Driverless Cars, Their Technology, and a Shift in Where They and It Are Going

In the area of autonomous vehicles, we’re now long after the crash – sort of like the time in “Wooden Ships,” where the two crews met and did things suitable for their post-apocalyptic times, including asking the plaintive question “Who won?”  Although the idea of driverless cars becoming the norm, replacing our current ones as comprehensively as they did to horses, seems headed for the next century at soonest, they are still making their mark.

As for general progress, we got “Super-smart cars” (The Economist, March 15^th).  Now, apparently, “China is leading the rollout of self-driving technology,” though as always what it is really doing and accomplishing is opaque.  Recently, in a huge city, “on a test drive… the car overtook a three-wheeled noodle cart, avoided scooters speeding the wrong way around the street and nailed a U-turn without intervention from humans.”  Yet the “driver did need to take control a few times during the twenty-minute ride.”  So, while “China’s robotaxi experiment is the world’s biggest,” they can still only “operate within approved areas,” so we’re not much further along technically than we were at last decade’s end.

What has been “The slow but steady advance of driverless vehicles” (Ian Rose, BBC.com, March 20^th)?  General Motors and Apple are both now out of that business, leaving Waymo as “the leading US player,” with driverless “taxis in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.”  Warm weather, for lack of snow and better battery performance, is important in a location now, and getting the cars out is a “slow process,” involving humans driving on certain streets “over and over again.”  But, despite not knowing just how many square miles of these four cities are open to them, this is certainly forward progress.

So agreed Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist, on April 23^rd, in “How I Describe Myself Politically These Days.”  He saw, as an improvement on “lazily bashing billionaires,” a need for Democrats to enlarge “the pie of work by expanding new industries,” which was where robotaxis came in.  In the four places named in the previous paragraph, Waymo “is now racking up a whopping 200,000 paid rides a week.”  He was unconvinced about any Chinese supremacy, as “American technology is still more than competitive and can become even more dominant.”  He said he “can’t think of a more obvious moonshot project to spur advanced manufacturing in America generally than making it our goal to have Waymos or robo-Teslas – or any other brand of self-driving taxis that we can make – operating in every city in America.”  Friedman had much to say about how we could get that going quicker, by refunding tuition on degrees in related fields, allowing “would-be immigrants, especially from China and Russia, that if they have a degree or expertise in” related areas, to “stay as long as they want,” creating a federal “Department of Engineering and Innovation,” and tripling government self-driving vehicle research funding.  Worthy ideas.

On the problem side, we had “California residents enraged by driverless cars forced by regulators to make loud beeping noises” (Alexander Hall, Fox Business, June 1^st).  The issue is that they must “audibly reverse like delivery trucks,” so “they beep as they back out of charging spots, and beep as they reverse to navigate around each other. They beep in the morning as they head out to pick up early passengers, and beep late at night as they return to charge up."  Perhaps that can be cut down…

Friedman also called on Tesla’s CEO to “finally get the Tesla robotaxi that you have been promising for a decade out on the road.”  Less than two months later, we were able to read that “Tesla’s Robotaxi, Long Promised by Elon Musk, Joins a Crowded Field” (Jack Ewing, The New York Times, June 18^th).  It went into service that week in its hometown, though “the busy streets of Austin show that Tesla will face significant competition and other challenges,” such as needing “painstaking experimentation.”  Indeed, nine days later, per Sophia Compton in Fox Business, “Tesla’s newly launched robotaxi service experiences driving issues, traffic problems: report.”  Those included “braking suddenly, speeding, conducting improper drop-offs, entering the wrong lane and driving over a curb.”  How long will debugging take?

Continuing with that company, as reported in the New York Times on July 2^nd again by Jack Ewing, “Tesla Sales Fall as Elon Musk Focuses on Self-Driving Cars.”  Its “greater emphasis on autonomous driving instead of new models aimed at attracting car buyers” is understandably hurting current revenue, which with electric vehicle sales leveling off and even dropping is now anyway unassured to be favorable.  Rolling out the robotaxis, glitches and all, may turn out to be the best decision Tesla makes this decade.  They may need that, as “Tesla, Elon Musk sued by shareholders over Robotaxi claims” (Reuters, August 5^th).  The business and its leader are accused “of securities fraud for concealing the significant risk that the company’s self-driving vehicles, including the Robotaxi, were dangerous,” based on the Austin mishaps.  This case may have a long way to go.

What’s the big change here?  In the first quarter I wrote that autonomous technology was taking the cash by moving to primary use as an enhancement for human-driven cars.  Now the driverless side is resurgent.  That may go back the other way as soon as later this year, depending on how it performs in robotaxis, but it may not.  There is now more reason for optimism about driverless vehicles than there has been for years, maybe five or six of them.  Stay tuned – there may be more, even much more.