[darklord]

Alphabet Inc's Google unit, Ford Motor Co, Volvo Cars and two ride-sharing companies said on Tuesday they are forming a coalition to urge federal action on self-driving cars.

The coalition, which also includes Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft, is "to work with lawmakers, regulators, and the public to realize the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles."

The group said David Strickland, the former top official of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will serve as the coalition's counsel and spokesperson.

Big guns are out for self-driving vehicles.

[hybridpetrol]

Originally Posted by darklord

Big guns are out for self-driving vehicles.

I can see how this coalition can work out great things in the future.
Imagine Ford supplying the mechanical components, as it does now, with Google powering the infrastructure for self driving components (such as maps, algorithms to handle various situations) and Uber making a perfect application out of these - When you book an Uber, a car without driver shows up to take you to the desired destination. Such car drives itself, and the billing, road safety, etc can be monitored by a BPO division (probably outsourced), while also providing voice support if required.
If such wild imaginations come true, a generation later, our grandchildren may not even need to learn car driving!

Quote by Larry Page in Alphabet's home page:

We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion users, like Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. And we haven’t stopped there. We are still trying to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about.

[cbatrody]

Volvo self-driving cars are coming to London in 2017



Volvo will launch a real-world autonomous car self-driving trial in London next year, with up to 100 cars to be used by real families on public roads.

The firm is calling it the biggest, most ambitious autonomous driving trial yet seen in the UK; it will commence in early 2017 and be fully expanded to the 100-car total by 2018.

Called Drive Me London, Volvo will use the project to generate real-world data from the families using the self-driving cars, which it says will speed up the roll-out of autonomous vehicles: this data is far more realistic than test track data used up to now.

The trial is part of Volvo’s commitment that nobody will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020 – and it’s the sooner the better for autonomous drive (AD) cars as far as Volvo’s concerned.

“Autonomous driving represents a leap forward in car safety,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars. “The sooner AD cars are on the roads, the sooner lives will start being saved.”

Self-driving cars will “massively reduce car accidents” says Volvo, but also free up congested roads and save drivers time. They will also make commuting more productive and help cut pollution and emissions from cars.

Independent data suggests autonomous-drive cars can cut the number of car accidents by 30 per cent – an enormous reduction, given how up to 90 per cent of all accidents are caused by driver error or distraction. This should “largely disappear” with autonomous cars, believes Volvo.

Volvo also hopes the London trial will help speed up legislation changes needed to fully roll out autonomous cars.


Source: http://www.motoringresearch.com/car-...ng-london-2017

[cbatrody]

Fiat Chrysler and Google close to deal on autonomous car technology - reports



Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and Google are reportedly very close to signing a deal related to self-driving car technology. Sources have told both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal that FCA and Google are in the late stage of negotiations, with the technology giant responsible for the supply of autonomous vehicle technology, while the Italian-American car maker will provide the automotive platform and manufacturing capability. According Auto Extremist, talks kicked off between John Krafcik, head of Google's autonomous car division, and Sergio Marchionne, FCA's CEO, in the aftermath of CES 2016 in January. The website believes that in the short term, if the deal goes through, the two companies will develop an autonomous version of recently unveiled Chrysler Pacifica people mover.




Source:

http://www.msn.com/en-ae/cars/news/f...BsqR4Q#image=2

[cbatrody]

Panasonic on self-driving cars and Tesla’s battery factory



Everyone wants a slice of the self-driving car market, and we can now add electronics giant Panasonic to that list. Tom Gebhardt, head of Panasonic's US automotive division spelled out the company's plans in an interview with Automotive News. He said that Panasonic has ideas about the way we interact with autonomous cars, which the company will develop out of its expertise with infotainment systems.

The company is also working closely with Tesla on the battery "Gigafactory" in Nevada, which will be key to Tesla's ability to deliver almost 400,000 Model 3 electric vehicles to those in that gigantic queue of preorders. Gebhardt wasn't able to put a number on Panasonic's contribution to the factory—apparently that's down to Tesla—but he said that the company would "do what we need to do to assure supply."

As we've discussed previously, government regulators and the auto industry are hoping for great things from autonomous vehicle technology. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is extremely bullish on self-driving cars, which it sees as the answer to reducing the 33,000 deaths on US roads each year.

Although most estimates put fully autonomous (level 4 in NHTSA-speak) cars more than a decade away from deployment, even cars with level 2 self-driving (adaptive cruise control and lane keeping) do much to reduce driver fatigue. Other advanced driver assistance systems like automatic braking are being rolled out industry-wide ahead of any government mandate.

Beyond reducing traffic collisions, there are other benefits. Platoons of trucks (and eventually passenger cars) should reduce congestion and carbon emissions, for example.

Gebhardt told Automotive News that it's looking to redesign the human-machine interface in the car, with a combination of heads-up display, driver-monitoring system, and a standard instrument cluster. The company is also working with Ficosa on replacements for the traditional mirror, possibly something similar to the wide-angle augmented mirror that Chevrolet will use in the forthcoming Bolt EV.


Source:
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/04/...us-car-action/

[cbatrody]

Dubai Pushes the Pedal to the Metal on Driverless Cars



Already home to the world's biggest skyscraper, Dubai has another tall order to fill: By 2030, its leader wants 25 percent of all trips on its roads to be done by driverless vehicles.

Last Monday's announcement by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum came without warning and with few details, as is sometimes the case with the many aspirations of the leadership of the United Arab Emirates.

In this car-crazed city-state of over 1.5 million registered vehicles, it's not unusual to see Ferraris idling alongside Lamborghinis at traffic lights. And Dubai already is home to a driverless Metro rail system, which carried 178 million riders in 2015.

Smart-car technology is being used in some of the world's luxury vehicles, and it is advancing rapidly enough for the plan to become a reality — or a nightmare for the thousands of taxi drivers who now plying the streets among the sleek skyscrapers in the UAE's commercial capital.

In a statement carried by the state-run WAM news agency, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan would cut down on costs and traffic accidents. The project would be a joint venture by Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority and the Dubai Future Foundation, he said, without offering how it would be funded in the oil-rich nation.

"Today, we lay down a clear strategy with specific goals for smart transportation to form one of the key drivers for achieving sustainable economy in the UAE," said Sheikh Mohammed, who can be seen driving himself around Dubai in his white Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV, license plate No. 1.

Dubai boasts the world's tallest building with the 2,717-foot (828-meter) Burj Khalifa, which opened in 2010. In 2020, it will host the World Expo, a world's fair that is held every five years.

Mattar al-Tayer, the director-general and chairman of the Roads and Transport Authority, said his agency has contacted a number of driverless vehicle sellers and "plans to conduct live test-runs for these vehicles in Dubai."

His agency already has signed a deal with Toulouse, France-based driverless vehicle manufacturer EasyMile to conduct tests on their box-shaped EZ10, which carries up to 10 passengers, according to a statement from al-Tayer.

EasyMile referred questions to its Emirati partner Omnix, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

For now, Dubai and EasyMile haven't made any financial commitment to each other, said Ahmed Bahrozyan, the CEO of the Roads and Transport Authority's licensing agency. Instead, EasyMile is using the opportunity to test its battery life and air conditioners against Dubai's summertime heat, which goes easily beyond 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), he said.

"Our strategy is not only looking at private cars, but looking at taxis, looking at buses, looking at ... cable car systems," Bahrozyan told The Associated Press.

While still a nascent field, many big names are looking at entering the driverless market. Google began developing driverless cars in 2010. Traditional automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and Toyota are working to gradually automate functions until vehicles potentially become fully capable of driving themselves.

Dubai may prove to be a good test site. It sees little rainfall and has a nearly new road system crowned by the E11 highway known as Sheikh Zayed Road, the country's longest thoroughfare that is a dozen lanes at its widest. But there are also high-speed traffic crashes and massive collisions caused by seasonal fog in Dubai and the rest of the Emirates.

Bahrozyan said Dubai has contacted Mountain View, California-based Google about its self-driving car, which he added had artificial intelligence far beyond the EZ10.

Google said in a statement that it has seen a lot of interest for self-driving cars and has talked to organizations and communities all over the world, without specifically addressing questions about Dubai.

The goal of 2030 is a "realistic timeline" for such an effort like Dubai's, said Jeremy Carlson, a senior analyst in autonomous driving at research firm IHS. Dubai's top-down government also will help push through such an effort, he said.

"By and large, technology is not going to be the bottleneck for bringing this to market," Carlson said.

But as drivers vanish, so do jobs. Dubai has a number of taxi companies, driven by a large labor force from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other mostly Asian countries. Bahrozyan, the Dubai transportation official, acknowledged their jobs could be at risk farther down the driverless road, although not immediately.

"I think it is very many years away, but what's exciting for people ... is obviously the safety factor, because not just in Dubai, but all around the world taxi drivers are on the road for many hours and are prone for making mistakes or their driving behaviors may not be the best," he said. "The other factor is the economic factor because the biggest cost of operating a taxi service ... is the driver."


Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wir...-cars-38658663

[cbatrody]

Uber testing driverless cars in Pittsburgh

http://www.wpxi.com/news/uber-testin...urgh/263217720

PITTSBURGH —
After a $5 million partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, Uber is now testing driverless cars in Pittsburgh.

Uber has hired CMU seniors to work towards driverless cars at its advanced technologies center on 32nd Street.

These driverless cars are topped with cameras, bells and whistles, which is the mapping and safety autonomy systems for the vehicle.

Uber officials said that the company is constantly working to get images of better detailed roads.

[cbatrody]

Head of Fiat Chrysler Sees Self-Driving Cars in Five Years, Not 20



WINDSOR, Ontario — In the last year, Sergio Marchionne took a few test rides in Google’s self-driving car, and he came away impressed with the speed. But it is the breathtaking pace at which the technology is advancing, not how fast the car travels, that has really grabbed his attention.

“Each time it got better and better,” said Mr. Marchionne, the chief executive of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which is now collaborating with Google. “It isn’t pie in the sky. People are talking about 20 years. I think we will have it in five years.”

Mr. Marchionne was speaking at the auto company’s plant here, which is starting to make a new minivan, the Pacifica. Under the partnership unveiled this week, Fiat Chrysler will make about 100 modified Pacificas that Google will outfit with sensors and computers it has developed. The two companies will put together a joint engineering team, based in Michigan, to hone the technology.

In his first public comments on Fiat Chrysler’s agreement with the tech giant, Mr. Marchionne acknowledged it was unclear how far their collaboration will go, or how they will share the results of their work.

“We are approaching this in a completely open-ended fashion,” he said. “We need to get to a stage where the car is viable so we can discuss the spoils of that work. We are not there yet.”

Others in the industry are also rushing to put autonomous vehicles on the road in real-world situations.

General Motors and Lyft, the ride-hailing start-up valued at $4.5 billion, intend to test a fleet of self-driving taxis in an American city as soon as within a year, according to a person who has been briefed on the two companies’ plans. That would most likely begin using the technology inside the battery-powered Chevrolet Bolt, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about unannounced initiatives.

G.M. and Lyft formed a partnership in January and said they planned to introduce “an on-demand autonomous network” of self-driving vehicles. A spokesman from G.M. and a Lyft spokeswoman declined to offer additional details about their plans.

News of the taxi tests was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

Until now, Fiat Chrysler had said little about its autonomous car plans. Mr. Marchionne spent much of 2015 focused not on vehicles of the future but on shaking up how cars are made today. In a blunt presentation he called “Confessions of a Capital Junkie,” he suggested the auto industry was headed for a crisis unless companies consolidated and stopped wasting billions of dollars to develop engines and other components that customers never touch.

He then tried, without success, to persuade General Motors or other automakers to enter merger talks.

Some analysts were skeptical of the agreement with Google.

“They are providing Google with 100 minivans, which is great, but there’s not necessarily a lot of ongoing collaboration,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at the research firm Kelley Blue Book. “So it remains to be seen how much work they actually do together.”

Other carmakers like Ford Motor and Audi have made no secret of spending millions of dollars to create driverless cars, usually with the idea of heading off any competitive threat that could come from driverless cars being developed by Google and its Silicon Valley rival, Apple. Some have tried to recast themselves as “mobility companies” that will provide the means of moving people around, whether by cars they own, rent or hail via an app.

On Friday, Mr. Marchionne said the mobility concept was a “lofty ideal.”

He also said he was not imagining a merger with Google, although he was counting on the tech giant to help Fiat Chrysler catch up in driverless car technology. “We will be walking in a collaborative fashion with them at their speed,” he said. “We are exploring with them to allow us into their world.”

He also said that rival automakers working on their own autonomous cars, in competition with Google, were taking a risk that their investments may not pan out.

“It’s too early in this process to make the call who is going to end up with the winning solution,” Mr. Marchionne said. “Precluding development with others is a very dangerous bet.”


Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/bu...ears.html?_r=1

[cbatrody]

Why Europe's Biggest Railway is Working on Self-Driving Cars



Getting people on a train isn’t the hard part; it’s getting them to the train station or bus stop that has long vexed public transit companies and urban planners.

Deutsche Bahn, a German-based railway and logistics company that transports about seven million train passengers every day, thinks the answer is self-driving cars.

The massive company plans to operate fleets of autonomous vehicles that could be ordered via an app, much people already do when they order a ride-hailing service like Uber. These driverless cars would be used to pick people up and bring them to public transit stations, solving the so-called “last mile” problem.


The company is currently working on autonomous vehicle technology, Deutsche Bahn chief Rüdiger Grube said in an interview with German newspaper Wirtshafts Woche. Grube didn’t provide much detail, nor he did give a timeline on when the technology might be tested or widely deployed.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

Grube said the company is also developing automated technology for its trains, an advance that will eventually make human locomotive drivers obsolete. That isn’t happening anytime soon though. In the interview, Grube said the trains could be controlled from an operations center in one or two decades.

Deutsche Bahn isn’t the only public transit company experimenting with autonomous technology.

Dutch company 2getthere has developed autonomous pods that can transport 24 passengers in each vehicle. The company has partnered with SMRT Services, a subsidiary of Singapore’s rail and bus network operator SMRT, to deploy the pods on the Southeast Asian island by the end of the year. A Singaporean startup also recently announced the setting up of driverless taxis in the country.

Other startups are developing autonomous shuttles to transport people to and from cities. For instance, WePods launched an autonomous shuttle service this year in the Dutch province of Gelderland. An autonomous pod that fit six people currently runs between the towns of Wageningen and Ede.

And then there are the automakers and technology companies that are in their own race to develop self-driving cars, which could eventually compete with public transit systems. Google hopes to commercialize its self-driving car tech by 2020. Executives running the self-driving car project insist they don’t intend to sell the cars, which means the company will likely launch it as a transportation service.

Meanwhile, General Motors ( GM -0.58% ) has invested $500 million into ride-hailing service Lyft and acquired Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based developer of autonomous vehicle technology, for more than $1 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition follows GM’s recent move to create a team dedicated to the development of self-driving car technology within the company. GM’s end game is a network of self-driving cars within Lyft’s service that can shuttle passengers around town without a driver.


Source:
http://fortune.com/2016/05/07/deutsc...-driving-cars/

[cbatrody]

Fiat Chrysler courts Google with self-driving cars deal

Brent Snavely, Detroit Free Press




WINDSOR, Canada — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles hopes its deal with Google to build 100 prototype autonomous minivans will be just the start of a longer relationship that could help it leapfrog other automakers in the race to self-driving cars.

Fiat Chrysler's CEO, Sergio Marchionne, acknowledged that the initial deal to create 100 self-driving Pacifica hybrid minivans is "very targeted," and limited in scope. He said Google, which has been developing autonomous vehicle technology for seven years, has more negotiating leverage than Fiat Chrysler, or any automaker, because of its profits and market value.

Nevertheless, Marchionne framed the deal with Google as the beginning of a relationship that could grow into a more full-fledged partnership with the potential of helping FCA expand its expertise with autonomous technology.

"We are approaching this in a completely open-ended fashion," Marchionne said. "They found it easy to work with us and to explore and learn. Whether this is enough for them to feel comfortable to take the next step is unclear to me."

Fiat Chrysler announced a deal Tuesday with the Silicon Valley tech giant's 7-year-old autonomous car program. The deal is widely viewed as a coup for the Detroit-area automaker, which is behind competitors when it comes to the development of key technology. It also came amid a string of other deals and partnerships recently announced between Detroit automakers and Silicon Valley tech companies.

Fiat Chrysler said and Google plan to co-locate engineering teams at a site in southeastern Michigan and will work out of that site to do the design, testing and manufacturing of the self-driving Chrysler Pacifica -- giving Fiat Chrysler an opportunity to gain insights from Google.

Google parent Alphabet's market capitalization -- the total dollar market value of all of a company's outstanding shares -- is $495 billion compared with $9.8 billion for Fiat Chrysler.

"We appear to be on the wrong end of the wealth distribution," Marchionne said. "Some (tech companies) can buy us out of petty cash. And so its almost an unfair match when they decide to come in and participate with us."

Marchionne made his comments about Google shortly before he spoke to thousands of workers at Fiat Chrysler's Windsor Assembly Plant, which is near Detroit, for the launch of the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica, which is on sale now at dealerships.

Marchionne said the fleet of 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans that it will produce for Google will look "physically different" after Google installs its sensors and self-driving technology.

"Take a look at the Google car, and then just imagine that in a minivan, whatever that looks like," Marchionne said.


Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...deal/84111622/

[naveen.raju]

This Is Uber's First Self-Driving Car, Which, You Know, Eliminates The Need For Drivers

A hybrid Ford Fusion, equipped with self-driving technology, is paving the road for Uber's future fleet of autonomous vehicles.

Dubbed Uber ATC, the car is currently being tested on the streets of Pittsburgh, equipped with radars, high-resolution cameras and laser scanners to map details of the environment, but despite its self-driving capabilities, a trained driver sits behind the wheel, monitoring operations, according to Uber's blog post.

With an upcoming fleet of autonomous cars, the ride-sharing company's goal is to "improve quality life for people around the world", as Uber writes, focusing on more affordable and accessible transportation, less congestion and a decreased number of car accidents in which 1.3 million people lose their lives annually - 94 percent of those involving human error.

"We’re excited that Uber has chosen the Steel City as they explore new technologies that can improve people’s lives — through increased road safety, less congestion, and more efficient and smarter cities", said the Mayor of Pittsburgh, William Peduto.

Uber is still in its early days / stages of self-driving and the technology is being developed as we speak, but if everything goes according to plan, then we might see roughly 100,000 autonomous vehicles in 10-15 years, which would allow the company to regain profitability by eliminating - drivers, one of its highest expenses.

Courtesy - carscoop

[srishiva]

With everyone jumping into self driving bandwagon, how diverse the technology could be?

Finally I think there will be a handful of companies that provide the driverless tech concentrating on the electronics and software.

Car companies would collaborate with one of these and concentrate on the car themselves. That would also make the driverless tech cheaper and choice to car makers to adopt them easily.

[cbatrody]

Motorist caught 'sleeping behind wheel of Tesla Model S while autopilot did the driving'

https://youtu.be/sXls4cdEv7c

This footage shows the moment a Tesla driver was caught on camera apparently sleeping at the wheel with his car on autopilot.

The video, which emerged on social media, appears to show the unidentified driver of the Tesla Model S blue nodding off during a traffic jam on a busy motoroway.

Some commenters have questioned whether the incident is genuine, though all Tesla Model S cars have an inbuilt semi-autonomous system which allows drivers to take their hands of the wheel.

[Sebring]

Test drives have started, spotted one last week. Dubai is certainly taking the lead.