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.