Autonomous Cars With Marc Hoag

Apple buys lidar: Apple is off shopping for lidar. I theorize that they're likely going after solid state lidar. Lucid gets SPAC'd: First Faraday, and now, as I predicted, so has Lucid, to the tune of $4.4B. Volvo's solution for motion sickness: Volvo is using predictive data to solve motion sickness with audio queues.

Faraday Future: FF just went public via a SPAC valuing the troubled EV automaker at $3.4B Aurora & Toyota: The AV technology company partners up with Toyota to utilize their Sienna minivan for ride hailing fleets Apple Car: Apple's long-rumored Apple Car is apparently not happening with Hyundai-Kia; so what's going on? 

Guest: Jessica Uguccioni, Automated Vehicles Review - Lead Lawyer, at Law Commission of England and Wales Topics: The Law Commission of England and Wales' review of the UK's regulatory framework for AVs on behalf of the UK Government's Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV)

Watch this review on my YouTube channel: YouTube.com/AutonomousCarsWithMarcHoag Read this review on my Medium channel  So I know this review has been a long time coming; those of you who listen to my podcast will remember that my wife and I took delivery of our white-on-white Tesla Model Y Long Range All Wheel Drive in June of this year; based on a delivery tracking site, I think it’s safe to say we were one of the first in California to take possession of that particular configuration. And now, after already hitting just over 16,000 km (10,000 mi) as of this writing, I feel confident that I can finally give a properly objective review of this undeniably astonishing, if flawed, machine. By now, however, you’ve all read and watched enough superlative-laden reviews about all Teslas’ face-distorting teleportation-like acceleration — suffice to say the Model Y is for all intents and purposes nearly as quick as the Model 3, if admittedly a bit less agile, as expected — so this review will focus instead on fou

I was introduced to Richard Goebelt through my H+C partner Martin Adler. The Director for Automotive & Mobility of the TÜV — the Technischer Überwachungsverein — Richard’s primary field of work, not to mention his passion and interests, rests entirely on the safety and regulatory landscape of all things automotive and mobility generally, with, of course, a focus on autonomous vehicles. Unsurprisingly, then, our conversation spanned the gamut from his thoughts about Tesla; a brief history of TÜV and Germany’s impressive grasp on automotive safety; the social impacts of autonomous vehicles especially on matters of equality, or lack thereof; and much more besides. This episode should be especially interesting to listeners in the US since we don’t really have anything like the TÜV. I suppose a loose analogy might be local agencies that require smog checks every few years. At a minimum, the TÜV requires certification of compliance to validate roadworthiness of all vehicles, including everything from turn signa

Our guest today is Ramon Marrades, the Director for Placemaking Europe, and he's joining return guest (#170) John Rossant, the Chairman of NewCities.org; CEO of CoMotion; and advisory board member of Neom. As an urban economist, a writer, and activist, Ramon has a real passion for people and places, and crucially, how people interact with places. Prior to Placemaking Europe, Ramon was the Chief Strategy and Finance Officer at La Marina de València, a waterfront development agency for the Spanish city, and a board member of the Worldwide Network of Part Cities (AIVP). Ramon is the co-editor of the book "Our City? Countering Exclusion in Public Space (2019) and the host and curator of Placemaking Week Europe 2019. Today, his work focuses primarily on the interface between public space and economic development. Today's conversation was a fascinating and totally open-ended dialogue between John and Ramon. As experts in their related and overlapping fields of urban design and development, it was an eye-opening loo

"What Phillip Wilcox has accomplished with The Future is Autonomous is nothing short of remarkable. The scope and depth of this book is simply staggering, while remaining an incredibly fast and easy, conversational read. From technology to society; from a micro view of individual companies to a macro, holistic look at the global AV industry; from legal issues to policy matters and everything in between, Wilcox somehow manages to cover the entire spectrum of the burgeoning autonomous vehicle industry and provides a distilled, unbiased crash course on a crash-free autonomous future." That was my preliminary review of Phillip’s book, available now for Amazon Kindle and paperback. Having now finished the book — in one 3.5 hour sitting, mind you — I summarized it thus: “Wilcox’s book is an astonishing crash course (pun not intended) on AV tech and law; a deep dive into US and China AV companies; the trade and security issues between the two countries that could determine the future of AV deployment; and so much mo

My guest today is Noam Arkind, the CTO at Israel-based Arbe Robotics (@Arbe_Robotics). Noam holds a PhD in Applied Math from the Robotics Lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science, so it’s no surprise that we did a fantastic one hour deep dive into all the fascinating technology behind their 4D high-resolution imaging radar solution. What struck me most about Arbe — and it took me until maybe half-way into our discussion to realize it — isn’t just their full development kit that includes both the hardware and software; it wasn’t just the cost competitiveness over alternative solutions like lidar for instance; but rather, it was the recognition that Arbe is quite literally shaping up to be a better lidar than lidar, from virtually every metric. Where computer vision cameras are limited by today’s AI and ML capabilities; where traditional radar is limited, at a minimum, by resolution; where lidar is limited by cost, inclement weather, and potentially resolution too, Arbe solves all those issues by effectively pr

Today's guest is Brett Bavar, the Engineering Lead at rideOS.ai, a universal mobility-as-a-service platform that aims to "efficiently move people and things throughout the world."  I first connected with Brett via my good high school friend Bill Chen, one of the first team members of rideOS, and we agreed it made sense to do an episode together on the fascinating work they've been up to which, frankly, is fairly unique in the AV landscape. Simply put -- though of course I leave it to Brett to explain more fully -- rideOS is a sort of routing optimization layer between any autonomous vehicle -- defined quite broadly -- and optimal navigation and prioritization routes for any thing that has mappable paths between A and B. It's a fascinating conversation spanning some 40 minutes in length, so I hope you're sitting comfortably to learn all about Brett and his work with the rideOS team.

1. Uber selling ATG News is circulating that Uber is prepping a sale of its self-driving car division Uber ATG -- Advanced Technologies Group -- to Aurora. Once worth over $7B, this sale would come almost three years after Uber's autonomous driving ambitions were stalled following the tragic accident in which an Uber test vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. But is this really game over for Uber's self-driving car plans? I think not. 2. Motional in Vegas Two episodes back we talked about Motional -- the joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv which recently partnered up with shuttle service Via -- and now there's news that Motional will itself begin driverless car testing in Las Vegas. This news comes right on the heels of Cruise's recent announcement that it too had been granted a driverless testing permit in San Francisco. 3. Honda reaches L3 Despite Audi's claim not long ago that it had achieved a Level 3 vehicle with its Audi A8, Honda says its 2021 Legend will be the first widely availabl

Today’s guest is John Rossant, the Chairman of NewCities.org and CEO of CoMotion. John also sits on the advisory board of Saudi Arabia’s impressive Neom City, a 150 sq-mi (388 sq-km) planned smart city powered fully by renewable energy, and eschewing conventional transportation methods for autonomous vehicles, both land-based and air-based. During our 40-minute conversation, John shares his fascinating insight on Neom, while touching on his global experiences derived from his time at NewCities and CoMotion.

Today: Hyundai and Aptive do a thing; I make a mistake; and ghosts learn to drive cars. All this, right now… 1. Hyundai and Aptive About a year ago, we discussed the new partnership as between Hyundai and Aptiv which saw the two companies forming some sort of unknown venture. This venture was apparently a company called Motional, and Motional has just partnered up with Via, a shuttle-van ride service that partners up with municipalities. The idea is for Motional to give Via driverless capabilities. 2. I make a mistake (about Daimler) Special thanks to Oscar Slotosch (Episode #142) for pointing out that I missed the recent announcement about Daimler’s partnership with Waymo to provide L4 trucking. Thing is though, it still seems that Daimler is focusing only on commercial trucking for now, so I try to go deeper than the last episode in an attempt to figure out (or at least guess) what’s going on. 3. Ghost Comma.ai has a friendly competitor driven by ghosts. Ghost is a plug-and-play hardware/software solution t

Today: Mercedes-Benz announces they're giving up on AVs; we talk AV design and what it really means; and, we unpack the true meaning of AV timelines. All this, right now.... 1. Mercedes-Benz gives up on AVs In a bizarre bit of PR non-hype, Mercedes-Benz announced to the world that they are giving up on AVs; this includes their (long since forgotten) partnership with BMW in which the Bavarian heavyweights were meant to co-produce AV software together, never mind the fact that neither company possesses such expertise. What's curious about this announcement is that it raises the question of what happens to Mercedes' ongoing development and improvement of their existing ADAS systems. Also, I make a fairly bold prediction, namely, that Mercedes will acquire an AV company in the next one to three years. 2. AV design The question of AV design often misses the bigger picture question: it's not so much a matter of how will today's passenger vehicles look, but rather, how will existing automobile companies' product lin

So this is a big, hugely polarizing deal: Tesla has just unleashed the beta version of its so-called “full self-driving” or “FSD” for short. Released only to an extremely small, but unknown number of so-called “early adopter program” (“EAP”) customers, this software update — 2020.40.8.10 — unleashes the full suite of long promised “self driving” features in an admittedly risky package; so risky, in fact, that the release notes warn that “[i]t may do the wrong thing at the worst time.” And the Internet has lost its collective minds: on one side of the ever-widening rift are the usual Tesla fanatics praising Elon for this extraordinary (non-?)achievement; on the other are naysayers criticizing him for his blatant ambivalence for, and risk with, human safety. I argue several points: First, the data needs to speak: if in fact this proves to be safe, then it should be continue. Second, we need to do anything we can — yes, even take more risks — if it means reducing the number of people killed every day.

Today: Cruise to start driverless testing in California; Caterpillar grows its AV division; Local Motors plans to test its new Ollie 2.0 in Toronto. All this… right now. Driverless Cruise I’ve been a big fan of GM’s Cruise (formerly Cruise Automation) pretty much since ever. But I didn’t agree with their announcement in 2019 that they would release to the world a true driverless car — sans steering wheel, mind — onto the chaotic streets of San Francisco by year’s end. First, I said it was an unlikely goal to achieve, which of course they didn’t. Alternatively, even if they did achieve it… so what? What really matters is not so much the marketing hype of demonstrating to the world that you have an L5-capable vehicle, but rather that consumers are actually using it, like Waymo is doing in Arizona. Now GM has become the fifth company in California to receive from the California Department of Motor Vehicles a driverless testing permit for their Cruise vehicle on the streets of California. But they still aren’t te

You've likely heard of Harry Campbell, otherwise known as "The Rideshare Guy," and chances are, if you are a driver for services like Uber or Lyft, you listen to his podcast religiously; and if you don't, well, do. So Harry recently emailed me to invite me to an event that he's putting on next week, with the impossibly awesome name Curbivore. It's bringing together thought leaders from the intersection of the food industry and mobility tech, to discuss these unprecedented challenges imposed by COVID-19. Curbivore is being produced with a colleague of his, Jonah Bliss. Jonah was formerly part of the original team at Turo, so suffice to say, he knows a thing or two about the mobility industry generally. Harry thought Jonah and I should have a chat about what's going on in this particular slice of the mobility space. So I agreed. What's especially interesting about Curbivore -- and why I agreed to do this admittedly very promotional episode despite that I've received zero compensation for it of any kind; this is

Today: We discuss the results of a study by Thatcham Research and Euro NCAP to crown Europe's safest vehicle (spoiler alert: it's not Tesla); when do we ban human driven vehicles; and we consider the path to EVs as a roadmap for AVs. All this... right now. Europe's safest vehicle A recent study was just published from Thatcham Research and Euro NCAP that sought to determine the safest vehicle you can buy for public roads. Somewhat surprisingly (or not?), the winner was not a Tesla. In fact, while Tesla scored highest in two categories, it scored abysmally low in one category, and the crown ultimately went to... When do we ban human drivers? The first question is whether we need to ban human drivers; and when you consider the appalling loss of human life around the world -- 1.25 million deaths caused by vehicle accidents, 94% of which are cause by human error -- it seems inconceivable not to ban them. But still, the question becomes when, and how do we do so. EVs as a roadmap for AVs The recent ban on ICE vehi

In a surprise move that came seemingly out of nowhere, Waymo has just opened up its Waymo One autonomous vehicle taxi services to the general public in its testing grounds just outside of Phoenix, Arizona; crucially however, these vehicles aren't just autonomous, they're driverless autonomous vehicles; i.e., Level 5 AVs. Until now, Waymo had been testing its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans with a human backup driver in a 100 square mile (160 square kilometer) region of the suburbs of Phoenix. Now, however, they've removed the human backup driver and shrunk the geofenced region to 50 square miles (80 square kilometers). Although the plan is to eventually re-introduce backups drivers and further broaden the coverage area, the current decision to remove the driver -- while surprising -- makes perfectly good sense during this era of the COVID pandemic. As I've often argued numerous times in the past, COVID should encourage, rather than discourage, driverless autonomous vehicles if only to maximize human saf

California recently announced a ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in 2035. This is an incredible decision but one which has been met with a surprising -- or not -- amount of resistance. I'm going to explain why everybody who disagrees with this is wrong. The first argument I've heard is people complaining that they should be allowed to buy ICE vehicles. This is not a ban on the sale of all ICE vehicles; only new ones. The second argument I've heard is that this will unfairly burden low income families. First, everything in the US unfairly burdens low income families thanks to our woefully inept social safety net. Second, low income families tend to buy used cars, not new cars (never mind the fact that most people in general tend to buy used cars), so this won't actually change anything. Third, and as a follow-up to the previous point, it needs to be pointed out that we're talking about something 15 years in the future; that's about as long as Tesla has been around (17 years), an

On their research to classify cities into 5 archetypes to determine the optimal future mobility solution for each city Hoag+Co. associate Maximilian Richter and Andreas Herrmann, researchers at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, have joined me to talk about their latest multi-year study. If you remember, an often-discussed topic on this podcast has been a 2018 study by BCG and the World Economic Forum on the impact on traffic in an autonomous vehicle future sans car sharing. Spoiler alert: it doesn't go well. Now, a new study -- effectively the sequel -- has just been released and Maximilian and Andreas are here to talk about it. What they've done is to classify cities from around the world into five archetypes based on myriad different qualities, in an effort to understand the future mobility technology best suited to that type of city. Simply put, there's no one shoe fits all solution for the cities of the world: a future mobility solution for Los Angeles will not work in San Francisco; what's opt