Topic: Autonomous driving
Self-driving car numbers double on California roads – Financial Times (Mar 9, 2017)
California and Michigan have to be the two states where the most testing of autonomous vehicle technology is being done, with the former home to most of the tech companies in the space and the latter the home of several legacy automakers. The FT is here citing data from the California DMV, which you can see in its raw form here. What’s fascinating is the mix of companies here, as I’ve said before – there are several traditional carmakers (VW, Mercedes, Nissan, BMW, Honda, Ford, and Subaru), several big names from the tech world (Waymo, Tesla, Uber, Baidu, Faraday Future, and Cruise [now part of GM]), and a variety of other smaller companies. But Waymo has by far the largest number of cars and miles driven (and most accidents). But the California DMV is certainly the source of some of the most interesting data on self-driving testing anywhere in the world right now.
via Financial Times
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
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
Uber will apply for a self-driving test permit in California – TechCrunch (Mar 2, 2017)
Well, well: a rare case of Uber caving to regulators and doing as they ask. It had seemed as though Uber had given up on San Francisco and California in general when it moved its self-driving Volvos to Arizona late last year, but it now appears that it is actually going to go through the steps necessary to gain DMV approval for testing self-driving cars in California after all. This all feels like a totally unnecessary rigamarole for all concerned – Uber has likely gained nothing and lost quite a bit of trust as a result of all this, and now it’s back where it started.
via TechCrunch
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
Uber’s Car Was Driving Itself When it Ran a Red Light in San Francisco – NYTimes (Feb 24, 2017)
During the very brief period when Uber’s self-driving cars were operating in San Francisco, one of them ran a red light. However, the company at the time engaged in some audacious spin and claimed the car was being driven by a human at the time and that the incident just highlighted the benefits of autonomy. Now, however, the Times is reporting that the car was supposed to be driving itself at that time and the human driver merely failed to intervene in a timely fashion. If validation were needed that the California DMV made the right decision when it stopped Uber from testing its cars without a license, here it is. But this is also yet another case of Uber acting like the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to it, and outright lying when it gets caught. And that in turn makes it very hard to believe it when it claims it’s in compliance with rules, and it only has itself to blame. What a terrible few weeks for Uber, pretty much all of its own making.
via NYTimes
Waymo Sues Uber over Stealing of Confidential Information (Feb 23, 2017)
Alphabet autonomous driving subsidiary Waymo is suing Uber and its Otto subsidiary over alleged stealing of confidential information by Anthony Levandowski, who was one of the early executives at Waymo and subsequently left abruptly in early 2016 and immediately unveiled a self-driving truck company, Otto. That company, in turn, was acquired just a few months later by Uber. Waymo has done some fairly detailed investigate work that’s outlined in the complaint, and discovered that six weeks before Levandowski’s resignation, he downloaded lots of files from Waymo’s servers, and it argues that these in turn informed Otto’s (now Uber’s) LiDAR designs. As this blog post from Waymo says, fierce competition in autonomous driving technology is a good thing – it’s pushing the market forward rapidly and leading to some great innovations that should benefit consumers. But there are obviously lines companies shouldn’t cross as they compete, and this would be one of those, if it’s proven to be true. This is the second lawsuit in recent weeks involving employees moving between autonomous driving companies – the first involved Tesla and a startup. In both cases, the allegation is in part about stealing proprietary information. Given that Uber is already dealing with the fallout from a sexual harassment and discrimination blowup in the past week and still reeling from the #deleteUber campaign, this is terrible timing, but may also be a sign that the company’s aggressive stance on competition is hurting it in more ways than one.
via Waymo (full complaint here)
Uber launches self-driving car pilot program in Tempe – Phoenix Business Journal (Feb 22, 2017)
A good reminder that even when an announcement is made, it often takes weeks if not months for it to actually take effect – Uber announced its move from San Francisco to the Phoenix area in December, but only now is it launching self-driving rides for paying customers in Tempe, a Phoenix suburb. In addition, we still have the disingenuous claims from the governor of Arizona that California was somehow not “open to business” for self-driving cars, despite being the home of the biggest trials in the country. The reality is that Uber wouldn’t comply with applicable regulation and made the decision to leave the San Francisco area rather than comply as others have done. For now, that must feel like good news for Uber – it gets to test its cars without the scrutiny or reporting requirements which would have been imposed in San Francisco. But whether this ends up being a good thing for the drivers and pedestrians of Arizona remains to be seen.
via Uber launches self-driving car pilot program in Tempe – Phoenix Business Journal
BMW, Mobileye, and HERE Partner to use Car Data to Update Maps (Feb 21, 2017)
I’ve seen this announcement referred to as being about crowdsourcing in at least one place, and that’s exactly the wrong word to use, because this isn’t about a crowd of people at all, but about real-time data from vehicles. In contrast to crowd-sourced map data, which can easily be manipulated for humorous or nefarious ends, this is a closed-loop system in which anonymized data from BMW cars will help update HERE’s increasingly detailed and real-time maps. And that kind of up-to-the-minute map data will be critical for autonomous driving in future – it’s no good knowing what the road looked like six months ago (or even yesterday) if there’s construction, an accident, or a roadblock today. Putting this technology into one manufacturer’s new cars by itself isn’t going to generate that much data – there simply aren’t enough brand-new BMWs to be useful. But if HERE strikes similar partnerships with other carmakers, then over time it could end up with some of the best real-time map data out there. It’s a little hard to tell from HERE’s release, but the BMW/Mobileye release certainly suggests that the latter will also get to aggregate and use the data. This announcement also highlights the fact that, no matter how clever the technology from Silicon Valley startups, the companies with by far the most and best data will be the car companies and those that partner with them.
via HERE and BMW/Mobileye
GM plans to build, test thousands of self-driving Bolts in 2018 – Reuters (Feb 18, 2017)
That’s two major carmakers who now plan to deploy their first autonomous vehicles in ride sharing fleets, with Ford already committed to rolling out its first self-driving cars in a similar scenario. This makes lots of sense – two of the biggest limitations of early AVs are going to be cost and restricted geographic use, so deploying them in ride sharing fleets where they can be limited to a narrow area and driven almost constantly creates conditions in which they can still be both effective and cost effective. I’m still skeptical that we’ll see these cars roll out in more than one or two markets in the timeframes mentioned here, and even then I think it’s quite likely they’ll require human drivers for quite some time. But all this also reinforces the sense that it will be many years until we see universally autonomous vehicles (rather than cars able to be autonomous within narrow confines), and also somewhat undermines Lyft’s claims of getting to 50% autonomous in its fleet by 2021.
via Reuters
Ford’s Dozing Engineers Side With Google in Full Autonomy Push – Bloomberg (Feb 17, 2017)
This is a really important aspect of autonomous driving that’s not talked about nearly enough. In the SAE levels system for describing autonomy in vehicles, all the layers between 0 and 5 require the driver and vehicle to work together at least to some extent, which means that even when the car has taken over a task, the driver is supposed to remain ready to take over when the car requests him or her to re-engage. The problem here is that we tend to switch off, whether deliberately or merely passively, when our focus isn’t actively required, and that means that machines have to give us an awful lot of notice when we need to take over. In practical terms, that’s often impossible, and that can actually make cars operating at levels 3-4 in particular less safe rather than safer than human drivers. That has important implications for those manufacturers which seem to be trying to work incrementally up from Level 2 to Level 4 or 5 over time, like Tesla, because there seems to be an increasing consensus that we may need to skip those middle levels entirely. And it also means, as I’ve pointed out a couple of times before, that lots of experience operating test or production vehicles at Level 2 or 3 is not nearly the same as being ready to produce a Level 4 or 5 vehicle.
via Bloomberg (we discussed this topic in depth during this episode of the Beyond Devices Podcast and this talk by Gill Pratt, head Toyota’s Research Institute, is also very illuminating on the same topic)
GM, Toyota say U.S. rules limiting self-driving cars need to be eased – Reuters (Feb 13, 2017)
I linked to a news item a while back about a Massachusetts bill which was intended to find ways to tax autonomous and electric vehicles, and in doing so talked about the competition that’s emerged between states and municipalities over autonomous driving – some have been welcoming, while some seem determined only to see trials of the technology as a tax revenue opportunity. But the patchwork of regulations and policies across the US is also a major barrier to the launch of production autonomous vehicles, because any vehicle sold in the US needs to be able to drive across state lines. As such, major carmakers are today asking the federal government to do what it can to create a harmonized rather than fragmented regulatory approach across the US. It’s interesting that it’s the major legacy manufacturers rather than newcomers like Tesla, Uber, or Waymo making this request, but they would certainly all benefit if the government listened.
via Reuters
One Reason Staffers Quit Google’s Car Project? The Company Paid Them So Much – Bloomberg (Feb 13, 2017)
That’s an interesting hook for the article, but far more interesting than the ease of hiring away Waymo employees is the fact that Alphabet had such a kooky compensation scheme in place at all – more evidence that the Porat era has introduced much-needed financial discipline in the Other Bets. Long story short: Alphabet paid massive bonuses to employees in its autonomous driving division based on “project milestones” which had nothing to do with financial performance (since the division won’t generate revenue for years). This, in turn, has apparently loosened up some employees who have enough financial security to take risks on leaving for competitors. It really is remarkable how the Google/Other Bets split has shone a spotlight on some of the crazy largesse in the latter businesses.
via Bloomberg
Lyft has tapped the head of Google Street View to lead its mapping team – Recode (Feb 9, 2017)
This is a big hire for Lyft, which so often plays second fiddle to Uber in so many ways. Being able to recruit a top notch mapping engineer like this away from Google is a great validation of Lyft as a company and as a recruiter specifically, and should make it easier to hire in other talent for mapping and autonomous vehicle technology at Lyft. It’s also notable that Vincent would be willing to leave Google, which obviously has far bigger and deeper efforts underway around mapping and autonomous driving than Lyft does.
via Recode
Consumer Watchdog asks California to take Uber’s self-driving trucks off the road – Recode (Feb 9, 2017)
This is what you get when you build a reputation for flouting regulation: people don’t believe you when you claim you’re operating within the bounds of the law. Uber ignored the regulations around its self-driving cars in San Francisco until its DMV registrations were revoked, and now Consumer Watchdog says Uber subsidiary Otto can’t be trusted either when it comes to its self-driving trucks. As I’ve said repeatedly, Uber’s flouting of taxi regulations was a very different animal from its disregard for regulations concerning autonomous vehicles – in the former case, it had consumers on its side and could make a strong argument for increased safety, but that’s certainly not the case when it comes to autonomous vehicles. And yet both its past anti-regulation stances and the San Francisco case will come back to bite it, as they are here. This is when unchecked narratives – especially ones grounded in reality – really become dangerous.
via Recode
Tesla Is Testing Self Driving Cars on California Roads – Bloomberg (Feb 1, 2017)
The headline is news, I guess, but far more interesting are the detailed reports each company testing autonomous vehicles in California has submitted for 2016. These reports lay out – in some cases in quite a bit of detail – the results of testing during the year, including the miles driven and the number of disengagements. This is a great counterpoint to the article last year which suggested Tesla had an edge over others in autonomous driving because its cars had driven many more miles – the reality is that Tesla’s truly autonomous cars drove just 550 miles on California roads, while Google/Waymo’s drove 636,000, or over a thousand times as many miles. What’s more, Waymo’s vehicles required just 0.2 driver interventions per thousand miles relative to Tesla’s 0.33 per mile. It’s also notable that the vast majority of Tesla’s disengagements were on wet roads – road conditions continue to be a major factor in the ability of many autonomous driving systems to function correctly, which obviously puts them a very long way from mass production and release to customers. I’m planning to dig into all these numbers some more.
via Bloomberg (see also this blog post from Waymo)