ” Read more Hmmmm…  Interesting, especially if you are relay energy conscious.  Alain