It’s all fun and games until millions of drivers lose their jobs but we won’t be able to stop this.
No human drivers were harmed in the making of this video!
The Tesla did the drive entirely by itself with 0 human input. No accelerator presses, no speed limit changes, nothing. @elonmusk$TSLApic.twitter.com/gZYL5SKmnJ
Volkswagen’s ID.3, which gets 550 km to a full electric charge, shocked the auto industry last week. But rather than going electric, others may be going without. (Friso Gentsch/Volkswagen)
Volkswagen, the company that alternates with Toyota for the title of world’s biggest carmaker, shook up the global industry last week when it announced it would begin accepting orders for its new electric car, the ID.3.
With a price and a 550 km range that challenge the Tesla 3, the new Golf-sized battery-powered car signalled a startling shift for the German automotive sector that only a few years ago seemed locked into its historic specialization in fossil fuel technology.
But just as skeptics have repeatedly underestimated the ability of the car business to adapt to climate change, there is early evidence of a potentially bigger transformation underway: the move to abandon car ownership altogether.
“I had an F-150, so when I did drive it was quite expensive,” said Calgary resident Damien Prud’homme, who gave up his Ford truck about six months ago. Besides the price of gas, the other expenses for the 10-year-old truck, including growing maintenance bills and insurance, just didn’t seem worth it because he drove it so seldom.
Instead, the telecom technician, who drives a company vehicle when on the job and who could afford to own a car if he wanted one, now uses car-share service Car2Go for occasional private trips. Prud’homme estimates his total cost for car sharing at about half of what he paid every month for insurance alone.
As the highrise building boom continues, downtown population concentrations mean not everyone can get around by car, whether it’s one they own or one they rent. (Don Pittis/CBC)
As General Motors shuts down plants in Canada and the U.S. and carmakers scramble to catch up to Tesla, many car analysts say a move away from private car ownership could be a hitch the industry hasn’t foreseen, and the reasons are not just economic.
In my family, after selling our beloved VW wagon back to the company last October as part of the “dieselgate” scandal, and stumped over what to buy next, we decided to wait a while and try going without. Since then, it seems I keep encountering more people who have abandoned their private cars.
So far, anecdotal information about a decline in Canadian car ownership is not backed up by the stats, according Denis DesRosiers, one of Canada’s best known automotive number crunchers.
10 million more cars on the road
“Vehicle ownership in Canada is at all-time record levels, and it’s been increasing,” said DesRosiers, citing figures showing there are now 10 million more vehicles on the road than there were in the year 2000.
Recent figures have shown sales growth tailing off, which some have blamed on rising interest rates, although DesRosiers said the decline is likely temporary and sales remain at historic highs. DesRosiers said car ownership has never been evenly spread. He notes that his own daughter, an urban dweller in her 30s, does not own a vehicle, but he himself owns three.
Charlotte Yates, a longtime car industry analyst who is now vice-president at Ontario’s University of Guelph, says other research may indicate something else happening: like DesRosier’s daughter, younger urbanites are delaying car ownership or abandoning it altogether.
Strapped by the high cost of housing, a downtown lifestyle, salaries that aren’t as high as previous generations and a growing variety of alternatives to car ownership, there are signs that fewer young people are getting driver permits, and many more are adopting a lifestyle that just doesn’t include a car.
That will grow as cities become more dense, something that has already happened in places like Hong Kong and New York.
“What I’m talking about is not a snapshot,” said Yates, referring to DesRosiers’ statistics. “This is about what we are projecting is going to be the long-term effect of shifting consumer demand amongst young people.”
Canadian car-sharing company Communauto, founded 25 years ago and now operating in 13 cities from Edmonton to Halifax, is one alternative to owning a private vehicle. (Communauto)
Current research by urban planning specialist Ahmed El-Geneidy at Montreal’s McGill University seems to confirm Yates’ analysis, with studies that show urban 30-year-olds today take public transit far more often than people in the same age group 20 years ago.
El-Geneidy’s research in Toronto shows that while some better-off urban dwellers may buy a car once they move to the suburbs to start families, high downtown housing costs force low-income families to move out along existing transit routes to avoid the cost of car ownership.
Public transit use, along with services like Uber and Lyft, car sharing and bike sharing plus traditional car rentals are all elements of a new way of looking at transport called “Mobility as a Service,” or MaaS. The term implies people will increasingly hire their transport as needed and as appropriate rather than investing in the capital cost and upkeep of a private vehicle.
Wilson Wood, a senior executive with the Canadian car-sharing service Communauto, is one of the people profiting from that change. Founded in Quebec City 25 years ago, the company, a global pioneer in car sharing, has spread to 13 cities across Canada, from Edmonton to Halifax, with a branch in Paris that Canadian members can use as well (if they dare).
Wood said his figures show that every Communauto vehicle represents about 30 members who decades ago might have owned a personal vehicle.
Not everyone can drive
While car-share numbers remain tiny compared to private cars on the road, Wood said his company continues to grow and continues to be profitable as people reconsider buying cars that sit unused most of the time.
The fact is that in jammed urban cores with highrise population densities it’s simply impossible for everyone to travel in a car, whether you own it yourself or rent your ride — something that Marco D’Angelo, CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, realized before getting rid of his own car about six months ago.
“Someone’s not going to use a ride-sharing program 100 per cent of the time,” he said. “But once they’ve moved away from having a privately owned vehicle that’s parked 96 per cent of the year, all of sudden all of the options are on the table.”
That’s certainly true in our household. We have not ruled out buying another car. If VW’s new ID.3 had been available when we turned in our diesel last October, it is very possible we would spent the rebate on one of those.
But now that we’re living comfortably without a car, without car insurance, without snow tire changes and maintenance bills and parking hassles, never mind considering the tens of thousands of dollars in purchase price and our carbon footprint, like others who decided to wait, we’ll have to find a very good reason to go back.
Don Pittis was a forest firefighter, and a ranger in Canada’s High Arctic islands. After moving into journalism, he was principal business reporter for Radio Television Hong Kong before the handover to China. He has produced and reported for the CBC in Saskatchewan and Toronto and the BBC in London. He is currently senior producer at CBC’s business unit.
Jock Finlayson/ executive vice-president of the Business Council of British Columbia.
December 18, 2018
Will robots soon be replacing humans across broad swaths of the labour market? Judging by headlines touting driverless cars, machine learning and the rapidly growing digital economy, one is tempted to answer: “Yes.”
No one can doubt the sweeping effects of new technologies. Historically, tens of millions of jobs have been eliminated by successive waves of technology-enabled innovation in industries ranging from agriculture, transportation and manufacturing, to electricity and information and telecommunications services.
A similar process is underway today, fuelled by advances in artificial intelligence, data science, and digital tools and platforms.
In past periods of widespread disruption, new jobs have been created in other occupations and industries to offset those lost due to the labour-displacing effects of new technologies. Will that happen this time?
There are mixed views.
Some researchers have produced jaw-dropping estimates of the number of jobs set to be destroyed by the relentless march of AI. Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of research for Google’s Asian operations, predicts that 40 to 50 per cent of U.S. jobs will be capable of being automated by 2035. Entrepreneur Elon Musk goes even further. He recently opined that with AI, humanity has “summoned a demon,” with smart machines ranking as “the biggest existential threat” to our species.
Other analysts paint a less frightful picture, in which AI alters many jobs and replaces some, but also stimulates new labour demand and fosters different forms of work. In this more optimistic scenario, automation doesn’t lead to mass unemployment.
My Business Council of B.C. colleague David Williams recently developed projections of the possible impact of automation on the labour market here in British Columbia. (David’s paper is available at bcbc.com.)
He finds that, from a purely technical or engineering standpoint, about 40 per cent of current B.C. jobs are in occupations with a “high potential” for automation in the next 20 years. Most of these fall into three broad categories: sales and service occupations; business, finance and office administration occupations; and trades, transport and equipment operators.
About 37 per cent of B.C. jobs are in occupations judged to have a “low probability” of being automated. The remaining 21 per cent of jobs fall somewhere in-between.
AI and related technologies are increasingly capable of performing routine, repetitive and rules-based tasks that feature prominently in many of the occupations most vulnerable to disruption. Some examples are retail salespersons, cashiers, food counter attendants, kitchen helpers, truck drivers, warehouse workers and general office support workers.
Are Google’s self-driving cars an “advance” or are they going to take away jobs, opportunities, and the ability to travel freely for those who don’t use them?
A self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, is about to quietly launch a fleet of paid rides in the world’s very first commercial driverless car service.
Imagine a world where you hail a cab and step into an empty vehicle. This empty car takes you to your destination while you sit in the back, read and swipe the app for payment.
This world is coming to Phoenix, Arizona in just a few weeks. And of course, the company is owned by Google.
They’ve already been testing this for 10 years.
The secretive Waymo has been quietly testing the technology of self-driving cars for a decade and has clocked in millions of driverless miles. Waymo still isn’t telling anyone what the new company or app will be called. But in early December the people of Arizona will start to see it for themselves. Google and Waymo are both sibling subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc.
Bloomberg reports that things will start small and slow, with the service being only available in 100-square mile Phoenix area.
The first wave of customers will likely draw from Waymo’s Early Rider Program—a test group of 400 volunteer families who have been riding Waymos for more than a year. The customers who move to the new service will be released from their non-disclosure agreements, which means they’ll be free to talk about it, snap selfies, and take friends or even members of the media along for rides.” (source)
Alphabet X’s lab is already shuttling employees to and from the job site in driverless vans in Mountain View and just last week Waymo got approval to begin testing cars with no backup drivers in Silicon Valley, the same spot Tesla’s Autopilot is based.
Will there be 10 million self-driving cars by 2020?
Business Insider predicted in 2016 that there would be 10 million self-driving cars on the roads by 2020 and because of this new announcement, this might actually happen with stunning accuracy.
Waymo will launch a commercial self-driving car service in the Phoenix area before the end of the year, says CEO John Krafcik. The venture, which pushes Waymo to the front of the driverless car race, will first be open to a small group of people. Krafcik added that businesses like Walmart and Avis were also willing to pay the service to transport their customers. Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, announced deals earlier this year to purchase thousands of vehicles from Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar Land Rover. (Source)
Bloomberg says this is what we can expect in December:
When Waymo starts its commercial program, there will be backup drivers in some cars to help ease customers into the service and to take over if necessary, according to the person familiar with the plans. The fleet of heavily modified Chrysler Pacifica minivans will drive themselves more than 99.9 percent of the time, based on data from Waymo’s test program submitted to California regulators.
Some volunteers in the Phoenix Early Rider Program won’t switch over to the new commercial program, the person said. Instead, they’ll continue to test new features and offer feedback to the company. For example, volunteers may receive cars with no backup driver with increasing frequency.
The company is taking a plodding approach across the U.S. to avoid any possible mishaps like crashes from setting the whole program back.
Among the biggest concerns of driverless tech are fatalities, loss of jobs and industry, hacking, forced dependency on smart-grid, and EMF health hazards. (DARPA is heavily involved in this technology, let’s never forget.) But none of these fears are in any way halting this new roll out.
The Moral Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars and Crashes
Although car crashes are among the biggest complaints of driverless tech, it’s almost being sloughed off as a foregone conclusion. Inevitable casualties of a New Boom. None of the companies trying to get into the door seem all that worried about it.
Although Uber’s driverless cars require human intervention every 13 miles, getting drivers to pay attention remains a struggle. In March, an Uber self-driving vehicle fatally struck a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. Video footage from inside the car showed that the “human monitor” sitting behind the wheel was looking away from the road in the moments before the collision.
Twisted irony: blaming the human insidea self-driving car for running over a human. But, is it only a matter of time before there is no human element to driving at all? And until we can’t take the wheel when something goes wrong?
In the world of A.I. people are things that are scanned and belong in an algorithm. But in reality, people on the road are unpredictable. How do self-driving cars navigate school buses, children playing, aggressive drivers, ambulances and high-speed chases or bicyclists?
So far, the driverless cars belong to geo-fenced zones. But what happens when they are unleashed and the number one rule is to avoid collision? Does that mean the passenger’s life is sacrificed to save the largest number of people like in some Utilitarian Ethics class? What about when people must break the rules of the road such as pulling over to avoid a high-speed ambulance behind them?
Self-driving cars use rotating lasers to view the road. Is it ready for snow or painted signs or construction? Just three years ago, self-driving cars were foiled by the shabby roads in America’s crumbling infrastructure.
Or, will there have to be certain highways built for driverless cars that don’t allow any variables to get into the way? Coincidentally, “smart roads” with crash-sensors are already here in the U.S., too!
People in rural areas will be left behind and that isn’t as good as it sounds.
Do you know what this means? The rural areas will be left behind. It sounds good now, but not when the only jobs and resources available are in the “smart” cities. There’s already talk of altering the roads in a major way, just to accommodate the coming swath of driverless cars. Just another glimpse into Agenda 21/Agenda 2030.
Will it be impossible to get around with putting your life into the hands (claws? pinchers?) of tech-guided vehicles? Will those who are outside of the cities still be able to drive their regular, old-fashioned vehicles on major thoroughfares? Or will they be stranded in a place with no jobs until they finally drink the Kool-Aid? Sounds a lot like microchips, doesn’t it?
A Corporate Circle Has No End…
The other big complaint about driverless tech is the inevitable loss of jobs.
There is a glaring irony here. Corporate cronyism once married government red tape to create a miserable, expensive transport system for decades: taxis, limousines, etc. When Uber and Lyft came along, they were the feared “wave of disruption” to the jobs that had been comfortably secured for so long. One could even speculate that strict blood-alcohol limits buoyed the transport industry as well as state revenue and prison systems.
But many argue that the ride-share innovation was badly needed to provide affordable, on-demand service and create a gig economy by opening up job opportunities to unlicensed people. Once the tech became available, there was no stopping it. Now, a giant corporation is creating the eye-popping futuristic tech and will be directly competing against Uber, Lyft and other ride-share platforms.
Google’s parent-company is causing the “wave of disruption” and will directly extinguish a lot of jobs; even the gig economy jobs that many rely on to get by. The economic circle is complete since we are back to a large, corporate monopoly – this time, funded by DARPA. (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
Golden Rule of Business and War: He who has the gold makes the rules.
One could say the Silicon Rule is this: He who has the gold, rules the tech. And he who is first in tech could be last, since gold begets gold.
“The early start also makes Waymo’s ride-hailing service worth about $80 billion—even before the service is launched—according to an analysis by six Morgan Stanley analysts in August,” reports Bloomberg. The fact that Waymo’s brand will be the one to offer licensing to driverless truckers and other transporters actually adds another $96 billion in current value.
GM, Tesla’s Autopilot, Mercedes, BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, and others aren’t not far behind at all. GM is only a year from launching their own driverless vehicles and Ford is launching theirs in 2020. Uber and Lyft are still in the launch running.
Frankly, the presentation of Waymo’s tech is nothing short of breath-taking.
What are the future health effects of having laser- and lidar-emitting vehicles gumming up the roads?
Let’s not forget that DARPA – nicknamed the Pentagon’s “mad science” division – was the first outfit to be interested in non-human driven vehicles. It has funneled half a billion dollars to universities and companies over the last 20 years to make driverless vehicles happen.
Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to revolutionize the way people live, work and travel across cities… oh, and have sex, according to a new study from the Annals of Tourism Research titled: “Autonomous vehicles and the future of urban tourism.”
Co-authors Scott Cohen, a tourism professor at the University of Surrey, and Debbie Hopkins, a transportation instructor at the University of Oxford, discovered that CAVs have the potential to reshape the night-time visitor economy.
“It’s only a natural conclusion that sex in autonomous vehicles will become a phenomenon,” Cohen told The Washington Post, citing convenience and the interior redesigns of CAV automobiles.
While global uncertainty usually favors the metal as a safe-haven asset, this time around has been different. Gold has suffered a drop throughout the summer but is in position to rally through H2. There’s a number of reasons for this including…
Hopkins & Schwanen said mass market penetration and growth in public acceptance of CAVs could be as early as 2025, first in parts of Asia, Europe, and the US, and are forecasted by some to be the primary means of transportation globally by 2040.
The academics searched over 150 studies on the future of automobiles and attempted to envision the technology’s impact on the night-time visitor economy: How could CAVs transform the sex industry?
Silicon Valley transportation analyst forecast that the economy is less than a decade away from the series production of driverless cars – some futurists predict that traditional taxis will be obsolete.
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With no driver costs, auto and tech companies could reinvest more into the customer experience. Interiors may become more spacious with bedding and or a massage chair, analysts said.
Enter “hotels-by-the-hour” on wheels, Cohen said, “a fleet of rolling love making bedrooms.” Tourists could summon the autonomous vehicle with a prostitute of their choice via the app on a basic smartphone.
“It is just a small leap to imagine Amsterdam’s Red Light District ‘on the move,’ ” Cohen and Hopkins wrote. Sex, they noted, “plays a central role in many tourism experiences. ”
Given the potentially short timeline until CAVs enter the mass market, mobile prostitution could disrupt the entire underground economy by the mid-2020s: “While [driverless cars] will likely be monitored to deter passengers having sex or using drugs in them,” the authors warned, “such surveillance may be rapidly overcome, disabled or removed.”
Cohen said law enforcement agencies should prepare for such looming threats, indicating that CAVs could provide cover for black market participants.
Missy Cummings, a mechanical engineering professor at Duke University, told The Washington Post that major tech firms and automakers across the world are currently developing and testing autonomous vehicles.
Back in March, one of Uber’s test cars killed a pedestrian. It was later learned Uber employees had disabled the automatic-braking features so the vehicle would not slow erratically during testing, The Washington Post said.
Kate Devlin, the author of “Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots,” said a fully tinted driverless vehicle cannot hide everything.
“Self-driving cars track a lot of data,” she said.
Devlin warned that autonomous vehicles would be collecting data on the occupants inside. Unlike a hotel room, they will have artificial intelligence monitoring cameras, microphones, and sensors. This means implications for sex workers are even more complicated:
“Would this be good in terms of sex workers’ security in that it could provide location information for safety,” Devlin said, “or could such data be used against sex workers where such work is criminalized?”
Sex on wheels could be coming to a city near you by 2025. It would not shock us if silicone robots replace human sex workers by that time.
Two British firms have teamed up to launch an initiative to increase connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) services across London by 2021 to boost UK driving services capabilities amid fierce competition from rival companies.
Private taxi hire company Addison Lee has teamed up with self-driving software company Oxbotica to digitally map over 250,000 miles of public roads “in and around the capitol”.
The pair aim to increase market shares of autonomous vehicles in the near future, worth £28 billion by 2035, according to estimates, Addison Lee said in a press release.
“Urban transport will change beyond recognition in the next 10 years with the introduction of self-driving services, and we intend to be at the very forefront of this change by acting now,” Addison Lee CEO Andy Boland said.
Boland also noted that autonomous technologies offered many benefits, including freeing up traffic congestion and fighting air pollution through the use of electric vehicles (EVs).
The initiative has gained support from UK chancellor of exchequers Phillip Hammond, who stated he wants to see “genuine driverless vehicles” throughout the UK by 2021.
Government officials have also requested the Law Commission to review driving laws in order to help the UK remain a leading force behind the CAV market. Major market competitors such as Uber have also joined the race to conquer shares of the global market.
Addison Lee was founded in 1975 and is Europe’s biggest private hire car service, with roughly 10 million journeys per year. The company is owned by US private equity company Carlyle Group and has boosted market shares in the US, operating in over 100 cities nationwide.
Social Impact of Autonomous Vehicles on Britain
Multinational professional services firm Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) partnered with the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) to research the “human and social impact” of CAVs on social mobility, which identified £51 billion in potential profits and the potential to protect drivers from roughly 25,000 auto accidents.
The study looked at three groups-young people, the elderly, and those with disabilities-and found that CAVs could help six out of 10 people in the UK. In a survey conducted by the SMMT, 56 percent of those queried said they felt positive about CAVs and 43 percent said they would use one if made available today.
A SMMT report also recommended that the UK government increase public awareness to dispel myths on CAVs and highlight their benefits, in addition to increasing digital infrastructure and coverage.
“Poor mobile internet coverage is already leading some automotive manufacturers to look to other countries to roll out new connected technologies,” the report said, adding that failing to address the issue would “undermine the UK’s competitive advantage against other international players and delay the roll-out of CAVs in Britain.”
It added that British authorities should increase and optimize funding for research and development, arguing for a nationwide “CAV testbed” to achieve results.
The UK government has published a report noting that it had established a team in 2015 to “secure the UK’s position at the forefront of this change for the safe development, production and use” of CAVs.
The government also established Project GATEway the same year, which provided £5.3 million for CAV research and testing while also surveying “over 32,000 members of the public”.
UK automaking powerhouse Coventry also initiated the UK Autodrive initiative, the largest of three in Britain designed to trial CAVs through the “Introducing Driverless Cars to UK Roads competition” spearheaded by the Innovate UK agency with £19.4 million in funding.
This is the autonomous shuttle set to take to the streets of Candiac. (CBC)
The City of Candiac will be the guinea pig for Canada’s first autonomous shuttle using public roads.
Rolling along at a whopping maximum of 25 km/h, the electric minibus will follow a two-kilometre route stopping along the way at City Hall, a bus terminal as well as various businesses.
Up to 15 people can ride it, free of charge.
“We think the technology is there, it’s safe to put out on public roads,” said Quebec Transport Minister André Fortin.
“This is a project that is safe for the users, safe also for pedestrians, cyclists and people who may interact with the minibus itself.”
The project is set to cost $750,000 with the province kicking in $350,000. The shuttle itself costs around $400,000.
Fortin made the announcement alongside Candiac Mayor Normand Dyotte and the manufacturer of the shuttle, Keolis Canada.
Ontario was the first province to test out autonomous cars on its roads, launching a 10-year pilot project at the end of 2016.
In Alberta, a pilot project is set to launch in the fall involving a shuttle travelling on separate roadways.
Testing it out
This pilot project was made possible after the province put its updated Highway Safety Code into effect. The changes allowed the government to test out the shuttles on public roads.
Members of the public will be able to ride the shuttle for free starting at the end of August. While the project is set to run for 12 months, it will not be open to the public during the winter months but will still run.
An operator will be onboard at all times to make sure things run smoothly, answer questions or intervene if necessary.
The two-kilometre route that the shuttle is expected to follow during the pilot project passes by City Hall, a bus terminal as well as various businesses. (Keolis Canada)
We’ve all seen the propaganda by now: Like it or not, autonomous driving technology is on the way. But what will that future look like? Should we be concerned about the lack of control implicit in these technologies? How vulnerable they are to hackers, both criminal and deep state? Or the fact that our entire society is about to be re-engineered before our very eyes? Join James for this thought provoking episode of The Corbett Report as he explores the road ahead on the path to the driverless future.
Self-driving cars nowadays are meant for one of two things: Industrial use and personal use. But there is a third category that sort of sits right in the middle of those two. And that’s precisely the space that’s being targeted by Nuro.ai, a Silicon Valley startup that’s being run by two ex-Google engineers, with a new prototype self-driving car called the Nuro R1. It’s designed to serve as a dedicated delivery vehicle.
According to a report on their current progress, the company has managed to raise $92 million in capital, and has set it for the development of its first prototype vehicle, which is meant to stay unmanned and used solely for certain specified purposes. As of this time’s writing, the Nuro R1 self-driving car is expected to arrive as a road-legal vehicle by 2022.
Like all new gadgets, the Nuro R1 will have an accompanying smartphone app, which can be used to open its side panels and access its cargo. Indeed, the Nuro R1’s dedicated phone app will be the tool used to control it the most: It can be used to open its hatches, and it will also let users know when the vehicle is nearby – prompting them to go outside to meet it for its cargo. The use of facial recognition cameras has reportedly also been considered to further improve the delivery process.
According to Dave Ferguson, one of the co-founders of the company, the idea to launch Nuro.ai and its subsequent product Nuro R1 came to them after realizing the business opening that is currently being under-served by the likes of Amazon, UPS, and other retailers that are active today. “We realized we could make it possible to delivery anything, anytime, anywhere,” Ferguson explained. “We like to call it a local teleportation service.”
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A report on the Nuro R1 said that it comes with a modular, customizable interior area that can be used to carry around 250 pounds of cargo. The modular interior can be fitted with a number of different shelves and containment units, which can be used to store a wide variety of items.
The car itself is actually quite advanced, considering its basic status as a computer on four wheels. It’s shaped like a giant toaster with a funny-looking hat on top of it, and has a narrow body that is about half as wide as its height. Its current design uses a combination of radar, cameras, and a spinning Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensor to navigate roads and its surroundings. It also has about a three- to four-foot “buffer” that acts as a sort of shield to protect other vehicles and even pedestrians from colliding with it.
Since the Nuro R1 is fully electric, the space inside it that isn’t occupied by containers for the cargo is filled with battery units. It’s designed to work as a low-speed car, so it will have to stay off the highway to carry out its deliveries.
If Nuro’s project becomes successful and they manage to come up with a good, working product, they could potentially be in for a multi-million dollar industry. It is said that UPS alone delivers about 19 million packages per day. And it’s likely that Nuro could tap a bigger market than the one served by UPS. In short, Nuro’s founders may have the two to four most important years of their lives ahead of them right now. It will be interesting to see how the public receives them and their efforts when – optimistically – self-driving vehicles for personal and industrial use become common by the time the Nuro R1 arrives.
Check out other examples of autonomous machines at Robotics.news.
Waymo plans to launch the “world’s first self-driving transportation service” this year…
San Francisco (AFP) – Google-owned Waymo is adding as many as 62,000 Fiat Chrysler minivans to its autonomous fleet in an expanded collaboration announced by the companies on Thursday.
Delivery of the Chrysler Pacifica minivans was expected to begin later this year, with the automaker also exploring the potential to build Waymo technology into a self-driving car it might add to its model line-up for consumers.
“FCA is committed to bringing self-driving technology to our customers in a manner that is safe, efficient and realistic,” chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne said in a release.
“Strategic partnerships, such as the one we have with Waymo, will help to drive innovative technology to the forefront.”
Waymo plans to launch the “world’s first self-driving transportation service” this year, with people able to summon rides from driverless vehicles using a smartphone application.
The announcement came a day after Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi reportedly said at a Code technology conference that the company is speaking with Waymo about putting its cars to work at the smartphone-summoned ride service.
Uber early this year negotiated a settlement with Waymo over trade secrets purportedly purloined from the self-driving unit of Google-parent Alphabet.
Uber suspended its own autonomous car testing in April after an accident that killed a woman pushing a bicycle in a street in Arizona.
Waymo CEO John Krafcik has publicly contended that the fatal accident involving a self-driving Uber car would not have occurred with his company’s technology.
“Waymo’s goal from day one has been to build the world’s most experienced driver and give people access to self-driving technology that will make our roads safer,” Waymo chief executive John Krafcik said in a joint release with Fiat.
Fiat and Waymo first announced a self-driving car partnership two years ago, and said that engineers from their companies have been working together since then.
Fiat has delivered 600 Pacifica Hybrid minivans to Waymo so far, the companies said. Earlier this year the companies said “thousands” more would be added.
Waymo and Jaguar Land Rover in March announced they have joined forces on a posh, self-driving electric car tailored for a ride-hailing service run by the Google-owned firm.
Waymo and Jaguar said they aim to develop a “premium self-driving electric vehicle” based on a new I-PACE model.
Waymo appeared to be hitting the accelerator in a race for leadership in autonomous ridesharing, which involves most major automakers, technology developers and services such as Uber and Lyft.
Separately, Japanese telecom giant SoftBank said Thursday it will invest $2.25 billion in General Motors’ autonomous car program in exchange for a stake in the venture.
The investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund in the GM Cruise Holdings will be executed in two stages, with the first $900 million coming after the transaction is finalized and another $1.35 billion once GM vehicles are ready for commercialization.
GM has said it plans to commercialize its Cruise program in 2019 through ridesharing.
The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic system.
A Third Industrial Revolution is unfolding with the convergence of three pivotal technologies: an ultra-fast 5G communication internet, a renewable energy internet, and a driverless mobility internet, all connected to the Internet of Things embedded across society and the environment. This 21st century smart digital infrastructure is giving rise to a radical new sharing economy that is transforming the way we manage, power and move economic life. But with climate change now ravaging the planet, it needs to happen fast. Change of this magnitude requires political will and a profound ideological shift.
This is perfect, it’s the article I have been waiting for. These are some of the things I was trying to predict but talented and clever Geoff Nesnow went all the way and came up with 73 scenarios that portray a more than likely possible future. No more cars, no more driver’s licenses, no more parking, cheap transportation, and probably a massive revolution as this future will bring in unemployment rates never seen before.
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
Wherein the author sketches a truly amazing and profoundly discombobulating near future for which many people may be scarcely prepared and which surely many will resist—at first. Including business.
I originally wrote and published a version of this article in September 2016. Since then, quite a bit has happened, further cementing my view that these changes are coming and that the implications will be even more substantial. I decided it was time to update this article with some additional ideas and a few changes.
As I write this, Uber just announced that it just ordered 24,000 self-driving Volvos. Tesla just released an electric, long-haul tractor trailer with extraordinary technical specs (range, performance) and self-driving capabilities (UPS just preordered 125!). And, Tesla just announced what will probably be the quickest production car ever made — perhaps the fastest. It will go zero to sixty in about the time it takes you to read zero to sixty. And, of course, it will be able to drive itself. The future is quickly becoming now. Google just ordered thousands of Chryslers for its self-driving fleet (that are already on the roads in AZ).
In September of 2016, Uber had just rolled out its first self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh, Tesla and Mercedes were rolling out limited self-driving capabilities and cities around the world were negotiating with companies who want to bring self-driving cars and trucks to their cities. Since then, all of the major car companies have announced significant steps towards mostly or entirely electric vehicles, more investments have been made in autonomous vehicles, driverless trucks now seem to be leading rather than following in terms of the first large scale implementations and there’ve been a few more incidents (i.e. accidents).
I believe that the timeframe for significant adoption of this technology has shrunk in the past year as technology has gotten better faster and as the trucking industry has increased its level of interest and investment.
I believe that my daughter, who is now just over 1 years old, will never have to learn to drive or own a car.
The impact of driverless vehicles will be profound and impact almost every part of our lives.
Below are my updated thoughts about what a driverless future will be like. Some of these updates are from feedback to my original article (thanks to those who contributed!!!), some are based on technology advances in the past year and others are just my own speculations.
What could happen when cars and trucks drive themselves?
1. People won’t own their own cars. Transport will be delivered as a service from companies who own fleets of self-driving vehicles. There are so many technical, economic, safety advantages to the transportation-as-a-service that this change may come much faster than most people expect. Owning a vehicle as an individual will become a novelty for collectors and maybe competitive racers.
2. Software/technology companies will own more of the world’s economy as companies like Uber, Google and Amazon turn transportation into a pay-as-you-go service. Software will indeed eat this world. Over time, they’ll own so much data about people, patterns, routes and obstacles that new entrants will have huge barriers to enter the market
3. Without government intervention (or some sort of organized movement), there will be a tremendous transfer of wealth to a very small number of people who own the software, battery/power manufacturing, vehicle servicing and charging/power generation/maintenance infrastructure. There will be massive consolidation of companies serving these markets as scale and efficiency will become even more valuable. Cars (perhaps they’ll be renamed with some sort-of-clever acronym) will become like the routers that run the Internet — most consumers won’t know or care who made them or who owns them.
4. Vehicle designs will change radically — vehicles won’t need to withstand crashes in the same way, all vehicles will be electric (self-driving + software + service providers = all electric). They may look different, come in very different shapes and sizes, maybe attach to each other in some situations. There will likely be many significant innovations in materials used for vehicle construction — for example, tires and brakes will be re-optimized with very different assumptions, especially around variability of loads and much more controlled environments. The bodies will likely be primarily made of composites (like carbon fiber and fiberglass) and 3D printed. Electric vehicles with no driver controls will require 1/10th or fewer the number of parts (perhaps even 1/100th) and thus will be quicker to produce and require much less labor. There may even be designs with almost no moving parts (other than wheels and motors, obviously).
5. Vehicles will mostly swap batteries rather than serve as the host of battery charging. Batteries will be charged in distributed and highly optimized centers — likely owned by the same company as the vehicles or another national vendor. There may be some entrepreneurial opportunity and a marketplace for battery charging and swapping, but this industry will likely be consolidated quickly. The batteries will be exchanged without human intervention — likely in a carwash-like drive thru
6. Vehicles (being electric) will be able to provide portable power for a variety of purposes (which will also be sold as a service) — construction job sites (why use generators), disaster/power failures, events, etc. They may even temporarily or permanently replace power distribution networks (i.e. power lines) for remote locations — imagine a distributed power generation network with autonomous vehicles providing “last mile” services to some locations
7. Driver’s licenses will slowly go away as will the Department of Motor Vehicles in most states. Other forms of ID may emerge as people no longer carry driver’s licenses. This will probably correspond with the inevitable digitization of all personal identification — via prints, retina scans or other biometric scanning
8. There won’t be any parking lots or parking spaces on roads or in buildings. Garages will be repurposed — maybe as mini loading docks for people and deliveries. Aesthetics of homes and commercial buildings will change as parking lots and spaces go away. There will be a multi-year boom in landscaping and basement and garage conversions as these spaces become available
9. Traffic policing will become redundant. Police transport will also likely change quite a bit. Unmanned police vehicles may become more common and police officers may use commercial transportation to move around routinely. This may dramatically change the nature of policing, with newfound resources from the lack of traffic policing and dramatically less time spent moving around
10. There will be no more local mechanics, car dealers, consumer car washes, auto parts stores or gas stations. Towns that have been built around major thoroughfares will change or fade
11. The auto insurance industry as we know it will go away (as will the significant investing power of the major players of this industry).Most car companies will go out of business, as will most of their enormous supplier networks. There will be many fewer net vehicles on the road (maybe 1/10th, perhaps even less) that are also more durable, made of fewer parts and much more commoditized
12. Traffic lights and signs will become obsolete. Vehicles may not even have headlights as infrared and radar take the place of the human light spectrum. The relationship between pedestrians (and bicycles) and cars and trucks will likely change dramatically. Some will come in the form of cultural and behavioral changes as people travel in groups more regularly and walking or cycling becomes practical in places where it isn’t today
13. Multi-modal transportation will become a more integrated and normal part of our ways of moving around. In other words, we’ll often take one type of vehicle to another, especially when traveling longer distances. With coordination and integration, the elimination of parking and more deterministic patterns, it will become ever-more efficient to combine modes of transport
14. The power grid will change. Power stations via alternative power sources will become more competitive and local. Consumers and small businesses with solar panels, small scale tidal or wave power generators, windmills and other local power generation will be able to sell KiloWattHours to the companies who own the vehicles. This will change “net metering” rules and possibly upset the overall power delivery model. It might even be the beginning of truly distributed power creation and transport. There will likely be a significant boom in innovation in power production and delivery models. Over time, ownership of these services will probably be consolidated across a very small number of companies
One of GM’s driverless prototypes. Can you spot what’s missing?
15. Traditional petroleum products (and other fossil fuels) will become much less valuable as electric cars replace fuel powered vehicles and as alternative energy sources become more viable with portability of power (transmission and conversion eat tons of power). There are many geopolitical implications to this possible shift. As implications of climate change become ever-clearer and present, these trends will likely accelerate. Petroleum will continue to be valuable for making plastics and other derived materials, but will not be burned for energy at any scale. Many companies, oil-rich countries and investors have already begun accommodating for these changes
16. Entertainment funding will change as the auto industry’s ad spending goes away. Think about how many ads you see or hear about cars, car financing, car insurance, car accessories and car dealers. There are likely to be many other structural and cultural changes that come from the dramatic changes to the transportation industry. We’ll stop saying “shift into high gear” and other driving-related colloquialisms as the references will be lost on future generations
17. The recent corporate tax rate reductions in the “..Act to Provide for Reconciliation Pursuant to Titles II and V of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2018” will accelerate investments in automation including self-driving vehicles and other forms of transportation automation. Flush with new cash and incentives to invest capital soon, many businesses will invest in technology and solutions that reduce their labor costs.
18. The car financing industry will go away, as will the newly huge derivative market for packaged sub-prime auto loans which will likely itself cause a version of the 2008–2009 financial crisis as it blows up.
19. Increases in unemployment, increased student loan, vehicle and other debt defaults could quickly spiral into a full depression. The world that emerges on the other side will likely have even more dramatic income and wealth stratification as entry level jobs related to transportation and the entire supply chain of the existing transportation system go away. The convergence of this with hyper-automation in production and service delivery (AI, robotics, low-cost computing, business consolidation, etc) may permanently change how societies are organized and how people spend their time
20. There will be many new innovations in luggage and bags as people no longer keep stuff in cars and loading and unloading packages from vehicles becomes much more automated. The traditional trunk size and shape will change. Trailers or other similar detachable devices will become much more commonplace to add storage space to vehicles. Many additional on demand services will become available as transportation for goods and services becomes more ubiquitous and cheaper. Imagine being able to design, 3D print and put on an outfit as you travel to a party or the office (if you’re still going to an office)…
21. Consumers will have more money as transportation (a major cost, especially for lower income people and families) gets much cheaper and ubiquitous — though this may be offset by dramatic reductions in employment as technology changes many times faster than people’s ability to adapt to new types of work
22. Demand for taxi and truck drivers will go down, eventually to zero. Someone born today might not understand what a truck driver is or even understand why someone would do that job — much like people born in the last 30 years don’t understand how someone could be employed as a switchboard operator
23. The politics will get ugly as lobbyists for the auto and oil industries unsuccessfully try to stop the driverless car. They’ll get even uglier as the federal government deals with assuming huge pension obligations and other legacy costs associated with the auto industry. My guess is that these pension obgligations won’t ultimately be honored and certain communities will be devastated. The same may be true of pollution clean-up efforts around the factories and chemical plants that were once major components of the vehicle supply chain
VW’s entry—the Sedric.
24. The new players in vehicle design and manufacturing will be a mix of companies like Uber, Google and Amazon and companies you don’t yet know. There will probably be 2 or 3 major players who control >80% of the customer-facing transportation market. There may become API-like access to these networks for smaller players — much like app marketplaces for iPhone and Android. However, the majority of the revenue will flow to a few large players as it does today to Apple and Google for smartphones
25. Supply chains will be disrupted as shipping changes. Algorithms will allow trucks to be fuller. Excess (latent) capacity will be priced cheaper. New middlemen and warehousing models will emerge. As shipping gets cheaper, faster and generally easier, retail storefronts will continue to lose footing in the marketplace.
26. The role of malls and other shopping areas will continue to shift — to be replaced by places people go for services, not products. There will be virtually no face to face purchases of physical goods.
27. Amazon and/or a few other large players will put Fedex, UPS and USPS out of business as their transportation network becomes orders of magnitude more cost efficient than existing models — largely from a lack of legacy costs like pensions, higher union labor costs and regulations (especially USPS) that won’t keep up with the pace of technology change. 3D printing will also contribute to this as many day-to-day products are printed at home rather than purchased.
28. The same vehicles will often transport people and goods as algorithms optimize all routes. And, off-peak utilization will allow for other very inexpensive delivery options. In other words, packages will be increasingly delivered at night. Add autonomous drone aircraft to this mix and there’ll be very little reason to believe that traditional carriers (Fedex, USPS, UPS, etc) will survive at all.
29. Roads will be much emptier and smaller (over time) as self-driving cars need much less space between them (a major cause of traffic today), people will share vehicles more than today (carpooling), traffic flow will be better regulated and algorithmic timing (i.e. leave at 10 versus 9:30) will optimize infrastructure utilization. Roads will also likely be smoother and turns optimally banked for passenger comfort. High speed underground and above ground tunnels (maybe integrating hyperloop technology or this novel magnetic track solution) will become the high speed network for long haul travel.
30. Short hop domestic air travel may be largely displaced by multi-modal travel in autonomous vehicles. This may be countered by the advent of lower cost, more automated air travel. This too may become part of integrated, multi-modal transportation.
31. Roads will wear out much more slowly with fewer vehicle miles, lighter vehicles (with less safety requirements). New road materials will be developed that drain better, last longer and are more environmentally friendly. These materials might even be power generating (solar or reclamation from vehicle kinetic energy). At the extreme, they may even be replaced by radically different designs — tunnels, magnetic tracks, other hyper-optimized materials
32. Premium vehicle services will have more compartmentalized privacy, more comfort, good business features (quiet, wifi, bluetooth for each passenger, etc), massage services and beds for sleeping. They may also allow for meaningful in-transit real and virtual meetings. This will also likely include aromatherapy, many versions of in-vehicle entertainment systems and even virtual passengers to keep you company.
33. Exhilaration and emotion will almost entirely leave transportation. People won’t brag about how nice, fast, comfortable their cars are. Speed will be measured by times between end points, not acceleration, handling or top speed.
34. Cities will become much more dense as fewer roads and vehicles will be needed and transport will be cheaper and more available. The “walkable city” will continue to be more desirable as walking and biking become easier and more commonplace. When costs and timeframes of transit change, so will the dynamics of who lives and works where.
35. People will know when they leave, when they’ll get where they’re going. There will be few excuses for being late. We will be able to leave later and cram more into a day. We’ll also be able to better track kids, spouses, employees and so forth. We’ll be able to know exactly when someone will arrive and when someone needs to leave to be somewhere at a particular time.
36. There will be no more DUI/OUI offenses. Restaurants and bars will sell more alcohol. People will consume more as they no longer need to consider how to get home and will be able to consume inside vehicles
37. We’ll have less privacy as interior cameras and usage logs will track when and where we go and have gone. Exterior cameras will also probably record surroundings, including people. This may have a positive impact on crime, but will open up many complex privacy issues and likely many lawsuits. Some people may find clever ways to game the system — with physical and digital disguises and spoofing.
38. Many lawyers will lose sources of revenue — traffic offenses, crash litigation will reduce dramatically. Litigation will more likely be “big company versus big company” or “individuals against big companies”, not individuals against each other. These will settle more quickly with less variability. Lobbyists will probably succeed in changing the rules of litigation to favor the bigger companies, further reducing the legal revenue related to transportation. Forced arbitration and other similar clauses will become an explicit component of our contractual relationship with transportation providers.
39. Some countries will nationalize parts of their self-driving transportation networks which will result in lower costs, fewer disruptions and less innovation.
40. Cities, towns and police forces will lose revenue from traffic tickets, tolls (likely replaced, if not eliminated) and fuel tax revenues drop precipitously. These will probably be replaced by new taxes (probably on vehicle miles). These may become a major political hot-button issue differentiating parties as there will probably be a range of regressive versus progressive tax models. Most likely, this will be a highly regressive tax in the US, as fuel taxes are today.
41. Some employers and/or government programs will begin partially or entirely subsidizing transportation for employees and/or people who need the help. The tax treatment of this perk will also be very political.
42. Ambulance and other emergency vehicles will likely be used less and change in nature. More people will take regular autonomous vehicles instead of ambulances. Ambulances will transport people faster. Same may be true of military vehicles.
43. There will be significant innovations in first response capabilities as dependencies on people become reduced over time and as distributed staging of capacity becomes more common.
44. Airports will allow vehicles right into the terminals, maybe even onto the tarmac, as increased controls and security become possible. Terminal design may change dramatically as transportation to and from becomes normalized and integrated. The entire nature of air travel may change as integrated, multi-modal transport gets more sophisticated. Hyper-loops, high speed rail, automated aircraft and other forms of rapid travel will gain as traditional hub and spoke air travel on relatively large planes lose ground.
45. Innovative app-like marketplaces will open up for in-transit purchases, ranging from concierge services to food to exercise to merchandise to education to entertainment purchases. VR will likely play a large role in this. With integrated systems, VR (via headsets or screens or holograms) will become standard fare for trips more than a few minutes in duration.
46. Transportation will become more tightly integrated and packaged into many services — dinner includes the ride, hotel includes local transport, etc. This may even extend to apartments, short-term rentals (like AirBnB) and other service providers.
47. Local transport of nearly everything will become ubiquitous and cheap — food, everything in your local stores. Drones will likely be integrated into vehicle designs to deal with “last few feet” on pickup and delivery. This will accelerate the demise of traditional retail stores and their local economic impact.
48. Biking and walking will become easier, safer and more common as roads get safer and less congested, new pathways (reclaimed from roads/parking lots/roadside parking) come online and with cheap, reliable transport available as a backup.
49. More people will participate in vehicle racing (cars, off road, motorcycles) to replace their emotional connection to driving. Virtual racing experiences may also grow in popularity as fewer people have the real experience of driving.
50. Many, many fewer people will be injured or killed on roads, though we’ll expect zero and be disproportionately upset when accidents do happen. Hacking and non-malicious technical issues will replace traffic as the main cause of delays. Over time, resilience will increase in the systems.
So are these driverless vehicles safer than those with traditional human guidance? That is the question, but the direction of science points to the disappearance of conventional vehicles as a private transport mode one way or another.
51. Hacking of vehicles will be a serious issue. New software and communications companies and technologies will emerge to address these issues. We’ll see the first vehicle hacking and its consequences. Highly distributed computing, perhaps using some form of blockchain, will likely become part of the solution as a counterbalance to systemic catastrophes — such as many vehicles being affected simultaneously. There will probably be a debate about whether and how law enforcement can control, observe and restrict transportation.
52. Many roads and bridges will be privatized as a small number of companies control most transport and make deals with municipalities. Over time, government may entirely stop funding roads, bridges and tunnels. There will be a significant legislative push to privatize more and more of the transportation network. Much like Internet traffic, there will likely become tiers of prioritization and some notion of in-network versus out-of-network travel and tolls for interconnection. Regulators will have a tough time keeping up with these changes. Most of this will be transparent to end users, but will probably create enormous barriers to entry for transportation start-ups and ultimately reduce options for consumers.
53. Innovators will come along with many awesome uses for driveways and garages that no longer contain cars.
54. There will be a new network of clean, safe, pay-to-use restrooms and other services (food, drinks, etc) that become part of the value-add of competing service providers
55. Mobility for seniors and people with disabilities will be greatly improved (over time)
56. Parents will have more options to move around their kids on their own. Premium secure end-to-end children’s transport services will likely emerge. This may change many family relationships and increase the accessibility of services to parents and children. It may also further stratify the experiences of families with higher income and those with lower income.
57. Person to person movement of goods will become cheaper and open up new markets — think about borrowing a tool or buying something on Craigslist. Latent capacity will make transporting goods very inexpensive. This may also open up new opportunities for P2P services at a smaller scale — like preparing food or cleaning clothes.
58. People will be able to eat/drink in transit (like on a train or plane), consume more information (reading, podcasts, video, etc). This will open up time for other activities and perhaps increased productivity.
59. Some people may have their own “pods” to get into which will then be picked up by an autonomous vehicle, moved between vehicles automatically for logistic efficiencies. These may come in varieties of luxury and quality — the Louis Vuitton pod may replace the Louis Vuitton trunk as the mark of luxury travel
60. There will be no more getaway vehicles or police vehicle chases.
61. Vehicles will likely be filled to the brim with advertising of all sorts (much of which you could probably act on in-route), though there will probably be ways to pay more to have an ad free experience. This will include highly personalized en route advertising that is particularly relevant to who you are, where you’re going.
62. These innovations will make it to the developing world where congestion today is often remarkably bad and hugely costly. Pollution levels will come down dramatically. Even more people will move to the cities. Productivity levels will go up. Fortunes will be made as these changes happen. Some countries and cities will be transformed for the better. Some others will likely experience hyper-privatization, consolidation and monopoly-like controls. This may play out much like the roll-out of cell services in these countries — fast, consolidated and inexpensive.
63. Payment options will be greatly expanded, with packaged deals like cell phones, pre-paid models, pay-as-you-go models being offered. Digital currency transacted automatically via phones/devices will probably quickly replace traditional cash or credit card payments.
64. There will likely be some very clever innovations for movement of pets, equipment, luggage and other non-people items. Autonomous vehicles in the medium future (10–20 years) may have radically different designs that support carrying significantly more payload.
65. Some creative marketers will offer to partially or fully subsidize rides where customers deliver value — by taking surveys, by participating in virtual focus groups, by promoting their brand via social media, etc.
66. Sensors of all sorts will be embedded in vehicles that will have secondary uses — like improving weather forecasting, crime detection and prevention, finding fugitives, infrastructure conditions (such as potholes). This data will be monetized, likely by the companies who own the transportation services.
67. Companies like Google and Facebook will add to their databases everything about customer movements and locations. Unlike GPS chips that only tell them where someone is at the moment (and where they’ve been), autonomous vehicle systems will know where you’re going in real-time (and with whom).
68. Autonomous vehicles will create some new jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs. However, these will be off-set many times by extraordinary job losses by nearly everyone in the transportation value chain today. In the autonomous future, a large number of jobs will go away. This includes drivers (which is in many states today the most common job), mechanics, gas station employees, most of the people who make cars and car parts or support those who do (due to huge consolidation of makers and supply chains and manufacturing automation), the marketing supply chain for vehicles, many people who work on and build roads/bridges, employees of vehicle insurance and financing companies (and their partners/suppliers), toll booth operators (most of whom have already been displaced), many employees of restaurants that support travelers, truck stops, retail workers and all the people whose businesses support these different types of companies and workers.
69. There will be some hardcore hold-outs who really like driving. But, over time, they’ll become a less statistically relevant voting group as younger people, who’ve never driven, will outnumber them. At first, this may be a 50 state regulated system — where driving yourself may actually become illegal in some states in the next 10 years while other states may continue to allow it for a long time. Some states will try, unsuccessfully, to block autonomous vehicles.
70. There will be lots of discussions about new types of economic systems — from universal basic income to new variations of socialism to a more regulated capitalist system — that will result from the enormous impacts of autonomous vehicles.
71. In the path to a truly driverless future, there will be a number of key tipping points. At the moment, freight delivery may push autonomous vehicle use sooner than people transport. Large trucking companies may have the financial means and legislative influence to make rapid, dramatic changes. They are also better positioned to support hybrid approaches where only parts of their fleet or parts of the routes are automated.
72. Autonomous vehicles will radically change the power centers of the world. They will be the beginning of the end of burning hydrocarbons. The powerful interests who control these industries today will fight viciously to stop this. There may even be wars to slow down this process as oil prices start to plummet and demand dries up.
73. Autonomous vehicles will continue to play a larger role in all aspects of war — from surveillance to troop/robot movement to logistics support to actual engagement. Drones will be complemented by additional on-the-ground, in-space, in-the-water and under-the-water autonomous vehicles.
Note: My original article was inspired by a presentation by Ryan Chin, CEO of Optimus Ridespeak at an MIT event about autonomous vehicles. He really got me thinking about how profound these advances could be to our lives. I’m sure some of my thoughts above came from him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Geoff Nesnow is an entrepreneurial futurist, a visionary who defines himself as “a systems thinker with lots of data points and a deep network.” He currently teaches graduate business students, writes about business and technology, advises startups and runs entrepreneurial competitions. Along the way, he built a small nutrition company and is still trying to make systematically reducing gang violence self-funding.
Proving the technology is safe could take hundreds of years while many say it will save lives now
The Google Waymo autonomous test car on the streets of Mountain View, California. (Google Waymo)
The latest U.S. government guidelines hand a lot of the responsibility for the safety of autonomous vehicles over to the companies that make them, but a Canadian expert says that may be the best option, and ultimately the decision will save thousands of lives.
“We’re [in between] a rock and a hard place.” says Paul Godsmark of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence (CAVCOE), which provides consulting services, analysis and recommendations to government, public sector agencies and private industry on automated vehicle deployment.
“It’s really a fascinating problem.”
Look, Ma, no regulations
The Trump administration this week issued updated safety guidelines for self-driving cars that take an even more hands-off approach than those issued by the Obama administration, which were already largely voluntary.
“The language is very much written in a way to make it seem like nothing that they are putting in there is an actual regulation. It’s kind of like vague guidelines.” says Mike Ramsey, research director with Gartner, a technology research firm.
“I think what you’re seeing is the Trump administration is very eager to show that they’re pulling back regulation, making it easier for companies to get things accomplished, removing barriers and roadblocks,” he said.
Called Automated Driving Systems 2.0 – A Vision for Safety, the new guidelines include a 12-point safety checklist, and make stipulations such as autonomous vehicle systems are expected to be able to detect and respond to objects both directly in front of them and nearby “including pedestrians, bicyclists, animals and objects that could affect safe operation of the vehicle.”
Companies are also encouraged to install systems that make drivers pay attention to the road even when vehicles are operating autonomously.
Godsmark says it’s clear the new guidelines are letting companies take the wheel. “What they’re doing is they’re giving license to developers to try an untested technology on an unsuspecting public,” says Godsmark.
As frightening as that may sound, he says it may be the best decision.
For one thing, it wouldn’t be practical to safety-test autonomous vehicles in a lab or controlled environment for the length of time needed to reach a statisticallly acceptable safety standard.
“We would need to have several billion miles of testing which … I think some people have calculated would take several hundred years,” he says.
Some studies have shown driverless cars could reduce the number of traffic fatalities by up to 90 per cent by removing driver error, speeding and other unsafe human practices.
The current human system, Godsmark says, is killing about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. — around 2,000 per year in Canada — and injuring many, many more.
Safer than human drivers
The question is, would unleashing an imperfect automated technology kill or injure fewer people than the current human-controlled driving system?
Godsmark says yes, even if that means having to place an immense amount of trust in private industry.
“We know that in the past when you trust tech companies and the automakers, they can take liberties.” he says.
But Godsmark and other supporters of the U.S. approach believe the developers are determined to make the cars safe because their business survival depends on it.
“So they are very motivated to get it right,” Godsmark said.
Leaving it up to the market to keep us safe
Others question whether a pure market approach is the best way go.
“Not all regulation is bad. The regulation exists to protect us,” says Ramsey.
“There’s an amount of regulation that has to go in because we’re not talking about just putting in an automatic braking system,” he says.
“So in one sense, yes, a lot of lives could be saved [by autonomous vehicles], but in another sense, you don’t want to rush something like this,” he said. “I mean, you’re talking about completely taking the human out of the driving loop. So it’s a big decision. It’s a big thing.”
Driverless cars will be on the roads sooner than you think
The U.S. is well ahead of the curve on automated vehicles compared to much of the rest of the world, moving forward with actual deployment. Other countries, including Canada, are still in the testing phase.
The entire automated vehicle segment is moving much more quickly than many people may realize, Godsmark says.
“The lead developers, the ones that I am monitoring, they are making great strides,” he says. “And my expectation is that we will have some form of autonomous vehicle operating on public roads in the next two years in North America.”
FILE PHOTO — General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra announces that Chevrolet will begin testing a fleet of Bolt autonomous vehicles in Michigan during a news conference in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo
General Motors Co plans to deploy thousands of self-driving electric cars in test fleets in partnership with ride-sharing affiliate Lyft Inc, beginning in 2018, two sources familiar with the automaker’s plans said this week.
It is expected to be the largest such test of fully autonomous vehicles by any major automaker before 2020, when several companies have said they plan to begin building and deploying such vehicles in higher volumes. Alphabet Inc’s Waymo subsidiary, in comparison, is currently testing about 60 self-driving prototypes in four states.
Most of the specially equipped versions of the Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle will be used by San Francisco-based Lyft, which will test them in its ride-sharing fleet in several states, one of the sources said. GM has no immediate plans to sell the Bolt AV to individual customers, according to the source.
The sources spoke only on condition of anonymity because GM has not announced its plans yet.
GM executives have said in interviews and investor presentations during the past year they intend to mass-produce autonomous vehicles and deploy them in ride services fleets. However, GM officials have not revealed details of the scale of production, or the timing of the deployment of those vehicles.
In a statement on Friday, GM said: “We do not provide specific details on potential future products or technology rollout plans. We have said that our AV technology will appear in an on-demand ride sharing network application sooner than you might think.”
Lyft declined to comment.
GM’s crosstown rival Ford Motor Co has said it plans to begin building its first self-driving vehicles at a suburban Detroit plant in late 2020, for deployment in on-demand ride sharing fleets in 2021. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is providing a small number of Chrysler Pacifica minivans to Waymo, which is converting them for self-driving tests.
GM’s Maven car sharing operation likely will be involved with Lyft in developing a commercial ride sharing business around self-driving vehicles such as the Bolt AV, GM executive Mike Ableson told Reuters in a November interview.
“If you assume the cost of these autonomous vehicles, the very early ones, will be six figures, there aren’t very many retail customers that are willing to go out and spend that kind of money,” Ableson said. “But even at that sort of cost, with a ride sharing platform, you can build a business.”
Chief Executive Mary Barra in mid-December said GM would begin building a fully autonomous version of the Bolt EV in early 2017 at its Orion Township plant north of Detroit.
GM is testing about 40 Bolt AVs in San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona, and plans to extend testing this year to Detroit, the automaker said in December.
The future of the driverless car is much closer than people realize, Elon Musk reportedly said in a speech in Dubai Monday. That’s the good news. The bad news, he points out, is that there will be a steep price to pay for the “great convenience.”
‘There are many people whose jobs are to drive. In fact, I think it might be the single largest employer of people. So we need to figure out new roles for what do those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quick.’
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, according to CNBC, said the disruption will take place within about 20 years and will ultimately leave up to 15% of the global population without jobs.
Musk also touched on one of his favorite topics: artificial intelligence. Specifically, he spoke of humans eventually merging with machines, like something out of a “Terminator” movie.
“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk told the audience. “It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output. He explained that computers can communicate at “a trillion bits per second,” while humans can do about 10 bits per second.
“Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem,” Musk said.
Google is perfecting its self-driving cars specifically to help elderly individuals get around. Watch how a few react to riding in one for the first time!
Credit: BuzzFeed
Times have changed, that’s a given. But take a moment to consider just how drastically different life is for those who were born in the 1920’s and 1930’s compared to how it is today.
In the past, hover boards, computers, and even the internet must have seemed like outlandish, far-fetched ideas. Yet today, most are manifested realities many of us take for granted.
Now, consider self-driving cars. Even a decade ago, one might have speculated that the population would have to wait a handful of years before even a prototype was invented – that’s no longer the case.
In fact, Google has already released a self-driving car and has vowed to perfect the models to specifically help elderly individuals get around without hassle. Of course, the rest of the population will likely be transported by self-driving vehicles within the next decade, but that’s another story…
Recently, the chief executive of Google’s self-driving car program, John Krafcik, enlisted his 97-year-old mom, Marie, to ride in one of the company’s self-driving units. BuzzFeed News was also invited, therefore, two more individuals over the age of 60 also tagged along: John Hickman, 73, and Barry Barron, 65.
As you can view in the video below, the adventure was considered to be something of an epic ordeal by all involved:
“There are so many people with some level of disability who don’t have driver’s licenses, and really don’t have the opportunity for the personal mobility that we all take for granted. That’s one of the great benefits of self-driving cars. We can get all those folks from where they are to where they want to be.”
Postdoctoral Fellow in Aeromechanics, University of Texas at Austin
Disclosure statement
Leon Vanstone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
The Conversation is funded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Knight Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Alfred P Sloan Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation and the Simons Foundation. Our global publishing platform is funded by Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
So let us imagine a not too distant (and quite likely) future where the majority of vehicles on the roads drive themselves. Those cars are networked together – they communicate information about their position, speed, traffic and hazards around them. You don’t need to stop at junctions if you know there’s no traffic approaching. A large traffic management system keeps cars moving, finding the best route.
An entire system of transportation that manages itself, reduces traffic, accidents, emissions – and all for a lower cost. How long before people not only accept this but even prefer it? Though many are quick to claim no one will want it, how many people still ride a horse-drawn carriage?
The implications of driverless cars are huge because the transportation industry is huge, employing almost five million people in the U.S. alone. Suddenly you don’t need drivers for taxis, buses, garbage trucks, deliveries, you name it. Not just cars either – boats, planes, anything that moves could be completely automated. Once this process begins, it’s likely to happen quickly, because there’s an incredible amount of money to be saved this way. What happened to the horses when we didn’t need them to pull carts?
The people who today drive these vehicles are currently some of the most valuable to society. Modern life would grind to a halt if they all suddenly disappeared. Together, these millions of people move food to our supermarkets, take garbage from our houses and take our children to school. What happens to all those people, who through no fault of their own, find themselves unemployed with a skill set society no longer wants or needs?
Obviously, jobs have disappeared from society before: how many people are blacksmiths, cobblers or chimney sweeps? Entire professions have faded from society before with little effect, so why care now?
Something changed.
Imagine you were alive hundreds of thousands of years ago. The average life expectancy is low. Technology is primitive. Food is scarce. Wi-Fi signal is beyond terrible. You spend most of your time foraging for food, and what little spare time you have during daylight hours is spent essentially doing science. Now this isn’t very advanced science – I’m talking about bashing rocks together, discovering fire, making spears – but none the less these explorations are science and progress is slow.
Now imagine you went back just a thousand years. You are now a peasant, along with almost everyone else. The average life expectancy is still low. You spend most of your time growing enough food so a few very privileged people don’t have to farm at all. As a whole, society has a little more free time to invent and discover. Progress is faster but not that fast. Life for the peasants still stinks. Wi-Fi signal is still terrible.
Now you are you. Your average life expectancy is higher than ever before. You are either part of the 1.5 percent of American society that does all the farming for everyone else or you’re part of the 98.5 percent that does other things. Either way your life probably doesn’t stink, Wi-Fi coverage is phenomenally better and you essentially live like royalty (at least in comparison to the other two versions of you). So what changed?
Farmers were replaced by machinery and they became manufacturers. Manufacturers were replaced by automated assembly lines and they went on to become computer engineers. The more people in a society who can be free to think, create and do things that don’t involve sustaining that society (like farming or moving things), the more people you have available to be artists, scientists and entrepreneurs. This leads to more discoveries, which in turn, frees more people to think and so on. Humanity has been doing this for millennia.
But this process of replacing one occupation with another has always been slow. Society needs time to adjust to a change in required skill sets. In truth, few farmers really retrain as manufacturers and few manufacturers go on to become computer engineers. It is much more likely to be the next generation that trains into the new skill set modern society requires. The farmers’ children go on to be manufacturers and the manufacturers’ children become computer scientists. But at some point, the rate of change may happen quicker than children take to grow up. At some point, the manufacturer has to retrain as a computer engineer… or confront a life with no livelihood.
In fact we have already passed that point; it occurred around the end of World War II, when the manufacturing industry moved to automated manufacturing. A prime example of this is Detroit, a city that grew from a population of 300,000 in 1900 to almost two million in 1950 due to automotive manufacturing. But soon after that 1950 peak, through a mix of poor management, global competition and automation, the manufacturing jobs disappeared, and the people did not. Detroit suffered. In 2012, Detroit was murder capital of the U.S., and in 2013 it filed for bankruptcy. This problem was not unique to one city: large parts of once-prosperous countries are now poor simply because the industry there collapsed relatively quickly.
From a social view point, having millions more people free to do more complex tasks is good. It leaves more people to be artists and scientists and entrepreneurs in much the same way reducing the number of farmers and manufacturers did.
For the millions of individuals who have suddenly lost their jobs, this evolution is very bad. As a society, we are not good at helping them to retrain. Instead we leave them to rust. Should we as a society pay to retrain workers whose jobs become obsolete, or do we just get used to living in Detroit?
We need to decide now what we will do about those drivers displaced in the name of progress because what we do now will set a precedent. A precedent for what society does with the rest of us when technology comes for our jobs. How long before we have to retrain the computer scientists? What will their children want to be?
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 
