Paul Gluckman

There's a "strong likelihood" the Senate Commerce Committee will hold an Oct. 4 markup session, but it's less clear whether a draft self-driving vehicle legislation will be reviewed, a Senate aide told us Thursday. Last week, the committee held a hearing on whether to include self-driving trucks in the draft, a move favored by Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., but opposed by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who has said he would rather see separate legislation on trucks (see 1709130039). Self-driving trucks aren't included in HR-3388 -- which unanimously passed via voice vote two weeks ago (see 1709060035) -- because the House Commerce Committee, which drafted the bill, doesn't have jurisdiction over commercial trucks. The aide didn't provide any details about sticking points over the Senate draft, which has been circulating for about two weeks. The committee also has been wrangling with issues such as pre-emption of local and state laws, which is favored by industry, plus cybersecurity and privacy.

The effective date for a July FCC order expanding the current 76-77 GHz spectrum allocation for vehicular radars to include the entire 76-81 GHz band is Oct. 20, after a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. The FCC also ordered the transition of the radars from the 24 GHz band. The order allows an extra year for the move of ultra-wideband (UWB) authorized to operate in the 22-29 GHz band. Commissioners approved the change in July (see 1707130056). The order “will improve performance for applications such as lane change warnings, blind spot detection, parking aids, ‘stop and follow’, ‘stop and go’, autonomous braking, and pedestrian detection,” said in a news release.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich touted its partnership with Waymo, known previously as Google’s self-driving car project, in a Monday blog post discussing the future of autonomous driving. “I fully expect my children’s children will never have to drive a car,” said Krzanich, commenting on the pace of autonomous driving technology. “Something almost 90 percent of Americans do every day will end within a generation,” he said, citing Federal Highway Administration data. Nearly 90 percent of the 1.3 million deaths caused by road crashes worldwide every year are due to human error, he said, citing World Health Organization figures. Waymo’s self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans use Intel-based technologies for sensor processing, general computing and connectivity, enabling real-time decisions for full autonomy in city conditions, Krzanich said. As Waymo’s vehicles become smarter and more capable, hardware and software will require more powerful and efficient computing power, and Intel is prepared to offer the processor power required for the higher levels 4 and 5 autonomy, he said. Waymo vehicles with Intel technology have logged 3 million miles of real-world driving, said the executive.

The House unanimously passed by voice vote the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution Act (Self Drive) Act (HR-3388), which would grant exemptions to automakers from safety standards to test more vehicles and would pre-empt state laws that the auto industry said would create a patchwork of regulations impeding the technology's development. Eyes now turn to the Senate Commerce Committee where Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., have been working on a similar bill. The panel plans a hearing on self-driving trucks Wednesday (see 1709060030). Thune told reporters he's “still working” on the bill with an eye to circulate a draft version as soon as later this week “to get response from members and the stakeholder community.” He hopes to file the bill within the next month and then “mark it up shortly after that.” Senate Commerce has a “little broader jurisdiction” than House Commerce does, so “there are some things that we could address in our bill” that HR-3388 couldn't, Thune said. But some Senate Commerce Democrats are raising “differences of opinion” on those additional provisions, including how the bill handles trucks, he said. “The main thing that we want to focus on is creating a pathway so that the research and development of this technology can proceed in the safest way possible,” Thune said: “We're looking at the full spectrum and trying to figure out the regulatory standpoint” for the federal and state levels. House passage of HR-3388 comes ahead of revised self-driving guidelines that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao reportedly is to unveil Tuesday in Michigan. Neither the Department of Transportation nor the White House commented. HR-3388 was expected to pass since the House Commerce Committee advanced it by 54-0 in July (see 1707260057). Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, lauded passage in a joint statement. The bill also would impose privacy and security requirements for automakers' "collection, use, sharing, and storage of information about vehicle owners or occupants collected by a highly automated vehicle." Organizations including CTA, CTIA, Intelligent Transportation Society of America and TechNet applauded passage. Critics, including auto safety and consumer groups, said it would jeopardize safety (see 1709050064). Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson said in a statement that pre-empting state laws "leaves us at the mercy of manufacturers as they use our public highways as their private laboratories however they wish with no safety protections."

Self-driving trucks and economic benefits will be the focus of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, the panel said in a news release. Witnesses include Navistar CEO Troy Clarke; Col. Scott Hernandez, who heads the Colorado State Patrol; National Safety Council CEO Deborah Hersman; and American Trucking Associations CEO Chris Spear. The release said lawmakers are discussing whether to include trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles in self-driving vehicle legislation. The House unanimously passed via voice vote autonomous vehicle legislation Wednesday, as expected, (see 1709060035). The 10 a.m. hearing will be in 253 Russell.

Consumer and auto safety organizations warned a self-driving bill scheduled for a House floor vote Wednesday (see 1708310055) is skirting safety measures. In a Tuesday letter to House members, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Consumer Federation of America and National Consumers League and others said HR-3388 "takes an unnecessary and unacceptable hands-off approach to hands-free driving." The measure sailed through a House committee in July (see 1707260057) and members then said they expect the full House to approve. Exempting potentially millions of such cars from federal standards could jeopardize safety, the coalition said. It said a public database with safety, level of automation of each vehicle and other information should be established and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should be given more funding, resources and enforcement authority to oversee the technology. The groups added state pre-emption is too broad.

Self-driving vehicle legislation that unanimously passed the House Commerce Committee in July (see 1707260057) will be considered on the House floor next week. In a joint statement, Commerce Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, praised the action: "This vote will pave the way for the safe testing, development, and deployment of self-driving cars across the U.S.” Reuters reported the vote will take place Wednesday. HR-3388 would establish rules for development and deployment of thousands of autonomous vehicles while also prohibiting states from regulating the technology.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai kept a busy schedule during the last part of his Southwest road trip Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday, Pai was in Reno, tweeting he would be “exploring Western #Nevada infrastructure” at a roundtable with Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev. Wednesday, Pai met with Arizona broadcasters and Arizona State University professor Subbarao Kambhampati to discuss artificial intelligence. Also Wednesday, Pai went for a ride in Chandler, Arizona, in a (Alphabet/Google) Waymo self-driving car. “Impressive reactions to speed bumps, construction crews, & more!” Pai tweeted. Pai said he met with the Bureau of Land Management‘s team in Arizona on siting issues.

Consumer Watchdog backed a proposed Chicago city ordinance that would ban self-driving cars from city streets unless the federal government enacts enforceable safety standards for autonomous vehicles, the public interest group said in a Monday news release. The group said testing autonomous vehicles would be “appropriate” if adequate safeguards were in place, including a “trained human test driver” with access to a steering wheel and brake pedal. Federal policymakers “are in no position” to determine conditions and challenges on local roads, said CW, citing special dangers unique to a location including school zones and highways under construction. “If self-driving car companies want to use Chicago’s public streets as their private laboratories, then they have a responsibility to be completely transparent about what they are doing and to test according to rules that City Council sets,” said Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson. Provisions of the ordinance say a self-driving vehicle being tested must have a permit from the city; the “robot” car in testing must have a trained test driver who can take over steering and braking; the testing company should be required to file public reports about any crashes; and the testing company should file public “disengagement reports” explaining instances when the robot technology failed and the test driver had to take control, CW said. It cited California regulations as a model and referenced a report from Google’s Waymo autonomous vehicle unit showing autonomous cars “had problems dealing with others on the road, construction zones and correctly perceiving their surroundings.” In the report Google said Waymo cars, which logged 635,868 miles on California’s roads in self-driving mode during 2016, saw disengagements decline from 341 to 124, or 0.8 per 1,000 miles compared with 0.2 per 1,000 miles. Most of the disengagements -- 112 -- occurred on local streets, not highways or interstates, the report said.

Nvidia’s autonomous-driving “road map” will include “development partnerships” it forges this year and next with a “growing number of car companies” on nonrecurring engineering and artificial intelligence projects, said CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on a Thursday earnings call. Beginning in 2018, he said he expects to see “robot taxis start to come to the road.” Nvidia is working with a “handful” of really exciting robot taxi projects around the world, many that will begin beta-testing, “and then next year you'll see a lot more of them,” he said. Starting in 2019, “you'll see them go into real commercial services” as what the industry calls “Level 5s, basically, driverless cars” with full autonomy, he said. Huang expects fully autonomous “branded cars will start hitting the road around 2020 and 2021,” he said. Huang thinks cryptocurrency “is here to stay,” he said on the call. “The market need for it is going to grow, and over time it will become quite large,” said Huang. As new cryptocurrency “algorithms” are being developed, the graphics processing unit (GPU), such as the Tegra devices that Nvidia makes and markets, “is really quite ideal for it,” he said. “And so this is a market that is not likely to go away anytime soon, and the only thing that we can probably expect is that there will be more currencies to come. It will come in a whole lot of different nations. It will emerge from time to time, and the GPU is really quite great for it.” Nvidia’s cryptocurrency strategy “is to stay very, very close to the market,” said Huang. “We understand its dynamics really well.” Huang thinks “the larger of a GPU company you are,” the greater its ability to “absorb the volatility” of the business, he said. “Because we have such large volumes, we have the ability to rock and roll with this market as it goes.”