SmartDrivingCar.com/12.33-HappyHolidays -12/22/24
33rd edition of the 12th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
HappyHolidays!!
Dec. 21, Hmmmm… It has been a most interesting semester. Had a great Orf 467 class involving a host of excellent outside speakers including Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley and Kyle Vogt who returned to the class exactly one year after Zooming into last year’s class 6 hours before the incident that changed everything for GM/Cruise. We learned so much!! The students became totally engaged in assessing the opportunities for MOVES-style mobility in their home communities. A compilation of their findings to date is referenced below. Alain
PS… I had the great pleasure of spending about an hour at the bedside of Prof. J. Stuart Hunter who taught Statistics superbly to so many back in the day. At 101.5 he is still sharp as hell and sends his best wishes for the New Year to all our former students. See photo. Also Prof. Ahmet Cakmak @ 90.5 sends his best. He hasn’t changed a bit!
The Real Case for Driverless Mobility
Narrated by Fred Fishkin, Available now
Just Published!!! Go to Amazon.com…
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 385 / PodCast 385 – w Michael Sena … GM Cancels Cruise, Waymo progresses and NHTSA’s New Rules for Driverless
F. Fishkin, Dec. 22 “With GM putting an end to the Cruise robotaxi venture, Waymo reaching 5 million rides and NHTSA proposing new rules for driverless vehicles, there’s plenty of news to end the year. The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a look at those stories and more on episode 385 of Smart Driving Cars! Tune in and subscribe.
0:00 open
1:17 Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Princeton’s John Hopfield. Alain’s tribute.
1:54 GM shutters Cruise robotaxi venture
13:26 Waymo has now delivered over 5 million driverless rides
26:49 NHTSA proposes new rules for self driving cars
34:55 The Dispatcher Musings…back to Scranton
38:14 Closing out the year with long time friends and kudos to Alain’s students
2024 Nobel Prize award ceremony
Dec. 10, “ in Stockholm for the Nobel Prize award ceremony which takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, on 10 December – the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. At the ceremony, the Nobel Prize in Physics … to John Hopfield..” Read more Hmmmm… So deserving. Congratulations John!!! Alain
Musings of a Dispatcher: Feeling at Home
M. Sena, Winter 2024, “We all started life somewhere. Chances are, you are not living today where you lived during the first years of your life. I thought I would share my reflections on the place where I spent the first thirteen years of my life. It is what I remember least or not at all that is my most persistent memory. ” Read more Hmmmm… Reflections of the season. Enjoy! Alain
GM to refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles
News, Dec 10, “General Motors (NYSE: GM) plans to realign its autonomous driving strategy and prioritize development of advanced driver assistance systems on a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles. GM will build on the progress of Super Cruise, the company’s hands-off, eyes-on driving feature, now offered on more than 20 GM vehicle models and currently logging over 10 million miles per month.
GM intends to combine the majority-owned Cruise LLC and GM technical teams into a single effort to advance autonomous and assisted driving. Consistent with GM’s capital allocation priorities, GM will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi development work given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market…” Read more Hmmmm… Called it!!! … back when Mary cut Cruise’ budget in half last January; The writing was on the wall. Alain
The end of Cruise is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles
Anthony Hawkins, Dec. 10, “Eight years and $10 billion later, GM has decided to pull the plug on its grand robotaxi experiment.
The automaker’s CEO, Mary Barra, made the surprise announcement late on Tuesday, arguing that a shared autonomous mobility service was never really in its “core business.” It was too expensive and had too many regulatory hurdles to overcome to make it a viable revenue stream. Instead, GM would pivot to “privately owned” driverless cars — because, after all, that’s what the people really wanted.
“Customers like to drive,” Barra said in a call with investors. “And there’s times they don’t like to drive.”
If some of this sounds familiar, Ford essentially made the same decision two years ago when it pulled its funding for Argo AI, the autonomous driving startup it had financed since 2017. It cited as one of its reasons a belief that partial autonomy — often described as Level 3 or Level 3-plus — will have more near-term payoffs.
Automakers are tapping out of the robotaxi business
Automakers are tapping out of the robotaxi business. With all the money being spent on electric vehicles, the auto industry has decided to cut its losses on autonomous mobility. Only one transformational, prohibitively expensive, once-in-a-generation shift at a time….” Read more Hmmmm… Anthony’s take here. I don’t see it the same way. Alain
It’s been a rough year for robotaxis — but not for Waymo
Anthony Hawkins, Dec. 18, “… While its rivals have been stuck in perpetual testing or forced to shut down completely due to dry coffers, Waymo has quietly amassed a legitimate robotaxi business that continues to grow and evolve. And today, it showed off a few numbers that underscore just how far ahead of the rest of the industry it is.
Chief among those is the number 4 million, which is how many driverless rides the company provided in the three cities in which it operates: Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Waymo says it has provided a total of 5 million driverless rides in its three key markets, which means nearly all of its growth took place this year alone.
Waymo’s service area is small but growing — the company says that it services 500 square miles cumulatively across all three of its main cities, as well as Austin, where it is still operating with a waitlist. The company plans to launch in Atlanta and Miami and recently said it would test its vehicles in Japan.
Four million driverless trips in 2024
Waymo riders spent a cumulative 1 million hours in the company’s autonomous vehicles….”Read more Hmmmm… Unfortunately, they don’t really tell us their fleet size. A few years ago (2018) they talked about options for 20,000 Jaguars and 60,000 Pacificas. Maybe from the 1 million hours associated with the 4 million rides (I prefer to call them “personTrips”) we can ascertain a prudent fleet size. It is likely that each ride takes on average ~15 minutes. Given that vehicles need to be repositioned, each can’t reasonably achieve more than 3 average personTrips per hour. While there are 24 hours in a day, it is doubtful that each vehicle could be counted on to have more than 10 good hours a day. Maybe one could argue that the other 14 hours in each day actually roll up to deliver two more hours of good productivity. Getting to 12 hrs/day. Consequently, each vehicle serves an average of 36 personTrips/day (I wish they told us. This is one of mobility’s fundamental productivity metrics.). Furthermore, assume that the vehicles can be deemed to be productive 300 days a year. That means each vehicle served about 10,000 personTrips per year. So if they served 4 x106 personTrips in the past 12 months, it means they had a fleet of roughly 400 prudent vehicles doing this work in in 2024.
Make no mistake, it is super impressive that they actually gave 4×106 safe driverless rides this year when no one else still operating gave even 1; however, moving on to making a real dent in the giving of rides to the 1.1 x109 personTrips/day = ~400 x109 personTrips/year that it take to well serve America’s lifestyle still lies ahead. They are at the very beginning.
Their market share stands at x10-3% = 0.001%. Which is why they were able to raise an additional $5.6 x109 ; although one wonders why they’d bother with Japan, and other overseas markets. What makes their grass greener this early in the growing season? Alain
NHTSA Proposes National Program for Vehicles with Automated Driving
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today proposed a voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight of certain vehicles equipped with automated driving systems.
The ADS-equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency, and Evaluation Program, known as AV STEP, would establish a voluntary review and reporting framework for participating ADS-equipped vehicles. The program would be open to all companies that operate or plan to operate compliant ADS-equipped vehicles on public roads, as well as those requiring NHTSA exemptions to operate non-compliant vehicles.
“AV STEP would provide a valuable national framework at a pivotal time in the development of ADS technology. Safe, transparent, and responsible development is critical for this technology to be trusted by the public and reach its full potential. This proposal lays the foundation for those goals and supports NHTSA’s safety mission,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv said. “We encourage everyone to comment on our proposed program.”
AV STEP would promote greater transparency into participating ADS operations and help the agency study and oversee ADS technology as it matures. Data are fundamental to NHTSA’s work, and the proposed program would provide NHTSA and the public with greater insight into ADS development and operational data.
Further, AV STEP aligns with the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, which was launched in January 2022 by U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, outlines a comprehensive approach to significantly reducing injuries and deaths on our nation’s highways, roads, and streets, and implements a safe system approach.
This enhanced transparency would promote the responsible development of ADS technology, as well as offer a way for vehicle manufacturers, operators, municipalities, researchers and policymakers to benefit from greater opportunities for public awareness and accelerated learning into the technology. Under AV STEP, NHTSA’s assessment of an application would be informed by the views of an independent third-party assessor.
AV STEP would also include two new exemption processes designed to optimize NHTSA’s administration of ADS exemptions, which do not replace NHTSA’s existing exemption processes but, instead, build on the agency’s experience with past ADS exemptions to offer additional paths for regulatory flexibility….” Read more Hmmmm… Wow!!!!! Why did it take this administration this long to begin to make such progress?? Did GM give up too early? They worked so hard for so long to get some love out of NHTSA for their Origin vehicle and now that they’ve thrown in the towel, bam!!! This should breathe life into ZOOX. Yea!!! Alain
Feds clear the way for robotaxis without steering wheels and pedals
R. Bellan, Dec. 20, “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Friday proposed a new national framework that could make it easier for companies to deploy at scale autonomous vehicles without traditional manual driving controls — like steering wheels, pedals, and sideview mirrors.
The guidelines also require AV companies to share a whole lot more safety data with the agency….” Read more Hmmmm… Rebecca’s take on this. Alain
NHTSA finally releases new rules for self-driving cars — but there’s a twist
Anthony Hawkins, Dec. 20, “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a new “voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight” of autonomous vehicles, a bureaucratic first step that could eventually open the floodgates for fully driverless cars. But there’s a twist: the agency wants self-driving car companies to cough up more data.
The proposed rules were first announced last year as the ADS-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency and Evaluation Program, also known as AV STEP. This program would allow the agency to authorize the sale and commercialization of more vehicles without traditional controls, like pedals and steering wheels, without hitting the annual cap on the number of exemptions to safety requirements. NHTSA is promising “an exemption pathway that is tailored for ADS-equipped vehicles,” suggesting a less onerous, time-consuming process for the release of fully driverless vehicles.….”Read more Hmmmm… Andrew’s take on this. Alain
Standing General Order
The General Order is available for download. This version, amended in April 2023, supersedes the original Standing General Order.
PDF Download developers. (Recommended reading)
Standing General Order
NHTSA has issued a Standing General Order (the General Order) requiring identified manufacturers and operators to report to the agency certain crashes involving vehicles equipped with automated driving systems or SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems. The General Order allows NHTSA to obtain timely and transparent notification of real-world crashes associated with ADS and Level 2 ADAS vehicles from manufacturers and operators. With these data, NHTSA can respond to crashes that raise safety concerns about ADS and Level 2 ADAS technologies through further investigation and enforcement. If NHTSA finds a safety defect, it will take action to ensure that unsafe vehicles are taken off public roads or remedied, as appropriate.
NHTSA issued the General Order in June 2021 to evaluate whether the manufacturers of ADS and Level 2 ADAS systems and the vehicles equipped with them, including manufacturers of prototype vehicles and equipment, are meeting their statutory obligations to ensure that their vehicles and equipment are free of defects that pose unreasonable risks to motor vehicle safety. Prior to the implementation of the General Order, NHTSA’s sources of timely crash notifications were limited and generally inconsistent across manufacturers, including developers….” Read more Hmmmm… The demise of this Standing Order is a very challenging issue. These systems fundamentally improve safety for those that use them properly, but unfortunately decrease safety for those who misuse them. This is true for essentially everything! Who would have ever thought that airbags would unnecessarily hurt children. Consequently, the yellow stickers on the back of sun visors.
It has “always” amazed me that I have never seen, nor has anyone ever told me that they saw a highway sign, even a “variable message highway sign” ever recommend that drivers use their “cruise control” (or “Level 2 ADAS”, can you imagine?!?) even though “every traffic engineer” knows that driving at constant speed is the nirvana of efficiency and throughput.
While I understand that there is enormous attraction in one’s phone, is it really better to discourage the use of these systems in order to better address the misbehavior associated with the mis use of cell phones. It is unsafe to steer a “55 chevy” across double lines, yet we don’t say, keep your hands off the wheel. Whatever, total frustration here.
We all recognize that the “>90%” of crashes (at least we aren’t calling them “accidents” anymore) involve human misbehavior. It is a shame that a technology that can, with high probability, improve safety is only being scrutinized and not promoted nor championed by NHTSA. Sure, we need to know what really happened in every crash, but there should be some acknowledgement and promotion of the positive side. Maybe NHTSA should be collecting this information on all crashes and determining not only which ones were “caused” by “ADAS” and which ones could have been avoided if “ADAS” had been engaged by the driver. Where would Vegas put the “over/under” on NHTSA’s findings of such a “Standing General Order”? Again, this is a very challenging issue! Alain
Woman crashes into Montgomery post office
M. Deak, Dec. 18, “A 79-year-old township woman was uninjured when she accidentally backed into the Blawenburg Post Office on Monday.
Police say Beth Watson, of the Skillman section, was backing out of a parking space at the post office on Great Road when she thought she had put her vehicle into drive.
Instead, police say, when she pressed on the accelerator, the vehicle was still in reverse and backed into the front of the post office.
The building sustained structural damage and was inspected by township code enforcement officials. ….” Read more Hmmmm… How does this continue to happen. Why hasn’t NHTSA recalled all cars without Automatic Emergency Braking when cars are in reverse. In reverse cars aren’t going very fast. How hard could it be? What if a child was at the door??? A worker was killed in a similar incident not 5 miles away from this one year ago. Why isn’t this easy for NHTSA? Good ADA/level2 would have averted these crashes. So frustrating. Alain
Draft… Orf467F24: Investigation of MOVES-Style Mobility Deployments … Draft
Alain Kornhauser, Dec. 19, “An updated note to the readers of the SDC eLetter: Read more Hmmmm… We had an excellent class this Fall. This is a compilation of their investigations of MOVES-stye mobility opportunities in their “hometowns”. This is a compilation of drafts submitted in lieu of a final exam. The class will make the document more suitable for publication during the January intersession. Alain
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Previous SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast/PodCasts
SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 384 / PodCast 384 – The Election, Musk, Tesla, Waymo & more with guest Michael Sena
On episode 384 of Smart Driving Cars, Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena. This time out- the election, Elon Musk, Tesla, Waymo, Aurora and a tribute to the late Paul Michel Lion III
0:00 open
0:55 From The Dispatcher -a look at the presidential election and the process
10:01 Princeton’s Bob Vanderbei maps out the electorate one again
14:30 The involvement of Elon Musk, pre-election and post-election and Michael’s look at the Robotaxi event.
42:20 Tesla’s quarterly vehicle safety report 47:48 A tribute Alain’s PHD Advisor at Princeton, Paul Michel Lion III.
48:28 Waymo is now valued at 45 billion dollars 49:59 Aurora’s Chris Urmson says we are on the brink of a new era in mobility and logistics 52:25 Michael comments further on Waymo and its role at Alphabet (Google)
59:54 The Autopian report on Google/Waymo patent application for system to take over automatically if it detects a bad driver behind the wheel.
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SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 382 / PodCast 382 – SpaceX, Cybercab and John Hopfield. Space X wows with catch, Tesla’s Cybercab event and the potential impact on mobility, and Princeton’s John Hopfield captures 2024 Nobel Physics Prize. Join Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for the takeaways from the latest headlines and more. Tune in and subscribe! 0:00 open 0:30 SpaceX wows with landing 8:38 Tesla’s Cybercab event-Alain’s take on the ups and downs 18:22 Elon uses the elevator analogy! 21:12 Forbes piece- Can’t Get a Cybercab? Wave Down a Waymo. 22:40 AutoEvolution: 5 Polarizing Facts from Tesla’s We Robot Cybercab Unveiling Event 26:26 Presentation from Alain’s students on shared mobility at Next Generation Systems Conference 27:45 More on Cybercabs and questions about insurance 39:02 Princeton’s John Hopfield wins Nobel Physics Prize! SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 381 / PodCast 381 – w Michael Sena: data privacy, Northvolt, Tesla and more. 0:00 open 0:54 Vehicle telecommunications and data privacy battle 22:40 What happened to Sweden’s Northvolt 27:17 The efforts to stop the importing of inexpensive Chinese vehicles. Is the rest of the world toast? 45:55 Tesla prepares for the robotaxi unveiling October 10 54:35 Reuters reports Waymo discussions with Hyundai on vehicle platform and remarks from Waymo co-CEO at University of Michigan 1:00:35 Two of Alain’s students deliver at the Next Generation Systems Conference SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 380 / PodCast 380 – w Michael Sena SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 379 / PodCast 379 – Time to Pivot-Hamburg-Waymo-Tesla & more SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 378 / PodCast 378 – Cry’n Shame GM’s Cruise abandons the Origin purposely designed robotaxi in favor of the Chevy Bolt. Former CEO Kyle Vogt calls it disappointing. Plus the audiobook version of The Real Case for Driverless Mobility arrives. Join Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 378 of Smart Driving Cars. SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 377 / PodCast 377 -What would GreenVille MOVES look like The push towards affordable driverless mobility continues on episode 377 of Smart Driving Cars. Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin show what GreenVille Moves would look like. Plus ..the EU mandates speed limiters, Tesla adding parental controls for teen drivers and more. 0:00 open 0:49 Congrats to Alain’s students who took part in the Henley Royal Regatta 2:04 Launching of HandyRides continues for affordable mobility 3:15 Demo of what GreenVilleMOVES would look like 33:30 EU is mandating speed limiters 34:15 Tesla update to give parents control over teen driver speed and more 39:50 The Drive report on Mercedes engineer criticism of Tesla FSD and its impact on public attitudes toward autonomous driving tech. 42:04 The Verge report on Distance Technologies windshield AR heads up display 45:00 Ken Pyle’s Viodi piece on Smart Driving Car Summit SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 376 / PodCast 376 -a mobility start-up is launched July 1st marks the launch of a new mobility start-up! Join Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for details. Plus..GM Cruise pays for crash report delays, Rimac robotaxis and automakers ask for reconsideration of automatic emergency braking rules. SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 375 / PodCast 375 Elon Musk talks Tesla robotaxis and more. Maybe for Brownsville? F. Fishkin, June 15, ” With Elon Musk divulging more about how Telsa robotaxis may operate, Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser demonstrates how they could be used to serve Brownsville, Texas. And the plan could be replicated anywhere. Plus the latest on Waymo and Cruise. Join Alain and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 375 of Smart Driving Cars. 0:00 open 0:30 Musk talks robotaxi business, Tesla Semis and more new vehicles 15:27 Alain shows how a Brownsville MOVES mobility service could work. 36:19 Waymo issues software and mapping recall following telephone pole crash in Phoenix 43:10 GM investing 850 million dollars in Cruise and resuming operations in Houston
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