Narrative: Tech Disrupts Transportation
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Apple Car Engineers Leave for Electric Mobility Startup Zoox (Aug 30, 2017)
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Tesla’s Rapid Autopilot Rollout Unnerved Some Engineers, Reports WSJ (Aug 24, 2017)
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★ Uber’s Q2 2017 Partial Financials Show Strong Growth, Vague Progress on Losses (Aug 23, 2017)
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Studies Find Pre-Autonomy Safety Systems in Cars Prevent Crashes, Save Lives (Aug 23, 2017)
The article linked below discusses several recent studies conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and other bodies, which provide substantial evidence that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like lane departure warnings and blind spot detection are preventing crashes and saving lives. This is notable because autonomous driving technology is widely expected to reduce crashes significantly, but is likely years away, while traditional car manufactures have been working for years on ADAS technology, and that’s already having a positive impact. That’s great validation for the strategy of most vehicle manufactures working in parallel on improving and broadening ADAS while simultaneously working on autonomy, because it suggests the former efforts are providing real benefit today, while autonomy is still years away. It’s also going to be very helpful for those trying to get regulatory approval for autonomous systems to be able to point to these results as evidence of the broader claims. Crucially, however, ADAS augments the driver’s own skills and awareness rather than replacing the driver, whereas intermediate autonomous technologies introduce scenarios in which drivers either can or may be tempted to pay less attention to the driving task, which can actually create new risks. The key in developing autonomous technology will be to implement methods to keep drivers attentive so that they act appropriately even as the tech in the car increasingly takes over.
★ Apple’s Car Project Suffered From Lack of Focus, Reports New York Times (Aug 23, 2017)
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GM’s Maven Unit Shows Signs of Deepening Direct Investment in Ride Sharing (Aug 17, 2017)
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Fiat Chrysler Joins BMW-Intel-Mobileye Alliance for Autonomous Driving Systems (Aug 16, 2017)
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Toyota, Ericsson, Intel, and Others Form Consortium to Manage Car Data (Aug 11, 2017)
Toyota, Ericsson, Intel, NTT, and other companies have formed a consortium to figure out ways to manage the massive explosion of data that will be generated by cars over the coming years. As cars become more autonomous, they will need to gather enormously more data from cameras, radar, LIDAR, and other sensors and transmit at least a subset of that data over networks to central repositories for processing and analysis. That, in turn, is going to require some big decisions about which data to process locally, what needs to be sent over the air, and how much and which data to store on an ongoing basis in both locations. Since carmakers like Toyota don’t really have much experience with that kind of thing, network infrastructure vendor Ericsson and chip vendor Intel among others are going to work together with them to figure some of this stuff out, and have left the door open for others to join their effort in future. Notably absent from this initiative are other big automotive chip vendors like Nvidia, any cloud service companies beyond Japan’s NTT, or mapping companies like HERE, and given the strong roles they’re playing or likely to play in this area, the consortium does need to add additional members (including ones who compete with the founding members) if it’s to make real headway here.
via Toyota
Samsung is Building Driver Assistance Technology for Cars to Rival Mobileye (Aug 10, 2017)
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Tesla is Working with CA and NV Regulators to Prep for Autonomous Trucks (Aug 9, 2017)
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