We are not even a week out from the Baidu announcement of its open source partnership with 50 companies in the autonomous vehicle (AV) world, when now we learn that Microsoft is joining that team. Microsoft continues its work on AVs by contributing to AI development and to connected vehicle (CV) research. Microsoft is playing to its traditional strengths to establish a beachhead in the AV market, rather than take the Google - now Waymo - all-in approach.
The technology under development is mode-agnostic, if you will. It can be employed in transit vehicles, in private ride hailing, micro-transit, or shuttles as well as for freight trucking and conventional individually-owned and operated cars and light trucks. There's a hedge-your-bets wisdom to concentrating on the technology side and ignoring business models and vehicle design.
Don't count out regular cars, just with AV
There are many who believe we will replace our current pattern of vehicle use with similar individually-owned AVs. Depending on price, this could be the future. News from Torc Robotics supports that prediction with an AV system for cars. The company is declaring that it has solved the weather problem and that it is partnering with auto companies to bring the system to market.
Not California or Singapore, but Dubai
Lots of US government investment is being made in CV research, but Dubai, which has been out in front in the adoption of AV transportation and pilots, will be testing CV - or rather V2I - traffic signals. (V2I meaning vehicle to infrastructure, in case any non-nerds are reading.) I hope that, unlike the DC area, there are no power outages there.
Another cute shuttle vehicle is born
EasyMile has much of the shuttle market the world over, but now a new player has emerged with its own adorable shuttle. "AirBridgeCargo has transported a prototype autonomous vehicle from the Netherlands to Singapore." The shuttle is supposed to be a new mode, or at least a new acronym - GRT, which stands for Group Rapid Transit. I wonder if GRT is a dig at EasyMile, which has concentrated on slow shuttles that are quickly easing regular people, in contrast to transportation nerds, into the idea of AV as normal.
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