Company / division: Carmakers
Silicon Valley’s responses to Trump’s immigration executive orders, from strongest to weakest – The Verge (Jan 28, 2017)
This is a good summary of the responses from the tech industry so far to President Trump’s executive orders on immigration from Friday. It also does a nice job sorting the responses by strength – there’s quite a range in the responses, from those focusing narrowly on the practical impacts on employees of each company to those issuing broader moral condemnations of the policy. This certainly won’t be the last we hear on this topic. It’s notable that as of right now Amazon is one of the major holdouts among the big consumer tech companies.
via The Verge
Tesla sues ex-Autopilot director for taking proprietary info, poaching employees – TechCrunch (Jan 26, 2017)
Things are getting nasty between Tesla and one of its prominent former employees, Sterling Anderson, who used to run its Autopilot program. The lawsuit alleges that Anderson both took proprietary data from Tesla when he left and that he tried to poach additional Tesla employees to work on his new venture with Chris Urmson, formerly of Google’s autonomous driving unit. This lawsuit just highlights how competitive the space has become, and how eagerly many different companies including established carmakers, smaller carmakers like Tesla, big tech companies like Apple and Google (and Uber), and startups like Anderson and Urmson’s new venture Aurora are pursuing it. We’re going to see a lot of ugliness, and certainly plenty more hiring and poaching between these various companies, over the coming years.
via TechCrunch
Elon Musk: Surprise winner under Trump – CNBC (Jan 24, 2017)
Although the tech sector has generally recoiled in horror at the prospect of Donald Trump’s presidency, and cooperated only under duress with the incoming administration, Elon Musk of Tesla seems to be something of an exception. His history with Peter Thiel, Trump’s right hand man on tech issues, is a major enabler, but it seems to go beyond that. It would be fascinating if Musk rather than Thiel himself ended up becoming the bridge between the administration and the tech industry. Cooperating closely with the administration is still likely to be a double-edged sword – on the one hand, it may curry favor, but on the other it may anger Tesla customers who view Trump with distaste. It will be fascinating to watch how this plays out.
via CNBC
Proposed state law would require emissions-free autonomous vehicles, and tax them by the mile – The Boston Globe (Jan 20, 2017)
As regulators and governments seek to provide a legal framework for autonomous driving, we’ll see something of a dichotomy between those who try to be as welcoming as possible to experiments and development of the technology, and those who see this as yet another opportunity to drive tax revenue or other separate goals. These lawmakers in Massachusetts seem to be taking the second approach, proposing that autonomous cars pay a per-mile road tax and produce zero emissions. Contrast this with Arizona’s governor, who has been very open to testing of autonomous vehicles and famously invited Uber’s self-driving cars to his state when they were banned from San Francisco. San Francisco, of course, is somewhere in the middle, largely open to testing of the technology, but with reasonable limits. Just as there will be fierce competition between tech companies around autonomous driving, there will be competition between states and cities around the technology too. Policies such as those being advocated in Massachusetts are likely to do little to endear the state to would-be autonomous driving companies.
NHTSA Finds No Fault in Tesla Autopilot With Regard to May 2016 Fatal Crash – NHTSA (Jan 19, 2017)
This is NHTSA’s report on the Tesla Autopilot crash in May 2016, which was investigating whether the Autopilot system was at fault. The headline from Tesla’s perspective is that the Autopilot system wasn’t at fault, because it (a) operated as expected, and (b) wasn’t intended to be able to avoid such cross-traffic collisions. That’s good for Tesla, because it exonerates its system, and also because NHTSA determined that its Autosteer system increases safety by 40%. Incidentally, the report also classifies Autopilot as a Level 2 system, whereas I’ve seen some people incorrectly refer to its as Level 3. The key here is that Level 3 systems allow the driver to stop paying attention, whereas Level 2 systems require full driver attention at all times. The problem in this crash was that the driver treated the system as a Level 3 system (which the term Autopilot somewhat implies), and paid insufficient attention to notice the truck crossing the car’s path. Tesla’s system may not have been at fault, but there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s not doing enough to train drivers not to treat its Level 2 system as something more – though NHTSA didn’t address that point in its report.
via NHTSA Finds No Fault in Tesla Autopilot With Regard to May 2016 Fatal Crash – NHTSA (PDF) – see also news coverage of the report on Techmeme
Building the Supercharger Network for the Future – Tesla (Jan 12, 2017)
Tesla announced the outlines of this new approach several months ago, but has now fleshed out some of the details – it will begin charging for using more than 400kWh annually at its supercharging (rapid charging) stations for new cars sold from this month onward, but the rates will be very low – apparently just $120 to drive across the US from New York to Los Angeles. The motivation here is that this charging infrastructure remains absolutely critical to the owner experience for electric cars, and densifying the network is expensive. As such, Tesla wants to recoup some (though apparently not all) the costs from those who actually use it. One of the big challenges for the big auto manufacturers is not just matching the performance of Tesla’s cars but matching its charging infrastructure over time too, and some have partnered in Europe to accelerate this rollout.
via Building the Supercharger Network for the Future | Tesla
U.S. Department of Transportation announces a new committee focused on automation – TechCrunch (Jan 11, 2017)
If there’s one thing that’s become very clear to me this week as I’ve attended the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, it’s that autonomous driving is a vastly more complex proposition than many of the claims from its various proponents would suggest. All autonomous driving technology is not created equal, and governments and regulators have lots of thorny issues to resolve before widespread autonomous driving can become a reality. The good news is that the US Department of Transportation seems to understand that and is taking steps to understand all the implications, working with many of the players likely to make it a reality in the coming years. I hope this work continues under the incoming administration, because it’s critical.
via U.S. Department of Transportation announces a new committee focused on automation | TechCrunch
Creator of Apple’s Swift Leaves for Tesla – Tesla PR (Jan 10, 2017)
This is one of those bits of news that’s almost impossible not to see as symbolic – a top software engineer leaves an Apple that has appeared to be struggling for Tesla, the car tech startup that can do no wrong. Both of those, of course, are exaggerations and Apple has poached many employees from Tesla over the last couple of years too. But the fact that Chris Lattner, an extremely well respected software engineer, chose to leave at the very least says something is currently more attractive for him at Tesla than at Apple. If Apple’s car efforts are in as much flux as they’ve recently seemed, and if cars are what Lattner wants to work on next, then that’s not all that surprising. And it’s impossible to know at this point whether there’s something more to it than that. (Update, Jan. 11 2017: see also this news)
via Welcome Chris Lattner | Tesla
Volkswagen will be integrating Amazon’s Alexa into its cars – The Verge (Jan 8, 2017)
This is the second of two Alexa car announcements made at this year’s CES, along with Ford’s, and together they’re part of Amazon’s push to get Alexa out of the home. There’s no date yet for this one, so it’ll be a while still before we start to see this, and of course unless you’re buying a new Ford or VW in the near future, you won’t benefit, but this is part of the longer-term push.
via Volkswagen will be integrating Amazon’s Alexa into its cars – The Verge
Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz to bring an AI car to market within a year | TechCrunch (Jan 7, 2017)
Though lots of the fuss about AI in cars relates to autonomous driving, the reality is that we’re many years from broad scale autonomous driving, and so what we’ll get in the meantime is lots of technology that assists human drivers rather than doing the driving itself. This Nvidia-Mercedes partnership is very much in this category, though we don’t know all the details yet, but we’ll see lots more of this kind of thing in the next few years, which in turn will help train AIs to take over the driving later on.
via Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz to bring an AI car to market within a year | TechCrunch
Autonomous tech supplier Mobileye wants automakers to crowdsource maps for self-driving cars – Recode (Jan 5, 2017)
Given that HERE is already owned by several of the automakers, you could make the argument that there’s a more natural player to aggregate mapping data from them, but Mobileye is making its pitch regardless. On the one hand, it’s easy to see the logic here – all the companies ultimately need basically the same data. On the other, however, these companies are fierce competitors and though they’ve occasionally cooperated too, they’re far less likely to cede control and exclusive ownership of something they consider strategically important. Ultimately, it may well be the premium and niche automakers who need such an approach more than the big guys.
Audi Pushes Toward Fully Autonomous Cars – WSJ (Jan 5, 2017)
Nvidia has been making big strides in the car technology space, and made more news this week at CES with a partnership with Audi. This is one of the most interesting battles among the major chipmakers at the moment, and Nvidia does seem to be doing well, while Intel and Qualcomm also make advances (both also made news at CES this week).
via Audi Pushes Toward Fully Autonomous Cars – WSJ
Ford and Toyota Establish SmartDeviceLink Consortium to Accelerate Industry-Driven Standard for In-Vehicle Apps | Ford Media Center (Jan 4, 2017)
This announcement builds on an existing partnership between Ford and Toyota around in-car entertainment systems, and it’s hard to see it as anything but a concerted effort to bypass CarPlay and Android Auto. Ford supports both technologies after being a holdout early on, but Toyota never has. It’s likely that for most of the consortium members those options will be present in addition to their proprietary systems, but it’s clear these carmakers aren’t willing to cede the in-car UI to Apple or Google.
Ford becomes the first automaker to bring Amazon Echo into their cars – The Verge (Jan 4, 2017)
This is an important new domain for Amazon and Alexa, one of the first that gets it out of the house with its voice assistant. Of course, it’s also one of the slowest-moving technology products, with massively long upgrade cycles and very long development cycles too.
via Ford becomes the first automaker to bring Amazon Echo into their cars – The Verge
BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye Will Have Autonomous Test Vehicles on the Roads by the Second Half of 2017 | Intel Newsroom (Jan 4, 2017)
This is a big deal for Intel, which has seemed to be behind some of its big chip competitors in the autonomous driving space, and the fact that real cars will be on real roads later this year means this is delivering actual results today, and not just a loose partnership. This will be a big year for autonomous driving in general, likely the year almost all big automakers run some of their first trials on real roads, and Intel needs to be in the mix like this. I’ll be talking to BMW next week at the Detroit auto show about all this too.
Tesla fails to come through on its promise to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 cars in 2016 – Recode (Jan 3, 2017)
The shortfall mentioned here was modest, and was entirely due to delivery rather than production issues. The bigger issue is that, even if it had hit 80 or 90k deliveries in 2016, its targets for 2017 and especially 2018 are higher still, with 2018 apparently ramping to 400,000. That’s still an incredibly steep hill to climb, and I’m doubtful Tesla can up production that quickly. There may be a lot of disappointed Tesla 3 reservers come 2018…
via Tesla fails to come through on its promise to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 cars in 2016 – Recode
Faraday Future Faces Crucial Test With New Electric Car – WSJ (Jan 3, 2017)
Well, Faraday Future does actually seem to have a car, which seems to be able to drive fairly quickly in a straight line, and is sometimes able to park itself automatically. That much is clear after its press event tonight at CES. But its financial situation, the eventual price and exact launch date of the car, and much else besides remain unclear. The event seems to have gone fairly well, which was in doubt after some recent stories, but it’s still far from certain that we’ll actually see a production vehicle from FF next year.
via Faraday Future Faces Crucial Test With New Electric Car – WSJ
Hyundai Collaborates With Google Assistant In Further Connecting Homes To Cars – Hyundai (Jan 3, 2017)
This integration allows a Google Assistant user to remotely control their Hyundai through its Blue Link connected car system. We’re going to see more and more integrations between various voice assistants and cars, though of course Siri won’t be part of that yet because its third party integrations are limited to a handful of specific categories. Google is slowing ramping up its API efforts around the Assistant, which should add value in interesting ways.
via Hyundai Collaborates With Google Assistant In Further Connecting Homes To Cars – Hyundai
FCA and Google Collaborate on a Uconnect System Concept Powered by Android – Fiat Chrysler (Jan 2, 2017)
This is an interesting side benefit of Google’s partnership with Fiat Chrysler around autonomous vehicles – FCA is now using Android N to power a new version of its Uconnect connected car technology in cars. FCA is on the official list of Apple CarPlay partners too, so even though there’s deep integration with certain Android apps here, this doesn’t mean iPhones will be second-class citizens in the car. But it does mean Google is now in cars in two distinct ways while Apple still seems to be honing its strategy behind closed doors.
via FCA and Google Collaborate on a Uconnect System Concept Powered by Android – Fiat Chrysler
Fiat’s Secret Self-Driving Car Shows How Industry May Evolve — The Information (Dec 29, 2016)
Great inside information here about FCA’s other self-driving initiatives beyond its Waymo partnership. The strategy highlights the big concern many carmakers have about partnering with Alphabet (or for that matter Apple) – that they will cede differentiation to the platform vendor and lose their own competitiveness in the process. Clearly, FCA remains committed to its Waymo deal, but it’s sensible to hedge its bets here.
via Fiat’s Secret Self-Driving Car Shows How Industry May Evolve — The Information