Driverless Commute

The Driverless Commute in Compliance Review: The prospect of the commercialization of Level-3 autonomous driving in China

Posted on April 17, 2019 By Henry Chen
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles

1. Baidu joins hands with GAC, formally launching the high-precision map and self-localization mass production project

On April 11, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd. (“GAC”) and Baidu, the Autonomous Driving Technology Day of 2019 — “Intelligent Driving along the Way,” was successfully concluded in Guangzhou. At the event, Baidu and GAC held the launching ceremony of the high-precision map and self-localization mass production project, while announcing that the two sides have cooperated in putting up the Level-3 autonomous driving vehicle model of GAC, which is expected to be “off to the market”（上市 in 2020. We look forward to the GAC vehicle model’s early realization of the leap from the scientific research results to the mass production.

The Driverless Commute: Is 2019 a bear turn for AVs?; the fight over connected car communication divides car makers in Europe; cheaper, lighter LiDAR and machine-learning for lane-keeping.

Posted on April 12, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and James Richardson
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

1. A bear year

2018 was the year of the driverless car.

No, they didn’t become commercially available and they failed to traverse the realm of true autonomy, but they captured the public’s imagination and sometimes paranoia in a way unlike ever before. Finally, it wasn’t just artificial intelligence researchers talking about autonomous vehicles, but regular Joes drawn in equal parts fascination and fear to the subject.

But now the honeymoon is over.

After throwing money at startups like drunken sailors for years, the industry has signaled a coming retrenchment. Rather than more multi-billion dollar acquisitions, expect to hear about reoganizations and partnerships that would have been unthinkable only years earlier.

The Driverless Commute in Compliance Review: Intelligent and digital infrastructures are scheduled to accompany automatic vehicles in China

Posted on April 11, 2019 By Henry Chen
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles

Boao Forum for Asia (“BFA”) was held on March 26 to 29, 2019. Its sub-forum — 5G: The achiever of Internet of Things — talks about the 5G development. The participants of this forum believed 5G development should be open, cooperative, globally unified and integrated with existing industrial facilities.

Miao Wei, the Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (“MIIT”), said at BFA that the MIIT and Ministry of Transport (“MOT”) had reached a consensus that the government would devote itself to promoting the research on vehicle networking, and speeding up the intelligent and digital revolution on the highways in China.

The Driverless Commute: Disengagement reports from China to California and lessons for AV sector in jet crashes

Posted on April 4, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and James Richardson
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

1. Beijing just issued AV report cards. Here’s why you should use California’s instead.

China autonomous vehicles - Beijing AV report

Beijing transportation officials offered this week a first, if severely constrained, glimpse into the country’s autonomous vehicle industry, saying in a new report that eight licensed self-driving firms had logged more than 150,000 kilometers on public roads last year in the Chinese capital.

Ninety percent of that distance was managed by just one operator, search giant Baidu, which also leads the pack in number of test vehicles.

Reports on test driving stats for self-driving vehicles by various autonomous vehicle firms.

Notably absent from the government’s report are measures of disengagements, though a parallel report by a private think tank using voluntary data described 23 situations in which safety drivers were required to assume control of the cars.

The Driverless Commute: GM’s driverless exemption petition advances, but key questions for industry remains; a driver’s test for driverless cars; and robo-race car to edge test

Posted on March 29, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and James Richardson
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

1. NHTSA advances GM’s FMVSS exemption bid. But we still don’t have answers on liability.

Car from GM Cruise LLC, a driverless car company that tests and develops autonomous car technology.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is airing for public comment two petitions to deploy on public roads vehicles that lack conventional controls like a steering wheel or pedals.

The move came some fourteen months after General Motors first asked federal regulators for a temporary exemption from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The automaker asked the agency in January 2018 for 16 human-driver-based exemptions from FMVSS with the hope it could deploy a fleet of robocabs later this year. (You can read their petition here.)

If approved, federal regulators would be endorsing the bold proposition that autonomous vehicles (these ones, at least) can deliver a standard of safety equivalent to what is already required of existing cars, but the long wait is evidence that catching the feds’ green light is neither easy nor assured.

The Driverless Commute in Law360: What’s Ahead For Autonomous Vehicle Test Driver Regs

Posted on March 27, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and Crawford Schneider
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

Autonomous vehicles are layered with complex, still-emerging technology. As a result, what makes driverless cars tick is a mystery for virtually the entire public. That dynamic itself shouldn’t be all that’s concerning: We routinely interact with technology of which we have little understanding. But when it comes to driving, a task humans have controlled for generations, the thought of surrendering the wheel to a code-based operating system is uniquely unsettling.

Empirically that should not be the case. Conservative estimates show that 94 percent of vehicle accidents are caused by human error. Autonomous vehicles, operating at peak performance and constantly communicating not only with traffic lights and stop signs but also with other vehicles and pedestrians, should significantly reduce, or even eliminate, car accidents, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health care and repair costs.

The Driverless Commute: Trump doesn’t like AVs. He’s not alone. So what does it mean for his administration?

Posted on March 22, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and James Richardson
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

1. Rage against the machine(s)

Ford Argo AI self-driving test car zooming through Washington D.C.

Donald Trump doesn’t use a computer. He doesn’t send or receive text messages or emails, preferring instead to annotate print-outs and have aides send scanned copies. He doesn’t carry a cell phone, but he sometimes consumes media on a tablet, which his handlers know as “the flat one.”

Sure, Trump may be living an analog life, but his administration isn’t.

Indeed, autonomous vehicles—at once the world’s most audacious and least-trusted form of artificial intelligence—have in Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao one of the technology’s most committed cheerleaders.

Just last week, Chao, whose practiced light-touch has allowed the technology to flourish, announced the creation of a new commission within DOT tasked with promoting emerging transportation tech like self-driving cars.