Before the news, one cute video from Sweden that imagines a perhaps overly optimistic driverless future in a generic city with Lego people and ice cream cone and cardboard architecture, with sweet parks to replace parking lots.
Taxi and tandoori
Construction should begin in India on a taxi-pod project in Gurgaon. This project appears similar to the Morgantown, West Virginia personal rapid transit (PRT) project built in the 1970s in the US. That's basically why I have not written about it before. The similarity with the Morgantown PRT being that the pods will operate on a fixed guideway rather than as automotive vehicles on roads. There is still an unresolved issue of which agency will be responsible for auditing the safety (and performance?) of the project. The project will start out with a 13-km pilot phase and the intent is to scale up to a full 70-km project.
Careem - not Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Okay, my basketball knowledge is not exactly current, but when I hear Kareem mentioned, the former basketball star is the one who comes to mind. That might be about to change because a Dubai driverless project with Careem is in the works. Careem, which is currently a ride hailing app (Uber-like) in the Middle East and Pakistan, plans to operate a driverless taxi-pod option in the future.
The taxi-pods will be able to function solo or attach to other pods. Careem's partner, US-based Next Future Transportation, makes driverless pods.
Careem is also partnering with Next Future Transportation to raise money for the project. The leadership of Dubai has been proclaiming its enthusiasm for driverless transportation for a while.
Euro buses sans drivers
Europe is a pretty transit-friendly place, but it's still nice to see transit again and again as a ground floor participant in driverless transportation.
Mercedes Benz has created a driverless bus that has successfully been tested on an actual road in the Netherlands. It's called Future Bus. Now Mercedes is telling the world. There is a boring video, but it is very short. (It feels like the start to a horror movie with its cool, impersonal surroundings and muzak.) In the video, there is a driver and a driver's seat, but there's no hands on the wheel. The goal is to begin operations with the buses by 2020.
Testing facilities - everyone wants one
Two testing facilities being discussed this week: the Smart Cities winner of Columbus, Ohio, and the long-planned Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan.
The Columbus testing site is a track at a now-empty, unused stadium. Driverless transportation is just one facet of the winning Smart Cities project. The Columbus project focuses on using transportation to help neighborhoods with struggling, low income residents. If you've visited Columbus, you know this is a huge issue.
Willow Run gets closer
Not sure why Willow Run is taking so much time for the land to be purchased and whatever needs to be built at Willow Run, which is intended to be a driverless testing facility. This is former GM land - location of a GM WWII bomber facility - for which the state of Michigan is helping to fund the acquisition and infrastructure for. Also Michigan gets enough snow to adequately test driverless technology to be able to navigate real winters.
But Willow Run is old news. It's the purchase agreement that just got signed.
Here's the news in a nutshell.
The Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response Trust on Monday announced a $1.2 million purchase agreement for the acquisition of 311 acres at Willow Run in Washtenaw County’s Ypsilanti Township.Trucking companies investing and salivating
If you are the owner of a large trucking company, I can only imagine your glee when considering the benefits of driverless hauling. No maximum limits on driver time, no rest stop shower and eating time, no obesity and other health problems to get bad PR about. Of course, there are details, but this is a huge opportunity. Daimler, one such company, is investing heavily in connected and autonomous systems (CV and AV). One of its buses just completed a complex, but quick AV test. CargoX is a freight broker working on a tech platform for AV and CV. It is now expanding internationally with the help of funding from Goldman Sachs. Click here for the trucking article.
By the way, the Columbus Smart Cities program will include testing of truck platooning and driverless non-lead trucks near the airport. Platooning is a connected vehicle approach for trucks so they can travel quite close together (I'm thinking of brio train magnets). The webpage linked to has an incredibly bad video that demonstrates an awesome and seamless platooning experience.
Legal stuff
China has cold feet - for now - as far as allowing driverless vehicle testing on its roads. The country has ambitious plans, projects underway, and companies heavily invested in driverless. But until further notice, Chinese roads are off limits. However, players in China are actively working out the details of regulations that will allow driverless operations on public roads.
Tesla crash news continued
Here is a link to the letter to Tesla from the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). The letter requests all sorts of information about the fatal crash in May and about all Tesla autopilot cars. No question that the NHTSA feels public pressure to investigate fully. There's competition with sibling agency NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), which is also investigating. Also NHTSA has no history of a close relationship with Tesla, in contrast to its coziness with the traditional automakers.
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