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News Roundup: Volkswagen Shows Off Sedric the Level-5 Autonomous Car in China, Major Players Weigh In on California’s Proposed Driverless Testing Policies, and More

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A look at some of the biggest news stories to come out of the driverless and connected-car world this past week:

Major players weigh in on California’s proposed self-driving testing policies

Representatives from major players in the autonomous drive game, such as Apple, Uber, Tesla Motors and Ford, have been sending comments to California officials on what changes they would like to see made in the Golden State’s proposed policies for testing self-driving vehicles. In particular, Apple wants to change the way companies report “disengagements,” which we assume refers to accidents or collisions. Tesla wrote that they disapprove of the idea of barring testing of vehicles that weigh more than 10,000 pounds. Uber said it should be allowed for people to pay to ride in an autonomous vehicle with a driver behind the wheel in order to provide the company with honest feedback. Tesla also warned that restrictive policies would encourage developers to leave the state. Read more from Business Insider.

 

What to do with the ‘ocean of data’ connected and driverless cars will create each day?

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson said recently that as more and more cars are outfitted with sensors, cameras and LiDAR, the more data they will begin to generate. In fact, a single autonomous car will be capable of generating as much as 100 gigabytes of data per second. “Assuming the entire U.S. fleet of vehicles - 260 million vehicles - has a similar data generation, it would create an ocean of data. To put it in context, one hour’s worth of raw data across the entire U.S. fleet would be around 5,800 exabytes in size,” Johnson said. One exabyte is equivalent to one million terrabytes. That presents a wealth of problems when it comes to the storage, management and analysis of that much data. Many big companies like Tesla, Delphi and Intel have ideas about how to tackle this problem. One idea is “edge analytics,” where information is analyzed close to the sensor itself rather than being sent elsewhere through the cloud. Read more from CNBC.

 

Volkswagen wows with ‘Sedric’ Level 5 autonomous concept car in Shanghai

We first saw “Sedric” the Level-5 autonomous car in March, when Volkswagen showed off renderings of the concept car. Now, Volkswagen is showing off the real thing. The company recently took Sedric to China to show it off at the Auto Shanghai 2017 show. The car is capable of full Level-5 self-driving, and in fact executives said all a passenger has to do it climb in, press a single button to start the car, and then control it throughout the rest of the trip via voice commands. The car has no brakes, controls or pedals. In fact, the car features no “cockpit” at all. See more from Automotive Tires and Parts.

Photo: Interior of Volkswagen’s ‘Sedric’ car / Credit: Volkswagen

 

News Roundup: Baidu Surprises By Offering Up Its Driverless Technology to the World For Free, Autonomous Trains to Debut in Delhi This June, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A roundup of some of the most interesting headlines to come out of the driverless and connected-car industries this week:

Baidu challenges the likes of Google, Tesla by offering its driverless tech to all

Chinese tech giant Baidu surprised industry analysts this week by offering up its driverless vehicle software to the world in what many are calling an attempt to challenge the likes of Tesla Motors and Google. Baidu is naming the project Apollo and says it will offer automakers all the tools they need to build an autonomous vehicle. “Essentially, Baidu is trying to become to cars what Google’s Android has become to smartphones – an operating system that will power a number of driverless vehicles,” CNBC explains. Baidu has been investing heavily in autonomous drive technology over the past year or two. The company has already tested driverless cars on highways in Beijing, and recently obtained a permit to test in California. Read more from CNBC.

 

Driverless Metro trains to debut in Delhi in June

Indian news media is reporting that Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is putting the finishing touches on a new system capable of operating without a driver, and says the public will be able to ride on it come June of this year. The trains will run on only two lines: Pink, which runs between Mukundpur and Shiv Vihar, and Magenta, which runs between Botanical Garden and Janakpuri west, covering a distance of 96 km. Testing took place between October and December of last year. Additional tracks are also being built, and testing will take place in new areas later this year. Read more from the Hindustan Times.

 

Grand Theft Auto 5 being used as simulation environment for driverless systems?

Possibly, soon. Professor Alain Kornhauser, professor of operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University, described the video game “Grand Theft Auto V” as “the richest virtual environment that we could extract data from” this week when speaking to media outlets. The actions of more than 1,000 virtual drivers and pedestrians in the game, along with “disordered roads” and changing weather offer a wealth of unpredictable conditions that can help teach artificial intelligence of driverless systems to respond safely, making the game a top-recommended game for developers to use as a training simulator. Read more from Engineering & Technology magazine.

Photo: A Metro train in Delhi, by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation

‘Olli’ the Self-Driving Bus Debuts in Maryland

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Jennifer van der Kleut

The company Local Motors says autonomous driving may not be as far in the future as many are saying. In fact, their self-driving shuttle “Olli” is ready to hit the roads safely now-all that’s needed is the legal permission to do so.

Local Motors introduced Olli last week on Thursday, June 16 to much fanfare. It is now ready to begin testing at the expansive, popular shopping area called National Harbor in Maryland, just outside Washington D.C.

Olli can seat 12 people, and can be summoned with an app similar to Uber or Lyft, explains Phys.org.

One of the most amazing facts about Olli? It can be “printed” via a 3-D printer in a factory in a matter of a few hours.

“We hope to be able to print this vehicle in about 10 hours and assemble it in another hour,” said Local Motors co-founder and chief executive, John Rogers. He told Phys.org he envisions hundreds of “micro-factories” producing the vehicles around the world, for markets that are ready for them.

Rogers said the shuttles are ready for deployment as soon as laws and regulations will allow them.

Over the next few months, Olli will begin public testing at National Harbor, and is expected to hit other areas like Las Vegas and Miami, as well as international spots like Berlin, Copenhagen and Canberra, Australia in the future.

Olli uses the interface Watson by IBM, which allows users to have “conversations” with Olli, such as to name their destination.

“A vehicle that understands human language, where you can walk in and say, ‘I’d like to get to work’ — that lets you as a passenger relax and enjoy your journey,” Rogers explained.

The vehicle relies on more than 30 sensors and streams of data from IBM’s cloud, Phys.org reports.

“With Watson, passengers can ask about how the vehicle works, where they are going, and why Olli is making specific driving decisions,” Phys.org says. “And it can answer the dreaded driver question, ‘Are we there yet?'”

It also can offer recommendations for popular restaurants or historical sites based on the personal preferences of the passenger.

Rogers said Las Vegas has already purchased two shuttles, and they are in negotiations with Miami-Dade for testing as well. All in all, they have had or are currently in discussions with 50 locations across the globe.

According to CNBC, a Local Motors spokespersons says it is quite possible that several hundred Ollis could be on public roads in different locations by the end of this year.

Automakers: You Wouldn’t Want to Rent an iPhone, So You Probably Won’t Want to Hire an Autonomous Car, Either

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Jennifer van der Kleut

CNBC recently interviewed executives from top automakers working on autonomous car technology, and they say they’re not as worried about the threat of ridesharing companies like Uber as one might think they should be.

Representatives from OEMs like Nissan-Renault and Volvo say in the future, your autonomous car will be just as personalized as your smartphone-and for that reason, they predict you’d rather own one than hire one.

“People use a car for many other things [than just transportation] and with the connectivity coming, the car is going to become a kind of working space, it’s going to become a living space,” Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Renault-Nissan, said during a CNBC technology event.

“Because if in the car you can connect, interface, video conference… it becomes your own space, you’re going to have your own photos, your own email, your own music, your own calls, your own everything. It becomes like your iPhone, you want something belonging to you,” he continued.

Klas Bendrik, chief information officer at Volvo Cars, told CNBC he thinks it will depend on the area one is in.

“You have a different transportation need when you go from the cities to the suburban areas, and if you go to the countryside you have a different transportation need,” Blendrik said, adding that ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft may make sense in “mega-cities,” he thinks personalized autonomous cars will prove much more attractive in suburban and other areas.

While countless automakers and tech firms alike have said they believe autonomous car technology as the safest option in the future, and will be the preferred mode of transportation for millions in the future, opinions still appear to be varied as to when we can expect it to be widely available.

While some companies like Tesla and Google appear to be in a race to see who can get it to mass market first, even before 2020 rolls around, others like Ford, Toyota and Mitsubishi seem to be taking the road a little slower to truly perfect the technology.

Toyota has publicly said that at this time, they still believe humans have better instincts than auto software, and that there are still significant hurdles to overcome before the technology is ready for mass market.

Mitsubishi has made no secret of the fact that they are not rushing to get an autonomous car on the road, though they are working on it. Their first priority is improving safety, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Ford appears to making significant progress, becoming the first to test their driverless and connected-car technology at the Mcity testing ground in Michigan, and the first to test their driverless cars in heavy winter snow and ice.

Ford has also famously partnered with Google on driverless car technology, pairing their cars with Google’s software-and some think the partnership could go beyond driverless cars as well.

See CNBC’s interviews with automakers like Nissan-Renault and Volvo on their website.

Study: Driverless Cars to Be 15% of Global Auto Sales By 2030, and How Ride-Sharing Companies Can Actually Help Grow Auto Market

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Jennifer van der Kleut

One consulting firm that studies auto trends has no doubts about the promises that several car companies have made recently-in particular, that fully autonomous cars will be experiencing mass-market sales by 2030 or possibly earlier.

The firm, McKinsey & Company, has released findings from a new study on several auto trends, one of the biggest of which says that they believe 15 percent of global auto sales will consist of fully autonomous cars by 2030. Before that, the firm predicts mass-market sales will begin around 2020-2022.

Another big declaration of the study touches upon the impact of ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft, as well as any potential future ventures.

The study predicts that in the near-term, ridesharing companies will slow the annual growth of global auto sales, from the current average of 3.6 percent down to 2 percent.

However, in the long-term, the study says that growth will rebound, and that ridesharing companies will actually help it grow by a whopping 30 percent by 2030. By 2050, McKinsey & Company predicts that 1 in 3 cars sold globally will be a shared vehicle.

The study also touches upon the rate of adoption of electric vehicles. Thanks to the efforts like those of Ford, which is investing millions in electric vehicle infrastructure such as charging stations, McKinsey & Company predicts 15 to 20 percent of all new auto sales will be of electric cars by 2030.

Read more on McKinsey & Company’s full report by news outlets such as Detroit News, Bloomberg and CNBC.

Calif. Proposes Self-Driving Car Laws That Would Require a Driver Behind the (Non-Existent?) Wheel

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Earlier this week, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) announced proposed laws to regulate self-driving cars-and those laws have many in the industry smacking their heads in frustration.

The part of the proposed regulations that is frustrating companies trying to get their autonomous car divisions off their feet-Google, Ford, Tesla, Delphi and others-is the sentence that requires that a licensed driver “to be present inside the vehicle and be capable of taking control in the event of a technology failure or other emergency.”

High-profile executives such as Google’s Chris Urmson, head of its self-driving car division, say California just effectively set back the progress of technology at least five years, CNBC reports.

“This maintains the same old status quo and falls short on allowing this technology to reach its full potential, while excluding those who need to get around but cannot drive,” Urmson wrote in an online blog post Thursday.

It’s not difficult to see how this would upset Google, as the company’s famous pod-shaped test cars are known for not having a steering wheel or pedals.

Others in the industry will surely lament the word “licensed” in the proposed law. Countless industry analysts, commentators and bloggers have publicly declared again and again that once self-driving cars are mainstream, foreign tourists, underage children, the disabled and the elderly will be able to enjoy increased mobility without having to maintain or own a driver’s license.

CNBC reports that two other requirements in the proposed regulations include third-party testing of vehicles and that manufacturers must alert car operators to a cyber attack.

CNBC reports that two public forums on the proposed laws will take place sometime next year.

Samsung Joining Autonomous Car Race

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A new company is joining the long list of those taking at a stab at the autonomous car business — Samsung.

Perhaps best known for flatscreen TVs and smartphones, news outlets are reporting that Samsung is launching a new division of its business aimed at manufacturing car parts for bigger automakers.

Engadget reports that the first project will be in-car infotainment systems, and that Samsung will eventually work its way up to car parts that enable autonomous driving. Engadget adds that many smartphone components also lend themselves to autonomous driving, making Samsung a credible player.

Both Motley Fool and Engadget point out that Samsung actually launched its own auto division, Samsung Motors, back in 1994. However, the market dive of 1997 forced Samsung to sell to Renault. Samsung reportedly still owns a 19-percent stake in that division.

CNBC points out that Samsung’s mobile phone division has plunged from over 60 percent to now just over 30 percent, and speculates the move may be fueled by a need to find new areas for growth. It also points out that Samsung’s biggest rival, LG Electronics, announced a deal in 2013 to manufacture car parts for General Motors’ electric Chevrolet Volt.

Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering Marks the 30th Birthday of Self-Driving Car Technology

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CNBC