Along for the Ride #118
Heya friends, happy Friday! And happy Olympics week š„³
As a Canadian, I mostly only get worked up over the winter Olympics (love a luge, personally), but this year the Olympics has something special on offer (beyond very strict Covid restrictions and astonishing human capabilities)ā¦ itās the first year thereās AVs at the Olympics. And we love to see that this fleet of Toyota e-Palettes are all designed to be shared and electric.
Alright, enough ogling over shuttles. Time for le news (my favourite piece this week is in the research section on cyclists being identified as hazards!!):
Read of the Week
Move fast and break things wonāt work for AVs
An article I both nodded along to, and raised some eyebrows reading. Itās worth the read, and Iād be interested in hearing where it lands with you!
āAppropriate regulation channels innovation; it does not stifle it. Witness the improvements in both crashworthiness and efficiency that todayās automobiles exhibit over those of a few decades ago, stimulated by regulations the industry fought. Setting appropriate, quantifiable safety goals for autonomous vehicles, and ensuring that the vehicles on the road meet those standards, will not hold U.S. industry back. Instead, it will stimulate it to produce vehicles that other countries will want to buy. And it will provide a basis for protecting all of us from unsafe products produced elsewhere.ā
Government and Policy
When Covid didnāt kill cities
Predictions swarmed last year that Covid would be the death to cities. Suburban living here we come rang opinion pieces everywhere. But how wrong so many were. The NYT deep-dives on why humans flock to cities, and why despite the dirt, noise, air pollution, high living costs, and other less favourable traits, we keep coming back.
Do Democrats really want to end highways?
This week, as Democrats tried to pass Bidenās infrastructure bill, Politico deep-dived on how House Democrats are trying to use this massiveĀ climate and infrastructure bill toĀ change how Americans get around. In particular they are trying to break many statesā decades-old fondness for building new highways and expanding old ones. I for one am all for defunding highway expansion. This Politico piece aptly weighs the pros (many!) and cons (few!) of bringing an end to highway expansion.
Industry
Lyft, ArgoAI, and Ford partner to bring AVs to life
Launching later this year in Miami (and soon thereafter Austin), Lyft will host fleets of ArgoAI and Fordās AVs. The plan is to have a few dozen cars operating in Miami and Austin, scaling to about 1,000 AVs across multiple cities within five years. Under the partnership, Lyft will take a 2.5 percent equity stake in Argo. In return, Lyft has agreed to share data it has collected about ride-sharing operations with Ford and Argo.
Tesla to sell FSD subscription for $199/month
Tesla is now offering some customers a way to subscribe and pay a monthly fee instead of $10,000 up-front for their āpremium driver assistance featuresā. This launch comes as Consumer Reports share new analysis that more and more Tesla owners are concerned about using the companyās Full Self-Driving Software. In particular, Consumer Reports called out Tesla for āusing its existing owners and their vehicles as guinea pigs for testing new featuresā.Ā
Waymo to open offices in Pittsburgh
The Steel City is once again attracting AV attention. Waymo announced this week they would open a new office in the city focusing on motion planning development, real-time route planning and developing their Driver platform.Ā
Mobileye has received a special permit allowing their AVs (adapted Ford Fusions) to test ride on NYC roads while test drivers keep their hands fully off the steering wheel as the cars drive themselves. According to the press release, the city allowed Mobileye to test after reviewing the results of their testing in other crowded cities, like Tokyo, Tel Aviv and Detroit.
Research and Academia
When cyclists get labeled as āhazardsā
New research considers how āhazard perceptionā has become an integral part of novice driver education and trainingāand what happens when we affiliate cyclists as hazards. āWe speculate that constituting cyclists as āhazardsā, something that presents a danger or threat, may foster negative attitudes toward cyclists.Ā We found a shift in the middle of the twentieth century from drivers being identified as āhazardsā to drivers being identifiedĀ as perceivers of āhazardsā.Ā Out of 200 articles published on drivers' āhazard perceptionā since the 1960s, one third categorised cyclists as āhazardsā.ā
Public health outcomes for 20mph city centres
New research out of Belfast interview 60 participants to explore the Belfast 20mph intervention, highlighting divergent perspectives and experiences. Implications of the intervention include limited awareness, reduced driving speeds leading to improved liveability, and increased cyclist safety.
What do Americans think about Transportation Tax?
Honestly, I low-key got lost in this report this week, as there as so many fascinating nuggets throughout their findings. Iāll copy and paste my favourites below:
Only 2% people of know that the federal gas tax rate has not been raised in more than 20 years. More than half of respondents (53%) said they simply didnāt know when the federal rate was last raised, and another 39% incorrectly believed the rate had been raised within the past 10 years.
Roughly half of people support some form of a mileage fee, whether it is assessed on all travel or just on commercial travel.
Support for the gas tax and mileage fee options was higher among the youngest group (respondents 18 to 25 years old) than the older groups. People living in urban communities were more likely to support the gas tax and mileage fee options than those living in rural communities.
Opinions
āAs locals, weāve sacrificed everythingāour health, our beautiful parks, and our sanityāfor cars. Itās estimated that an astounding 50 percent of a typical American city is paved. The 2,000 miles of road winding around Greater Boston would get you from Beacon Hill to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Put another way, add up those highways and streets and youād get about 24 square miles of concreteāequivalent to paving over more than all of Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville.ā
Can we use AVs as supercomputers?
Hereās a fun / frightening fact: Autonomous vehicles use the equivalent of 200 laptops to get around.Ā
āKeith Strier, Nvidiaās VP of worldwide AI initiatives, envisions a world in which government fleets of autonomous vehicles that sit idle at night are harnessed to address the computational needs of nations that donāt own expensiveĀ supercomputers.ā
Did Amazon and Google get their AV investments wrong?
Apologies this is behind a paywallā¦ FT subscribers, hope you enjoy!
Thatās all from me, have a beautiful weekend friends.
Sarah