Paul Gluckman

Semi-autonomous systems will continue to dominate the market for self-driving cars over the next decade, ABI Research said in a Thursday report. It forecasts that vehicles with Level 2 and 3 systems on the Society of Automotive Engineers six-step scale of driving autonomy will account for 86 percent of the autonomous vehicles shipping in 2026. But “higher levels of autonomy will gain traction quickly,” accounting for just under a third of autonomous vehicles shipping in 2030, it said. Self-driving cars “will transform the way mobility is consumed, bringing environmental, societal and convenience advantages to the end user,” ABI said. “It also represents a fundamental disruption to the business model that dominated the automotive market for almost one century. OEMs have much to gain in pursuing semi-autonomous operation, maintaining the importance of the driving experience.” Recent announcements from BMW, Ford, Tesla and others “signal that OEMs are not only looking to introduce higher levels of autonomy by 2021, but are also actively planning to transition from vehicle sellers to mobility providers.” ABI sees the “quasi-universal” 2021 target date for the rollout of Level 4 and 5 systems representing “a significant acceleration in the autonomous technology market,” it said.

Senate appropriators will take on the question of automated and self-driving vehicles Wednesday in a 2:30 p.m. hearing in 192 Dirksen. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairs the Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee holding it. Witnesses are National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Administrator Mark Rosekind, National Safety Council President Deborah Hersman, Alliance for Transportation Innovation President Paul Brubaker and Rand Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty Co-Director Nidhi Kalra. The hearing’s title is “The Automated and Self-Driving Vehicle Revolution: What Is the Role of Government?”

The potential impact of self-driving cars on motorist safety as well as on mobility and new opportunities for disabled and underserved communities will be the focus of a House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. “Next week’s hearing provides us the opportunity to review the potential impact this innovative technology will have on safety and economic growth, while allowing us to examine any regulatory roadblocks hindering its development," said Subcommittee Chairman Michael Burgess, R-Texas, in a news release. Witnesses haven't been listed yet. The 10:30 a.m. hearing will be in 2322 Rayburn.

Vehicle-to-everything technologies will make driving safer, 5G Americas said in a white paper. V2X technologies also will make traffic move more efficiently, provide additional traveler information service and be good for the environment, the paper said. “LTE cellular technology can be an important enabler for a best-in-class vehicle connectivity solution,” said Chris Pearson, president of 5G Americas, in a news release. “A global LTE footprint and technology standards, combined with future-proof evolution, are enablers for Cellular V2X on the road to success in achieving the goals established for safety, information, ecology, maintenance and security, as well as entertainment, in the connected car of the future.”

The White House released a report on the role and potential benefits of artificial intelligence, including how AI-enabled products should be regulated. "In general, the approach to regulation of AI-enabled products to protect public safety should be informed by assessment of the aspects of risk that the addition of AI may reduce alongside the aspects of risk that it may increase," said the Wednesday report. Policymakers and regulators should discuss whether existing regulations adequately address such risks and how they can change regulations if they increase compliance costs or slow the development or adoption of AI innovations without affecting safety or competition. For instance, the report pointed to the regulatory challenges in developing driverless cars and drones, which potentially could provide many economic and societal benefits, but also present public safety issues. The report also touched on government R&D to advance AI, the need for a better skilled workforce and consequences of the technology's impact on jobs, safety and security. The report, which lists nearly two dozen recommendations that federal agencies and other stakeholders should take in this area, was released a day before the White House's innovation conference in Pittsburgh that will include AI as a topic (see 1610110008).

U.S. consumers are “excited” about autonomous cars and the benefits they could provide, and most want to “swap their current cars for completely self-driving vehicles,” a CTA study found. CTA canvassed online in July 2,001 adults who drove a car or truck in the past month and found 70 percent have a “strong interest” in testing a driverless car, it said in a Friday report. CTA also found 62 percent of those polled are interested in replacing their current cars or trucks with completely self-driving vehicles, it said. Other findings: (1) More than eight in 10 consumers (82 percent) agreed with the proposition that autonomous cars can “reduce accidents caused by aggressive driving or driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol”; (2) Slightly fewer think driverless cars will bring “monetary savings” on car insurance (80 percent), will prevent up to 90 percent of driving-related accidents and injuries on U.S. roads (79 percent) or offer “new mobility options” for people with disabilities (78 percent). “We don’t have to wait for the benefits of self-driving cars to arrive,” said CTA President Gary Shapiro in a statement. “Driver-assist technology is already saving lives, avoiding accidents and paving the way for completely driverless innovations still to come. We should promote these technologies that help drowsy or inattentive drivers stay focused, or provide specific responses such as automatic braking and lane-drift avoidance -- all of which are now widely available in newer model vehicles.”

Google wants to show autonomous vehicles are for real and has now logged more than 2 million miles on public roads, said Dmitri Dolgov, head of the self-driving technology program, Wednesday in a blog post. “If you consider the hours we’ve spent on the road, our cars now have the equivalent of 300 years of human driving experience.” Google recognized it had to tackle complex driving environments, Dolgov said. “We now spend the vast majority of our time on complex city streets, rather than simpler environments like highways,” he said. “It takes much more time to accumulate miles if you’re focused on suburban roads.” It took the company six years to hit 1 million miles, only 16 months to log the second million, he said. “With each mile we drive, our test drivers provide feedback on the car’s movements  -- things like how quickly we accelerate and brake, the distance we keep from other cars and pedestrians, or the speed and angle we turn,” he said. “With each piece of feedback, our engineers tweak our software and calibrate our driving behavior, making our self-driving car feel more natural on the road.”

Lifting a Pennsylvania restriction on municipal broadband could spur state smart city initiatives, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (D) said Wednesday. A Pennsylvania law forces cities and counties with broadband plans to ask their incumbent ISP to implement broadband before the governments can do so themselves. Changing the law “certainly would give us options that cities like Chattanooga have already been able to seize upon,” he said on a live-streamed Washington Post smart cities event. Google Fiber helped in Kansas City and other cities, he said. Pittsburgh could use better broadband, he said. “The amount of information that will be required and the broadband that will be needed will be possibly more than we can provide right now.” The city has dark fiber owned by the utility company, he said. “That could become really the backbone of a system that would then be able to be launched with wireless technology.” Pittsburgh has “been having conversations with DQE,” a subsidiary of the energy company Duquesne Light, he said. The mayor also spoke about Uber, which recently announced Pittsburgh as a test bed for its autonomous cars (see 1609070018). Peduto joked that fear of “robot cars” may be one of three reasons he isn’t re-elected, in addition to bike lanes and welcoming Syrian refugees into the city. People fear a self-driving car will cause an accident, but the reality is that humans cause many accidents, he said. “There will be accidents, but if the greater goal is to make the streets safer in the long term, we have to begin at some point, and we can’t wait for regulation to catch up to innovation.”

Intel joined those hailing the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for releasing their long-awaited guidelines on autonomous vehicles (see 1609200039). Intel “commends DOT/NHTSA’s interest in encouraging U.S. innovation, as well as seeking a consistent national framework across all 50 states for the testing, deployment and operation of highly automated vehicles,” said Marjorie Dickman, global director and managing counsel-IoT policy, in a Tuesday blog post. The company also wants the agencies to “invest a larger portion of its ‘innovation’ grant funding in autonomous vehicles,” Dickman said. “Increased investment -- along with removing unnecessary barriers and promoting autonomous vehicle research and deployment -- are critical to U.S. global competitiveness in the 21st century and, most importantly, to saving more lives.” Autonomous cars just five years ago “seemed like a far off ‘Jetsons’ fantasy,” but they’re now “just around the corner,” she said. Intel, BMW and Mobileye announced plans in July to bring autonomous vehicles to streets by 2021 (see 1607010052).

Ford sees autonomous vehicles accounting for one in 10 miles traveled in the U.S. by 2030, CEO Mark Fields told the company's Analyst Day conference Thursday at its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters. Ford’s intent is to introduce a “Level 4" fully autonomous vehicle in 2021, Fields said. A Society of Automotive Engineers standard published in January 2014 defines Level 4 as “high automation” in a vehicle, meaning it will have an automated system capable of handling “all aspects” of driving tasks, “even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene.” The first Level 4 vehicle Ford introduces will be “specifically designed” for “commercial mobility services” such as ride-sharing and ride-hailing, and won’t have a steering wheel, brake pedal or gas pedal, said Raj Nair, chief technical officer. “I love driving, but I hate my commute,” he said. If he had the opportunity for a vehicle to pick him up from home every day and drive him to work in a manner that would be cheaper than personally owning a vehicle, “I would jump on it,” he said. “I think that’s true for a lot of our customers. And so this is why we think this could really be a game changing aspect of how personal mobility is viewed in the future.” Ford projects that autonomous vehicle sales could account for up to 20 percent of total vehicle sales by 2030, Nair said. “Couple that along with the opportunity of not just manufacturing and selling the vehicles, but participating in the transportation of the service opportunity, participating in the vehicle management as the service opportunity, you could see why this is such a large opportunity for Ford Motor Company.”