Narrative: Tech Disrupts Transportation
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Lyft Announces its own Vaguely-Defined Autonomous Driving Effort (Jul 21, 2017)
It’s been somewhat heartening lately to see Lyft partnering with a number of different players around autonomous driving technology, and even announcing its own “open platform” (mostly an API for integrating with its ride sharing data) for the space. At a time when Uber, Waymo, Tesla, and a raft of big legacy automakers are all competing around self-driving systems, it appeared Lyft was going to avoid diving into the fray and instead try to partner with the best in the industry. However, all that got rather turned on its head today when it announced that it will also be developing its own self-driving technology, with 10% of its engineers already devoted to this area and a big expansion and new offices planned for the team. On paper, that looks like something of a contradiction given the recent announcements about partnerships, or at the very least a serious hedge that will make at least some of those partners think twice. However, in reading both Lyft’s own blog post and several press articles about the news, I’m coming to the conclusion that there’s actually very little there, and in fact Lyft may be building something far more limited in scope than what most others mean when they talk about a self-driving system. All that’s really described in Lyft’s announcement is leveraging its existing ride sharing data and possibly adding sensors to some of its drivers cars to create 3D mapping. The former is already the centerpiece of its open platform, while the latter seems overly ambitious and probably also redundant given the much larger and more advanced high definition mapping efforts underway for the last several years. What I don’t see any references to are developing LIDAR or other hardware necessary for self-driving, or even software to steer self-driving cars – it’s almost as if Lyft expects its partners to fill those roles, though it still talks about Lyft’s own self-driving cars as distinct from those run by partners. I’m hoping we’ll get more clarity as this project moves forward, but suspect it’s less momentous and therefore also less contradictory than it might at first seen based on the headlines.
via Medium
Apple is Reportedly Partnering with Chinese Battery Maker CATL (Jul 21, 2017)
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Chinese Regulation of Mapping Creates Barriers for Autonomous Driving Data (Jul 14, 2017)
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★ Uber Joins Forces with Yandex in Russian Ride Sharing Market (Jul 13, 2017)
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Uber Investor Call Reports Bookings Up, Losses Down, May Settle with Waymo (Jul 11, 2017)
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Volvo’s New Cars will All be Electrified from 2019 Onwards (Jul 5, 2017)
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Baidu Fleshes out its Open Platform for Autonomous Driving (Jul 5, 2017)
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Tesla On Track to Deliver First Model 3s by End of July, But Q2 Production Falls Short (Jul 3, 2017)
Update: following another release from Tesla on Monday, I’ve amended both the headline and content on this piece significantly from the first version published Monday morning.
Overnight, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had tweeted that Model 3 production would begin shortly, with the first deliveries happening by the end of July, with production ramping up slowly from there. Hitting the launch milestone is something of an achievement for a company that’s often missed its own self-imposed deadlines, but the real test is ramping production enormously above past levels, and that continues to be the achievement I’m far more skeptical of. The new numbers provided today suggest far lower total production than Tesla has promised in the past, at least in the second half of this year and first half of 2018. Later on Monday, the reason for getting that news out overnight became a little clearer, as Tesla released its production and delivery numbers for the June quarter, including a shortfall in both due to battery shortages. That’s bad news for Tesla, and more evidence of its inability to plan and execute on production in predictable ways, and therefore to meet the targets it sets itself. None of this gives me any more confidence in the longer term projections of Model 3 production.
Safety Advocates and Carmakers Speak in Congress on Autonomous Driving (Jun 27, 2017)
The US House Energy and Commerce panel held hearings today on proposed legislation to regulate the licensing of autonomous vehicles for testing on roads. There is, of course, quite a bit of that testing going on already in various states throughout the US, but the Congressional effort aims to unify regulation on the topic and create a single set of policies nationally as a result. The carmakers are, in theory, in favor of that, but only if it reflects the lighter-touch approaches currently being taken by states like California, while safety advocates are pushing for tighter regulation, more testing, and generally slowing things down. There are sensible arguments being made on both sides here – no-one, least of all the carmakers, wants high-profile accidents featuring self-driving cars putting the whole field back by years. But given the potential of autonomous driving to increase safety over time, there are also strong safety-centric arguments for allowing reasonable testing to go on without burdensome oversight. Given the current state of US politics, I’m not 100% confident that we’ll get a sensible bit of legislation out of all this, but I do think that it’s inevitable and welcome that we’ll eventually have a national framework for not just testing but ultimately selling autonomous vehicles. Testing is an area that needs to be addressed today, but commercial vehicle sales are several years away and as such there’s time to get this stuff right and no need to rush into anything today. But there are some really thorny issues here that do need to be thought through in great detail, not least questions of liability and responsibility.
via Bloomberg
★ Apple Leases Cars from Hertz for Autonomous Technology Testing (Jun 26, 2017)
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