Saturday, February 17, 2018

Robopocalypse Report #99 (mini version)

DOT Secretary Elaine Chao thinks deregulation will help autonomous vehicles come to market faster.

US DOT called a summit on self driving cars on March 1st.

Driverless cars might not actually help with traffic and other problems, according to some.

Will self driving cars actually kill car ownership in 2030?

How do you get people to trust self driving cars more?  By making them act like people?!

A motorcyclist that got in a dust up with a GM/Cruise self driving car is suing the company.  This might set legal precedent for who is liable for the self driving vehicle.

Byton will get its self driving tech from Aurora.

Continental, the German car components maker, has selected NVIDIA as its computational core for its self driving products.

Data released by California show the self driving cars being developed are needing human intervention less and less.

Didi has teamed with Renault-Nissan to start a self driving car service in China.

Drive.ai released its report on progress on its autonomous vehicles.

Embark's self driving semi drove from California to Florida.  Or is was the semi semi autonomous?

Ford patented the concept of an autonomous police car.  It's not robocop.

A convoy of autonomous Hyundais drove from Seoul to Pyeongchang.

Mclaren's will have autonomous tech in the future.

Nuro wants to use self driving cars to deliver packages.

Rimac's new hypercar will have a 120 kwh battery and level 4 autonomy.  Supposedly.

The Teamster's Union is demanding UPS NOT use drones or self driving vehicles as part of the contract negotiations.  You would think a union that takes its name from those people who used to drive teams of horses would be a bit sharper than that.

Tesla keeps having people try to trick its Autopilot software into allowing hands free driving.

Tesla is still planning the delayed coast to coast self driving car demo.

A Toyota exec claims self driving cars will kill mass market cars, except for luxury and performance cars.  This is a possible outcome in metropolitan areas, but out back home in New Mexico and other 'fly over' places, I bet that will not work.  The density will be too low.

Uber claims self driving trucks will result in more, not less truck drivers on the road.

Uber and Lyft want to ban nonfleet self driving cars from dense urban cores.  Some are decrying that.

Uber vs Waymo trial over theft of self driving car tech got under way Monday.  What was learned on day one of the trial?  In opening statements, Uber and Waymo throw some lightning bolts.  Levandowski considered selling Otto to Lyft.  Uber and Waymo reached a settlement where Waymo would get .34 % (or roughly at the current valuation of Uber of ~$245 million).  Uber was able to negotiate down the settlement from ~$500 million.

Udelv has started testing autonomous delivery vehicles in San Mateo, California.

Waymo is buying thousands of FCA minivans for its expanding Phoenix area self driving car service.

Waymo's cars are the most advanced.

Yandex's self driving car tech is making progress.  Watch their self driving car navigate Moscow.

1 comment:

Mike said...

I assume someone out there has examined self driving cars in light of the upcoming/currently on-going retail apocalypse? Because self driving cars will dramatically lower delivery cost, that’s beyond dispute correct? So if home delivery becomes even cheaper at the same time tons of drivers become out of work, that should have a cascading effect upon retail that will make the current collapse look like boom times.