Narrative: Tech Disrupts Transportation
Each narrative page (like this) has a page describing and evaluating the narrative, followed by all the posts on the site tagged with that narrative. Scroll down beyond the introduction to see the posts.
This Insurance Startup Wants to Cover Tomorrow’s Self-Driving Cars – Backchannel (Mar 9, 2017)
Pay-as-you-drive insurance isn’t a brand new concept – indeed, I remember a colleague writing a report on this about five years ago when I was at Ovum. The basic concept is that the insurance company finds a way to measure actual driving behavior and then offers lower rates to those drivers who drive most safely. There are a number of pilots and active programs underway already, and this Tesla program just takes it a step further by focusing on drivers who turn on the Autopilot feature. Outside of this program, Root measures actual driving behavior through an app, but with Autopilot-enabled Teslas, there’s apparently no such hurdle to overcome. That’s great validation for Tesla (especially given the recent worries over its latest software), and also for autonomous driving technology as a whole – a key argument made by essentially all of its proponents is that it will be safer than human drivers. I’ll be curious to see if this program eventually gets expanded to cover other ADAS systems (since Autopilot is technically ADAS rather than autonomous technology), and whether Root’s data backs up Tesla’s claims about safety over time.
via Backchannel
Didi has opened a self-driving lab in the U.S. with famed Jeep hacker Charlie Miller – Recode (Mar 8, 2017)
This seems like a smart move – even though there are lots of talented engineers in China, the nexus for development of autonomous driving today has to be either Silicon Valley or Detroit, so putting a base of operations in the former makes a lot of sense. There’s no evidence here that Didi is otherwise expanding into the US (after all, its new partner Uber is dominant here and that likely wouldn’t go down well), but that’s not to say Didi won’t try to hire from the other companies in the area. It’s already hired Charlie Miller, who came from Uber itself and was best known for having hacked a connected Jeep while it was driving a while back. The competitive intensity in this market, especially over hiring, is only likely to ramp up over time and things will get increasingly nasty as a result (and we’ve already got two lawsuits underway).
via Recode
Self-driving cars are watching us and recording our data whether or not we’re watching the road — Quartz (Mar 7, 2017)
This article is part good reporting, part opinion, and comes with a clear point of view (which I’d articulate as “carmakers are collecting too much data on us and our driving behavior with insufficient transparency and opt-outs”). But the reporting is well worth reading whether or not you agree with that point of view: the piece does a good job of spelling out all the data that’s being collected by various automakers old and new, and what it’s being used for. And indeed, this data is critical for developing both ADAS and autonomous driving systems, because it’s only by measuring real-world human driver behavior at massive scale that cars can be taught both how to drive like human beings (which is important for trust and comfort) and how to drive better than human beings (which is important for safety). The legacy carmakers obviously have a big advantage here because they have many more cars on the road and hitting the road each year than newcomers like Tesla, let alone non-carmakers like Uber and Google. But it’s how that data is collected and used that makes all the difference here – putting advanced sensors in cars is critical to getting the rich data needed, but it also raises big privacy concerns which I suspect we’re going to hear a lot more about in the coming years.
via Quartz
Tesla Drivers Are Paying Big Bucks to Test Flawed Self-Driving Software – Backchannel (Mar 7, 2017)
It’s impossible to imagine any major car manufacturer putting out an ADAS system or autonomous driving technology that was as unready (and as apparently unsafe) as Tesla’s Autopilot software currently appears to be – it would be catastrophic for their brands and reputations. That’s probably the single biggest difference between Tesla and the major legacy automakers at this point, and it’s simultaneously what allows Tesla to move so much faster and what may end up causing major image, safety, and regulatory problems for the company as well. Moving fast and breaking things may be a fine motto for a social network, but it’s clearly not the right approach for a car. The very fact that the current feature set is said to be in beta feels like completely the wrong model for this environment. Tesla seems to be being helped by the fact that many of its drivers are early adopter types and eager to test even technology that isn’t completely ready, but I’m guessing they will feel differently if they or family members are hurt or killed in an accident because of this faulty steering and other erratic behavior. Tesla really ought to pull these updates and roll cars back to previous versions until it fixes the problems.
via Backchannel
Waze and other traffic dodging apps prompt cities to game the algorithms – USA Today (Mar 6, 2017)
My “Tech Disrupts Transportation” narrative feels particularly appropriate for this story, which really highlights the degree to which technology can radically change the way transportation operates in a city. In this case, it’s car traffic in busy cities and towns, and the way in which navigation apps have begun sending traffic through quiet residential streets and other short cuts to avoid that traffic. On the one hand, you could argue – as Google does – that the apps are doing exactly what they’re designed to do, which is to find the most efficient route at any given point in time. On the other, you can argue that they do so without taking into account the impact on the streets down which those cars will drive – the algorithms don’t seem to be programmed to avoid quiet residential streets or to make another sort of value judgments. City planners naturally don’t like this – their job is to send subtle and not so subtle signals with road layouts and traffic management schemes in order to get people to drive in a certain way, and the apps entirely ignore that. This kind of clash between technology and government officials isn’t new or unique – it’s the kind of thing that will continue to happen over and over again, and the answer usually isn’t fighting the technology but either working with it or adapting to it.
via USA Today
Toyota’s billion-dollar AI research center has a new self-driving car – The Verge (Mar 6, 2017)
Toyota’s approach to autonomous driving strikes me as exactly the right one – as this article briefly explains, it’s approaching the problem from two different perspectives, one of which is about improving existing ADAS systems within the cars we’re driving today and in the near future, with the other being focused on Level 4 and 5 autonomy. I continue to be very skeptical that any car company is going to work its way incrementally and smoothly through the levels from 2 to 3 to 4, and believe much more strongly that we’re going to see a Big Bang shift from Level 2 to Level 4, which means that transition is likely to take quite some time. That doesn’t mean things like cruise control, self parking and so on aren’t going to get a lot smarter in the meantime, and that’s a good thing, but it does mean that true autonomy is both a long way away and likely to arrive all at once rather than incrementally. And of course because companies like Toyota have tens of millions of cars on the road already, they’re able to capture lots of data that will help with both the incremental ADAS and eventually autonomous technologies.
via The Verge
General Motors’ Maven launches monthly car plan – VentureBeat (Mar 3, 2017)
I’ve argued that the big car companies are actually participating pretty actively in the three big shifts occurring in their industry at this point, rather than just sitting idly by, and GM’s Maven business is a good example of some of that engagement, albeit on a fairly small scale. This new model doesn’t seem all that compelling – at over $1000 per month (including insurance, gas, and parking) it’s a little steep for a month’s Volt rental, which would cost you a fraction of that on a longer-term basis. But at least the company is experimenting. Other Maven services are a lot more interesting, and I had an interesting conversation with some of the team at the Detroit Auto Show in January. Maven Home is designed for high-end apartment complexes, for example, where owners get access to cars on an on-demand basis through their building, and GM is also doing interesting things with both Uber and Lyft separately.
via VentureBeat
Lyft looks to raise $500M as Uber stumbles – USA Today (Mar 2, 2017)
As I mentioned in covering Lyft’s rapid expansion into new cities in the first two months of the year, taking advantage of Uber’s current struggles is smart, but it’s going to be costly. This news that Lyft is raising more money is validation of that view, but may also be a sign that it work even harder to take advantage of this window of opportunity. That’s smart – Uber is especially vulnerable with both drivers and riders at the moment, and the differentiation between the two is so limited that as long as Lyft has the capacity it could take really meaningful share.
via USA Today
Uber’s self-driving unit quietly bought firm with tech at heart of Alphabet lawsuit – Reuters (Mar 1, 2017)
This is an interesting angle on the Uber-Waymo lawsuit over the alleged stealing of LiDAR technology by Anthony Levandowski – it appears Levandowski’s Otto acquired a company which specialized in LiDAR technology before it was itself acquired by Uber, providing an alternative theory for how the company was apparently able to get up to speed so quickly on the technology. One of Waymo’s key arguments in its suit was that Levandowski appeared to make unreasonably rapid progress on LiDAR following Otto’s founding, and that the only explanation was theft of ideas, designs and so on from Waymo. As an interesting side note, see also this newly-released October 2016 interview with Anthony Levandowski from Forbes, in which he somewhat bizarrely volunteers the information that he didn’t steal any IP from Google when he left. He also talks through his long history with autonomous driving technology, which raises a key point here: clearly Levandowski learned a lot about this technology over the years, and taking that knowledge with him to a new employer clearly isn’t stealing. So how does Waymo prove in court that Otto/Uber used the documents he allegedly downloaded rather than his personal knowledge (or technology from somewhere completely different) in designing LiDAR systems? If you know the best way to build a LiDAR system because you’ve done it before, are you obligated to act as if you have no idea how to do it when you move to a new employer? I’m not a lawyer, but I think some of these questions are fascinating, and are likely to be critical in this case.
via Reuters
Self-driving Nissan car takes to Europe’s streets for first time – Reuters (Feb 28, 2017)
This piece is a good reminder of three things: not all testing of autonomous vehicles is being done in California (or even the US), not all testing is being done by tech companies and startups, and countries, states, and cities are competing to be friendly to this testing. Old established carmakers are a long way down this road too – something that was borne out to me by conversations I had with a lot of them at the Detroit Auto Show in January – and they’re testing in their home markets as well as others. And cities like London are competing to be attractive to this testing, because it brings economic activity as well as a reputation for being friendly to technology in general. I learned to drive in central London, and wouldn’t really wish that on anyone, human or machine, but it sounds like the testing is mostly taking place in some of the less busy parts of the city, which makes a lot of sense.
via Reuters