AV Ridehailing = 70s Brooklyn

The future has already happened and it is 1970s Brooklyn. Imagine a world with a subway system, lots of transit buses, taxis and car services. Car services were (maybe still are) these businesses that voila! produced a car - with a driver - within five minutes of when you called. No one ever had to drive.

Dads of high school students loved this because they did not have to get out of bed at some late hour to retrieve their kids. Of course, since we thought the drivers were creepy, we usually ended up sleeping over at friends' houses so that no one had to be the last kid in the car with the driver. My grandmother and her friends used the buses and car services to go everywhere.

Now the world is catching up. Soon everyone can achieve the nirvana of my hometown - except that it will not be so heavenly with a few big competitors and the permanent travails of lack of transit funding likely to continue. Here are some players that have announced on-the-street AV service to launch within the next few years.

Caveats - No word from any car manufacturer or AV technology company about AV ridehailing that will be accessible for people with disabilities. And that's another thing, these companies are all talking about cities, but no one is volunteering to serve rural communities or people with disabilities. Maybe we still are in the 1970s.

Uber is not waiting

Uber is already on the streets of San Francisco providing AV rides - but only for its self-driving staff. I wonder if there's a clause in the employee manual about relinquishing the right to sue. The rides, by the way, are free, so I'm not sure about applicability of federal or state laws or regulations when no money is changing hands and the ride is kind of, sort of, part of the job. Don't get too excited.

As is true for all self-driving vehicles on California public roads, the cars will have backup drivers. The Department of Motor Vehicles recently created a system for companies to test self-driving cars without backup drivers but has not yet issued permits for it.

No doubt Uber will be ready to submit one of those no-human-backup-driver permits.

Happening in China and Japan

Pony.ai is starting an AV ridehailing service in China. "its fleet is running a nearly two-mile route in Nansha, Guangzhou, where its China HQ is located."

Meanwhile in Japan, "Nissan and Japanese telecom company DeNA [started] a field test of driverless Easy Ride taxis ... on March 5, offering rides to passengers along a fixed 2.7-mile route between the Nissan headquarters and the Yokohama World Porters shopping center." The ridehailing service that is planned is not expected to be in operation until at least 2020.

Waymo  in 2019

Okay, the date is unspecified, but it looks like Arizona and California will see completely no-human-driver AV ridehailing service first. Waymo has partnered with MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Drivers - and groups representing seniors and people who are blind to join in an advertising campaign about the benefits of AV transportation.

Waymo's application to remove the human driver as backup has already been submitted in Arizona - and approved. Word is that ridehailing will begin in 2019. No date or locations have been announced.

GM date uncertain for heading to the big apple

News of GM bringing AV ridehailing to lower Manhattan in New York City is the product of good journalist digging. Tribeca Citizen, a neighborhood news source, looked into GM's leasing of office space and discovered that the party named in the lease is none other than "GM Cruise LLC, commonly referred to as Cruise or Cruise Automation." This follows Gov. Cuomo's announcement in October that GM will be doing testing in Manhattan at some unspecified 2018 date.

May Mobility goes for quick trip - shouldn't you walk? - market

May Mobility also scored a big win by getting Tampa's transit agency on board for a pilot with this newcomer AV producer's shuttle. Testing began this week and the pilot for regular riders will commence later in 2018.

Toyota and BMW are funding some May Mobility activity involving "plans to use the seed money to expand in Texas and Florida — states that don’t require a safety driver." This involves some one kilometer routes. Am I missing something or isn't that a short walk - unless we are talking inclement weather? Really inclement weather.

AV Shuttles in the Outback and US; MADD Partners

Yes, I will admit that to a native New Yorker, anything beyond Ohio, let alone Chicago, seems like the outback, but that is where AVs are taking hold first. By the way, I am simply being self-aware here and not proud of this mindset as I work with many lovely people across the US who see far prettier landscapes than I do everyday and live outside of the DC and NY bubbles.

Plus, we already have 12 mph vehicles in NYC; that's called regular traffic.

Australia

Perth has had a driverless shuttle for over a year and the Darwin Airport just had its own AV shuttle demo to ferry folks on airport grounds. This was the "EZ10 shuttle from Transdev and Easymile." However, this was only a two-day demonstration last week to show the wonders of new transportation technology and to get the conversation started.

Meanwhile, a suburb in Queensland, Australia, is planning for a totally AV system in a private area. Springfield - not the one in Illinois or Massachusetts - is a suburb of Ipswich and this week it is hosting an EasyMile AV shuttle demo.

Minneapolis wants another taste

Now that Minnesota had its first taste with an AV shuttle, this during the winter in downtown Minneapolis during Super Bowl week, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT) is moving on demos elsewhere in its biggest city. ""I've ridden on the vehicle, and it feels a bit like the people-mover at the airport that runs between terminals," says [Hennepin] county transit director John Doan."

The Hennepin County Board just approved the idea for a demo in another location. That location is the Greenway, which advocates are touting as part of a route for another light rail line. The Greenway is a six-mile bike and pedestrian trail. "Driverless rides will be offered over a weekend in April. They'll take place along a 2-3 block stretch." Rides will be fare free.

FYI: If you go out to Minneapolis to ride an AV shuttle, take the time to go have pancakes at Mickey's Diner in St. Paul. The place is tiny, so get there early or on the very late side.

One more FYI: I know John Doan and he heads up Mobility 4 All, which is advocating for accessible AVs for people with disabilities. Mobility 4 All is a partner in the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets.

Even the Marines

A Marine Corps air station in California is planning for AV routes, as in real service, on a sprawling base in Miramar, CA. "Two routes on the air station, a “rural” and “urban” route, will provide opportunities for stakeholders to initiate autonomous vehicle testing and development projects. The rural route is located on East Miramar where autonomous vehicle technology testing began early February 2018."

The AVs will be vans and they will also be part of a connected vehicle project.

Buffalo university buys a shuttle

The state university of New York campus at Buffalo has purchased an Olli with help from the NYS DOT and the NYS Energy and Research Development Authority. The Olli, a product of Local Motors, will be used on campus for first-mile/last-mile service to and from public transit. Service is not set to begin until at least the end of April.

Public good case for AVs

MADD and Velodyne Lidar have entered into a partnership to do something unspecified for the cause of getting humans away from the steering wheel.

To fulfill this vision, Velodyne and MADD have adopted the shared mission of promoting and advancing Autonomous Vehicle technology with the singular goal of getting you and your loved ones home – safely. The Designated Driver of the future is Velodyne LiDAR. Velodyne LiDAR will never be drunk, drugged, distracted, or even drowsy.

Following the press release, I have not seen anything more detailed.

MADD is an easy partner because unlike advocacy groups for people with disabilities, MADD's push to transport drunk and tipsy people - who seem to greatly overestimate their ability to drive under the influence of alcohol (or other substances) - without having them drive does not require any accessible equipment or interfaces.

And if I sound snarky, I do not mean to. I have known a few people who have been killed in car crashes and I have seen a dear friend try to rebuild her life after her son's death. My father's best friend was killed by a drunk driver. Already two young adults from my daughter's high school class have been killed on US roads. I applaud MADD for encouraging AV technology.

Velodyne is supplying lidar technology to Ford, Volvo, Baidu, Mercedes and other companies, according to the Velodyne Lidar homepage. MADD is a partner in the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets.

Yesterday's NHTSA Hearing

Warning: This is a long post.

The most interesting aspect of this type of public hearing is not generally what people say, but who shows up in the first place. The NHTSA hearing in California, held yesterday at Stanford University, attracted many of the same players as the Apr. 8 hearing held in DC., with quite a few additional speakers. Representatives of people with disabilities were out in force and remain amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of driverless vehicles, with the proviso that those vehicles be designed for full accessibility. Other participants included Google's Chris Urmson, David Strickland of the new Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, and a representative of MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

General themes

A general theme for the day and the one point on which there is complete consensus is that the US should adopt a national framework - whether through a uniform set of state laws or via federal laws and regulations - for the operation of driverless vehicles so that manufacturers, safety advocates, and others do not have to operate with a maze of different, and sometimes conflicting, legal provisions. State-by-state air quality standards were raised as one example where that is the case.

An aspect of this call for national standards was something heard as well at the Apr. 8 NHTSA hearing, a plea for technology-neutral standards to allow for flexibility in the development of new technology. One speaker, who was from VQuest and does work for the Department of Defense, used the term "platform agnostic." No one seemed to want driverless vehicles to be tied to any particular technology without ease to advance or change.

The VQuest speaker made a related point that we do not want to punish failure; we want to create incentives to experiment and thereby learn from failures. Only if we do so will we promote a willingness to share data and innovate. 

One more point of consensus is the idea of required black boxes, similar to what is on airplanes, to provide data when crashes occur. Some guy also mentioned white boxes, but I did not catch exactly what that was. I admit that I am willing to spend only so much time on this; not willing to go back to the video of the hearing.

A last theme, or, perhaps, more of a common refrain, was the recitation of how everyone, including existing manufacturers of currently non-accessible vehicles, is looking forward to a rosy and accessible future for people with disabilities. A less common refrain, though pretty common, was the mention of benefits to the environment. (FYI: If anyone is looking for a brilliant materials science engineer to work on batteries, I have a daughter who fits the bill. She'll be starting a PhD program in the fall. So proud.)

Some safety advocates have selective goggles on - for good and bad

Some from the so-called consumer safety community continue to drone on about the need for a human driver as though they never received the mountains of news reports over the last one hundred years that drivers have caused over 90 percent of all motor vehicle crashes, the ones that have killed hundreds of thousands and injured millions more - in the US alone, with many millions affected the world over. One of those casualties last year was someone I knew, a fact that scares me each time one of my daughters drives.

What the safety advocates make good points about are needs for (1) real federal standards and not just voluntary compacts among the car companies; 2) required transparency of data about operations of vehicles, interfaces, and crashes and near-crashes; and (3) mandatory alerts for car owners and used car owners, in particular, about vehicle recalls and defects. These advocates paint a picture of traditional car companies manipulating a cushy regulatory environment with lax oversight.

Neat speaker shows West Coast vibe

One biker dude showed up. I admit that I did not catch his name. He was the only speaker who mentioned something important beyond the actual vehicles, which is the people on streets who will not be inside vehicles, autonomous or otherwise. The biker dude expressed concern that self-driving vehicles be designed to decrease worries on the part of, and actual collisions with, bikers and pedestrians.

The MADD representative reminded the panel about human drivers who operate vehicles when they are in no condition to drive. MADD, of course, is most concerned about driving under the influence of alcohol and other inebriating substances, and the representative spouted the scary number 80, which is the average number of times a driver drives drunk before an arrest. The advocacy group looks forward to the day when it no longer has to spout such numbers and be concerned about innocent people harmed because a human in a drunken stupor, or just tired after a drink or two (those are my words), gets behind the wheel.

NHTSA panel gets star speakers

Two rather prominent individuals in the driverless world appeared at the podium to speak at the NHTSA hearing, Chris Urmson of Google and David Strickland, a former NHTSA Administrator, and now counsel and spokesperson for the newly founded Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets. (That name, of course, not suggesting that the coalition has no one behind its metaphoric wheel.) A third speaker with some glamour was the representative of Beverly Hills, California (yes, 90210), Dr. Julian Gold, a member of the city council and former mayor. 

Urmson is about as relaxed a public speaker as I have ever seen. Unlike the other corporate
types at the hearing, Urmson seemed frank and conversational. I also like what he said. It's as if he's been listening to me rant on about driverless vehicles. I'd accuse him of eavesdropping at my office and at my kitchen table, but he has no need. He already knows way more about the technology than I do. 

Urmson pointed out that we already have unsafe roadways with many, many deaths and injuries. There's no reason, he said, to go slowly and incrementally. He succinctly stated that while everyone agrees that the US needs national standards, there is significant disagreement about the speed of implementing the technology and how to develop it. 

Testing, Urmson reminded the panel, cannot only be performed on testing courses (and fake roads), but must be done on real roads. He talked about the successful experiences of Google's test vehicles and he rightly stated that accidents involving those vehicles have been minor. He also warned the panel that if the US does not act to provide a national regulatory framework that allows for innovation, testing, and deployment, other countries will pass us by. 

Coalition talks - Reminding me of the old EF Hutton commercial

Strickland announced his new role on behalf of the new Self-Driving Coalition, made similar remarks to others about safety for all and access for people with disabilities, and then progressed to appropriately calling driverless a "safety game changer" and asking for a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Definitely a DC guy. Anyone outside of DC gets the kooties just hearing that word. But Strickland is correct because that is the way Washington, DC, operates best, with coalitions that represent the full range of - ooh, yes I'm using the word - stakeholders.

Strickland, as you can tell, spoke in big tent language, and matter of factly told the panel that driverless operations are "years, not decades, away." Even though anyone with a bit of knowledge knows this, the panel needs to hear it from people like Strickland, who have clout and gravitas. He is about as far from a hipster dude as one can be. Suited, serious, and with credentials that precede him, there is no question that the NHTSA panel took his presence there and his words seriously.

Confession: I have been in DC long enough that I hardly wince when I hear the "s" word. That's what you get for spending lots of time in an office two blocks from the White House.

Town of palm trees and movie star houses wants driverless transit

Beverly Hills is actually the City of Beverly Hills, though it is small and feels more like a neighborhood in the LA area. It is very pretty and wealthy. But it recently pushed itself to the forefront of progressive urbanism by passing a resolution in favor of a plan for driverless transit. Dr. Julian Gold, a former mayor and current council member, talked to the NHTSA panel about first and last-mile challenges once transit rail lines are built and in operation nearby. There will be no new parking garages, so the city is realistically considering options and a driverless transit system seems like a good one. The city plans to host a forum soon as it explores how to go about making this dream a reality. (I can see a logo on the vehicle with nice green and pink hues from the Beverly Hills hotel and a white overlay of a tall palm tree. I'm willing to design it.)

Gold also envisions driverless for seniors and people with disabilities who live in his city. He reminded the panel that parking spaces cost about $40,000 a pop. They are not free. Gold was practical in raising issues such as whether children will be allowed to ride with adults (they do on subways and there's no driver or other official in every car), and what roadway and vehicle specifications, if any, will need to be in place. Gold brought the local government perspective, which is an important one in transportation. Local and state governments are responsible for transit and for road maintenance. He informed the panel that these questions need to be answered ASAP.

And his city wants the full monty of level five, fully autonomous vehicles. 

The federal-state division of responsibilities may need to be revisited wholesale instead of globbing on a new layer of regulation onto the old. The Nvidia spokesperson suggested as much in his comments. Truth be told, however, globbing is a traditional DC strategy in a town where consensus is the name of the game. 

Award for most effective speaker

The representative of Self-Driving MN (Minnesota) at yesterday's NHTSA hearing spoke from the heart as he described the hi-jinks of family members and a mix of family and public transportation that provide transportation to work for his brother who is disabled. He spoke eloquently when he wondered aloud how someone with a disability who does not have family close by is able to get to work and to otherwise take care of oneself. The intimate scene that this gentleman allowed everyone watching the hearing to share painted a before and after picture that demonstrated the freedom and equality that autonomous vehicles will represent for many people with disabilities.

Another representative of the disability community reminded panel members that blindness and visual impairments are not the only class of disability that will require accessibility to driverless vehicles, a point emphasized in more ways at the Apr. 8 hearing in DC. However, that same speaker, whose name I did not jot down, aptly uttered the mantra of the disability community - nothing about us without us - when calling for universal design to be incorporated in and interfacing with these new vehicles at the outset.

Award for speaker who probably knows a thing or two about microbreweries

The Zoox speaker was by far the coolest dude in the room, with a sense of humor and a let's-figure-this-out-over-a-beer vibe. He also had on a nice hat and told the story of how his company got started just a stone's throw away from where the NHTSA hearing was taking place. It made me smile. He got to the heart of the matter at hand for NHTSA, which is how to have technology experts and government regulators, who approach their lines of work very differently, to come together for the common good. And he used the word traumatized to describe the experiences of families around the globe who have lost loved ones.

A big thank you to the tweeter, Mark Harris (@meharris, published in the Economist, among others), who pointed out that I was wrong with my spelling of Zoox. I was thinking in terms of rhymes with cukes. 

Usual suspects

Traditional car companies showed up as well, including Ford, Honda, Toyota, and GM. No surprises there. No news - with one exception. Toyota is pushing for a transitional period, which, when translated, means, in my opinion, that the company is not ready for prime time on driverless and it does not want anyone else getting out of the gate on this any time soon. Likewise for the speaker from Subaru. (Okay, can we really trust a car company with a dweeb advertising campaign that it's cars are made with love? I thought they were made with robots and non-union labor.)

Best corporate speaker award

This prize definitely goes to the Volvo speaker, who right off the bat mentioned that she has three children and who managed to humanize the Volvo corporate goals of zero deaths by 2020 and its acceptance of full responsibility - meaning liability - for any crashes involving its driverless vehicles, which, by the way, will be on London roads soon, and, of course, Swedish ones. (Trust me, London can compete with New York for crazy driving, though I believe that New Yorkers are less about following rules and definitely more about shouting out the window in an endless loud back and forth with pedestrians, except above Mitdtown, where there is less and less traffic.)

If you would like to watch the Apr. 8 hearing, here is the video. I suspect the video of the Apr. 27 hearing will be available soon.

In case anyone wants more of a say, NHTSA will be accepting public comments until May 9, the day after Mother's Day.