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.

Living Document = Let's Chat

Advances in technology, law, planning, and driverless projects did not stop this week for the double whammy of a hospitalization, then a death in the family, and surgery on another close relative. Life goes on, but I am digging out of a large mountain of email and work and fighting back the numb sensation of futility.

I have not even peeked at the comments to the proposed NHTSA guidelines or the proposed guidelines regarding cybersecurity. Here's a link to Consumer Reports' review of comments about data sharing. There's a NHTSA public meeting this coming Monday, Dec. 12, 2016, but I will be otherwise engaged with the surgical follow-up appointment. I hope to catch some of the live stream.

Game of chess and fun pilots

Is there a stalemate right now between the concepts of data sharing and proprietary data? Is the term living document being used as code for no one is ready for actual regulation? That is what it seems like at the federal level, where voluntary guidelines are proposed and we do not seem close at all to actual guidelines or regulation. In Pennsylvania, proposed regulations for driverless testing are not being pushed forward, reportedly because Uber is unhappy with data sharing provisions. And right now it seems that Uber owns the driverless field in Pennsylvania, particularly in Pittsburgh.

But there are strivers who are eager to race ahead. One is Florida, with the City Jacksonville's transit authority pondering, without any real detail, a driverless replacement and improvement on its current, disappointing Skyway. 

Sick of the 94 percent factoid

This statistic is repeated EVERYWHERE, including here and several times at the recent Congressional Roundtable of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. But is this factoid consistent across time, types of crashes, types of drivers, and different places? I do not know. All I know is that the 94 percent figure is cited over and over again without being tethered to any source of evidence or discussion of whether that evidence is consistent in various situations and places. In fact, even if the statistic is sometimes 85 percent, or in some places 98 percent, does it matter? The important reality is that we in the US pay lip service - in most places - to Vision Zero or other efforts to reduce roadway fatalities and injuries. Ultimately my irritation with the repetition of the 94 percent figure is irrelevant because we have effectively accepted the equivalent of a huge number of deaths each week. 

Scary when I think that my daughter will be making a six-to-eight hour drive home in a week. 

Not a united attitude

I don't know whether it is the imminent change in administration in Washington or NHTSA's relatively timid - not necessarily inappropriate - approach, but states and cities in the US are not taking a national approach. In their own ways, they are striving to race to the forefront, where the current leaders are Michigan and California, with Pennsylvania close behind due to the presence of Uber and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

Two arbitrary tidbits

Yes, some of this news is a bit stale, but I want to catalogue this for myself. I realize this is a bit arbitrary because there is plenty I am mentioning only on Twitter or Reddit.

Local Motors adds a drone accessory

Nvidia can text driverless vehicles in California

The Russians, Chinese Are Coming in Driverless Buses, Pods

Russia plans to introduce a driverless bus. So far, it has been tested, presumably at low speeds, on private roads, such as campuses. The bus is low floor, and therefore accessible (I presume), and runs on electricity. No confirmation if the bus will be launched during the 2018 soccer World Cup games. Warning: Even insomniacs will fall asleep to this video.

Toronto wants driverless buses, or at least little shuttles

Though driverless vehicles - sans drivers - are not yet legal in Ontario, Toronto council members are hatching a plan for driverless transit. They will meet in mid-July to consider a report to plan driverless transit. Toronto was one of the first cities to designate a staff person to begin to look at the transformation that driverless transportation will bring.

Intel + MobilEye + BMW = ?

The three companies: a chipmaker, driverless player, and a traditional high-end car company, are teaming up. The question is whether the deal will push BMW ahead in the driverless car race. Bloomberg did a nice summary. More speculation and details are provided by Android Headlines (AH). I have not seen anything yet that would make me believe this is a game changer. 

Baidu chooses Chinese town as third of 10

Baidu has chosen an ancient Chinese town, a tourist magnet, for a driverless project with a route system. The company, known as the Chinese Google, is planning to introduce driverless vehicles to 10 cities. The ancient town of Wuzhen is the third to be announced. There is no date set for the launch of the demonstration projects.

Tesla fatal crash

To all of us who did not know the victim, the Tesla crash heard round the world is a piece of information, something to be fixed. To me, personally, the fatal crash demonstrates the dangerous and disingenuous game that the partially driverless vehicle plays. Human drivers, such as the victim, himself a big fan of his beloved Tesla autopilot, get lulled into complacency with each day's safe trip. One day, when daydreaming, watching a movie - as the "driver" was reportedly doing - or just staring out the window, but hardly paying attention to the road, the human is not driving or thinking about driving, when an instant you-must-pay-attention-right-now situation presents itself. We humans are not generally good at the split second jolt to action. The crash occurs before the driver knows what is happening, in that split second when he or she is processing information, before action is taken.

While Mobileye and Tesla hash out who was responsible in the press, presumably continuing into the courts unless the victim's family is placated with lots of money first, I hope that NHTSA, which will investigate, will take the opportunity to impose a black box requirement for driverless vehicles and also consider the great risks of the combination of the partially driverless vehicle and the human who is supposedly ready to drive.  

My condolences go out to the family of Joshua Brown. His death is a great sorrow to his family and friends. May they be comforted by memories of him.

Even Slow Car Companies Making Driverless Boasts

Remember when the car companies were talking down the idea of driverless transportation? Remember when, maybe a year and a half ago, or two years ago, they were saying it is a few decades away? Well, Google, Tesla and others have changed the tune of almost every company.

Here's the recent evidence. 

*  GM finalizes contract for purchase of Cruise Automation, which will remain in San Francisco.

*  BMW to have iNext, a fully autonomous car, on the road in 2021. There's also a new car in 2018, but I could not tell how advanced that vehicle will be.

*  Audi is testing a driverless car, its A7, on the autobahn. It plays well with others and does not exhibit any road rage. The article reports that its driving style is very human like, actually like a nice human who does not drive too fast or weirdly.

*  Renault is committed to introducing an affordable driverless car in 2020. The company is sponsoring a design competition at an arts college in London. The college, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, will have groups of students working on designs for the interiors of totally driverless cars.

And now, after years of speculation, the first solid evidence of Apple's driverless situation and plans. Seems that Apple's previous efforts in this direction were fruitless or showed that Apple was way too far behind in this race to catch up on its own. Now, taking advantage of the shared use model of transportation - sans drivers - Apple has bought up China's version of Uber, Didi Chuxing, commonly called Didi. Testing and operations in China have the benefit of a supportive government that is presently doing more to pave the way for driverless than the United States. That's the benefit of no democracy, though there are serious and depressing downsides.

We Got a Us a Convoy

Well, the Dutch. And they are not talking trucks out West, either. Nor are we talking about truckers seeking to fall under the radar of the Man, specifically state troopers.

This is a convoy today of partially-driverless vehicles doing a test for a risk-management company to gather data on safety and vehicle spacing in mixed traffic. Though the vehicles were not completely autonomous, the humans left to the cars decisions about acceleration and lane changes, Not an entertaining video.

A good group of car companies participated. "The cars making the journey include BMWs, Hyundais, Mercedes, Teslas, Toyotas and Volvos." 

You want to see this again. Kris Kristoferson, Ali McGraw, and Ernest Borgnine. Classic grade B movie.

Endless Corporate Plans on the Horizon

So many plans out there being boasted of that I'm going to leave out details. Hoping this is the bottom of the pile and that I will not have any driverless catching up to do for a while. Really, the news should wait for when I have time to read it. Some of this is current and some from the last few weeks. Funny though that the media takes much longer to catch up, so still timely.

Great minds and herds - thinking alike

Uber to launch driverless taxi/publicly-available transport in Arizona. No backup driver necessary from the report, though we will see if that changes. At this point, an Arizona executive order (which can be quickly yanked or changed), not legislation, permits driverless bots to roam without a backup driver. 

Mercedes is considering following the same path as Uber. The swanky car company is planning a driverless limousine/taxi service, perhaps fancier than the more taxi-like bot service than Uber envisions. Mercedes does not want to be left behind when the Google and Uber driverless bots hit the road. Corporately related to Car2Go, by way of Daimler, Mercedes has a built-in advantage due to the on-demand experience of its corporate cousin.

BMW is considering the same, but it has no actual plans. However, the company is seeing ridehailing a la Uber as the future, with three-minute wait times.

Hire one person and speculation runs amok

What is Google going to do? The tea leaf readers are having fun after the recent Google hire of an automobile executive to lead its driverless car project. The new guy, John Krafcik, was at Ford and Hyundai before going to a now-failing online car dealership. Google is also ramping up driverless car production, so speculation continues about whether the company is preparing to mass produce its driverless pods. (Randomly, interchangeably using the terms bots and pods. Terminology is fluid at this early stage of the driverless revolution.)

Apple speculation heats up with meeting between executives and California DMV. Are they or aren't they? And what exactly is Apple building? Where will they test it?

Yes, if you are up on driverless news, that week-or-so old update is old.

And I have not even gotten to today's driverless news. Other work keeps getting in the way.

Chinese Car to Go Both Ways

China's Baidu company is creating a driverless car that will allow for optional driving. Baidu is a technology company with mapping services. It is working with BMW, according to the linked article. Right now, the plan is to have a prototype car ready for travel on actual roads in 2015. But the driver option is seen as a good one for city driving. 

I think this is like so many products that try to do multiple things well - think of baby strollers that turn into backpacks or shorts that turn into skirts. Never good. 

But let's not underestimate Baidu, a major player in artificial intelligence, and speech and facial recognition technologies. This is an impressive and ambitious company.