Topic: Autonomous driving
Behind the scenes at Faraday Future, an electric carmaker on the brink of collapse – The Verge (Dec 22, 2016)
A pretty damning take on Faraday Future and its current financial situation, ahead of a big launch at CES early next month. It’s hard to avoid the sense that both Faraday Future and its largest investor LeEco are struggling with the results of over-ambitious expansion plans.
via Behind the scenes at Faraday Future, an electric carmaker on the brink of collapse – The Verge
Honda, Alphabet’s Waymo in talks over self-driving technology | Reuters (Dec 22, 2016)
Google (now Waymo) partnered with Fiat Chrysler some time ago to use Chrysler Pacifica minivans for testing autonomous technology. This second partnership suggests some momentum, though it’s not yet clear how this fits in with Honda’s in-house autonomous R&D efforts.
via Honda, Alphabet’s Waymo in talks over self-driving technology | Reuters
Nvidia Surges in 2016 Using Graphics Chips to Challenge Intel – Bloomberg (Dec 21, 2016)
Nvidia has been one of the great chip success stories of the last couple of years, coming at the market from a new angle and outperforming competitors including Intel in emerging opportunities like autonomous driving. This is a great summary of that strategy and trajectory.
via Nvidia Surges in 2016 Using Graphics Chips to Challenge Intel – Bloomberg
The Tesla Advantage: 1.3 Billion Miles of Data – Bloomberg (Dec 20, 2016)
This is a huge oversimplification – Tesla’s cars aren’t entirely autonomous, and mostly use their limited autonomy on highways, whereas truly autonomous vehicles need to learn how to drive in far more complex urban environments. But having production cars actively using the technology certainly helps Tesla.
via The Tesla Advantage: 1.3 Billion Miles of Data – Bloomberg
Teaching a Machine to Steer a Car – Udacity Inc – Medium (Dec 20, 2016)
This has been a fascinating experiment – online coding course provider Udacity partnered with Google (now Waymo) to allow coders to remotely control self-driving cars. The results are now in. The experiment is just that, but highlights both the possibilities and some of the risks of future code-driven cars.
via Teaching a Machine to Steer a Car – Udacity Inc – Medium
Uber plans to keep its self-driving cars on San Francisco roads despite DMV’s demand to stop – Recode (Dec 16, 2016)
This story has been characteristic of Uber’s disregard for regulations, which in the past have mostly been designed to protect the taxi lobby, but with self-driving cars moves into the realm of protecting drivers, passengers, and other road users. I suspect Uber will get a lot less sympathy from its users over these issues, and this approach will eventually backfire.
The Third Transportation Revolution – Lyft CEO (Sep 18, 2016)
Lyft CEO John Zimmer makes two strong claims in this piece: autonomous vehicles will account for the majority of Lyft rides within 5 years (i.e. by 2021), and private car ownership will all but end in major US cities by 2025. Both of these claims are directionally correct – autonomous cars are absolutely coming, and thanks to ride sharing, many city dwellers will eventually abandon car ownership. But the timelines for both are likely dramatically over-optimistic. Most major car manufacturers aren’t talking about having production autonomous cars on the road until the early 2020s, and car ownership trends will shift much more slowly too. We therefore have to ask to what extent Lyft’s business plans are based on these over-optimistic goals.
via The Third Transportation Revolution – Medium
Master Plan, Part Deux | Tesla (Jul 20, 2016)
This is Tesla’s four-part new master plan for the next few years: “Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage; Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments; Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning; Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it.” Autonomy and sharing – the last two bullets – are the key ones from a broader tech perspective, and this is the first hint we’ve had that Tesla will participate in sharing, though its vision is more aligned to the future vision of the Ubers and Lifts of the world than their current business model – autonomy + sharing. Given how effective Musk and Tesla have been at achieving the broad strokes of the first “master plan”, they seem likely to succeed again, and there are few concrete timelines here to miss.
via Master Plan, Part Deux | Tesla
Uber Could Be First to Test Completely Driverless Cars in Public – IEEE Spectrum (Sep 14, 2015)
This article is from when it first became apparent that Uber might end up being one of the first companies to put autonomous vehicles on real roads with real passengers, back in September 2015. Even then, Arizona governor Doug Ducey was attempting to entice technology companies to do their testing in his state, a strategy that paid off in December 2016 when Uber moved its second self-driving trial from San Francisco to Arizona.
via Uber Could Be First to Test Completely Driverless Cars in Public – IEEE Spectrum