Ooh La La Taxis, Shuttles, and Hyperloop

Navya will be starting an autonomous vehicle taxi service next spring, that's the second quarter of 2018. So, flowers, buds on trees, and a taxi sans driver - but only in Paris - so far. Also nice is that the taxi will be EV as well as AV (electric vehicle, autonomous vehicle for you non-acronym lovers). For now, Navya merely offers a boring, corporate-styled video.

Okay, yes, I can't resist the temptation to include the boring video.

More taxi-like news

We have advanced beyond "what's good for GM is good for America" to the point where GM is going after the business of people completely car-free or at least car-lite with its Maven ridehailing service. Maven is now expanding to more cities, operating in Baltimore, DC, Boston, and Los Angeles, among others, bringing the total to eight.

GM's Maven is not yet autonomous, but it represents GM's foray into a different business model in preparation for an AV world that may not mirror the old model of a car - or two or three - in every driveway.

Off topic: Where maven comes from

Maven, by the way, is from Yiddish and means expert. In Yiddish, the word maven often carries a negative connotation, as in "What are you, a maven?" My parents always talked about the men who gossiped on the street corner in this way - people who talked, thought they were experts, but did not contribute.

However, the word has taken on a more sunny, positive disposition in American English.

2018 in Tennessee

Knoxville, TN, may soon see an AV shuttle from Local Motors. Yes, Olli will be manufactured in Knox County and an Olli AV shuttle, to be 90 percent 3D printed, will likely begin ferrying Knoxville passengers in 2019 - which is like seven years from now in AV time. (My family in materials science generally poo poo's the 3D printing thing, but Local Motors seems to be making this work, or, at least, is persistent in pursuing it.)

Hyperloop actually progressing - and being built

Despite my skepticism, two distinct and quite separate hyperloop projects have official approval to begin building - with private dollars. The first will go from Baltimore to DC and the second will be in suburban metro Denver and into the city.

What is hyperloop? In case you do not follow this stuff, wikipedia has a good page that explains pretty much everything.

Watch out MARC train, there will be a much faster way to go from Baltimore to DC - or to Baltimore for a fantastic Italian sub at Isabella's. (I say that as a native New Yorker.) Virgin Hyperloop One, an Elon Musk/Richard Branson company (renamed from Hyperloop One with the Branson investment) could be bringing Musk's vision of hyperloop pods traveling all the way from DC to NYC in less than 30 minutes. Maryland's governor has given approval to a chunk of the Baltimore to DC segment. (I hope there will be a stop at BWI Airport.)

"Hogan [Maryland's governor] administration officials said [in mid-October] the state has issued a conditional utility permit to let Musk’s tunneling firm, The Boring Co., dig a 10.3-mile tunnel beneath the state-owned portion of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, between the Baltimore city line and Maryland 175 in Hanover. ... More than two-thirds of the 35-mile Baltimore Washington Parkway is owned by the federal government, which as of Thursday had not publicly granted permission for the hyperloop system."

The Colorado project will be built by Arrivo, which is headed by a former Elon Musk employee at SpaceX and a co-founder of Hyperloop One. This will be "a public-private partnership with Colorado’s Department of Transportation and E-470 Public Highway Authority." I can tell you personally that there is both excitement and concern about hyperloop in the growing suburbs around Denver. The Arrivo hyperloop version goes slower than the Musk version, at about 160 mph instead of at several hundred miles per hour, which has not yet been achieved.

No Human, Fare Free and In Traffic

Headlines from the past week:

Waymo in Phoenix - hands free and engineer in back seat

Las Vegas AV shuttle begins with a glitch

Tampa AV shuttle to start public transit service in January 2018

and from Miami - Mayor with a big bus dream

What do these headlines have in common? Autonomous vehicles (AVs) that are shared - for transit or for pooled taxi-like rides - are moving ahead, well in front of the sale of fully autonomous private cars.

And, for now,  the rides are free though, we have yet to hear whether Waymo's Phoenix-area rides - with the engineer in the back seat - will be free or discounted. The Miami dream is way too far away to talk about fares.

In regular traffic and then an all-too-human driver ...

Here is a video with a reporter who was on the Law Vegas shuttle. The report includes "real people" concerns that the passengers expressed in the wake of the mishap of a very minor crash with a truck in the shuttle's first couple of hours of operation. The crash, by the way, was the fault of the human truck driver, not the AV technology. The shuttle was manufactured by Navya.

Florida shuttle coming after New Year's

The Tampa AV shuttle is being shown off this week at an AV summit. The cute AV will be in regular operation come January. The shuttle manufacturer is Coast Autonomous and the vehicle will seat 14 passengers and fit a total of 20. And the AV shuttle will be fare free.

The transit agency will operate the AV shuttle. This is actually Tampa's second experience with AV service. There was an AV giving rides at a science museum. That demonstration project started way back in 2015.


Miami mayor wants big driverless bus

The mayor of Miami has gotten cold feet for a large rail project. These come with scary price tags. Instead, the mayor is proposing a newly developed autonomous bus - a really big bus - that is touted as a train on wheels. It's like the AV shuttles on steroids with room for 300 passengers. Miami already has dedicated bus lanes. 

Now to read all of the articles, legislative bills, etc. starting to pile up this week.

And, in a land that believes in planning, Japan continues AV pursuit

Maebashi will be the first city in Japan to host autonomous buses operating on public roads. Testing will begin in the spring of 2018. The expectation is that "[s]tarting from November 2018, the test buses will have passengers on board." Japan's motivation is a large aging population that will need to get around and will want to remain independent without driving.

Autonomous cars are still not recognized under Japan's Road Traffic Act or the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, which sets common standards among signatory nations. However, driverless vehicles and artificial intelligence hold pride of place in the central government's cutting-edge tech growth strategy, which includes a 2020 deadline for the practical implementation of autonomous vehicle-based transportation systems. This push to get driverless vehicles on the road has jumpstarted local test projects across Japan.

This is not Japan's first testing of AVs. There has been testing in rural areas for connectivity for low-density populations, and it hosted an AV pilot at a shopping mall. Japan has also been playing around with driverless grocery delivery testing. This country even showed off AV taxis at a G7 summit. And, as far as I know, Japan still plans to ferry attendees around in robo-taxis at the 2020 Olympics.