Autonomous Cars With Marc Hoag

Austria's Magna Steyr and its imminent ICE to EV transition, and how it syncs up with an AV future If you want to attend MOVE America on September 1-3, grab your free passes here: hoagandco.com  I know I often say this about many guests on my show, but today’s discussion with Anna Kleissner, PhD and Michael Semmer, MS, was absolutely fascinating; easily one of my all-time favorite discussions. It was engaging; it was at times entertaining; and it was incredibly thought provoking and educational. To cut to the chase: it turns out that if Austria doesn’t successfully orchestrate a transition of its roughly 314,000-strong automotive sector employees from ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle production to EV production within about 10 years, it stands to suffer a whopping 5.8% reduction in GDP. In plainer terms, Austria risks losing its entire automotive manufacturing industry if it doesn't fully embrace electric vehicles within 10 years. If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because it bears as striking

A year and a half ago — January 2019 — I was invited to CES 2019 by the good folks over at HERE Technologies to moderate three days worth of talks. (Here’s the episode I did and a brief video.) Apart from getting seriously sick for those three days — a weird, hugely unpleasant thing for someone who, knock on wood, never gets sick — it was an otherwise fantastic experience. During those several days, I had been invited to some surprisingly fun afterparties; and it was on the last night of my three-day stint in Vegas, at just such a party, that I happened to meet some of the LeddarTech team from Montréal. It’s been far too long for me to remember now, but LinkedIn reminds me that I met with their Product Line Manager, Pier-Olivier Hamel; so you can imagine my pleasant surprise when LeddarTech reached out to me for a conversation with none other than their President & COO, Frantz Saintellemy. What had most intrigued me about LeddarTech when I’d met with Pier-Oliver back in January 2019 was the decidedly nove

If you have even a passing interest in Teslas — including and especially their recently-released Model Y, which I call “the most important vehicle since Henry Ford’s Model T some 112 years ago — then chances are you know Ryan Shaw and love his deeply informative, highly objective and sincere videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfv7-e6_6ZhvDL9-7Yw5OVA I’ve come to admire Ryan because, like me, he’s undeniably a fan of Tesla and Elon Musk, while at the same time keeping his enthusiasm and support in check: while he has no reservations about gushing his praise for their vehicles and technology generally, he’s quick to enumerate all faults, critiques, and criticisms as appropriate. Just before the COVID-mandated shut down of Tesla’s Fremont factory went into effect back in March, Ryan and I were in the queue for our respective Model Y orders; it was a patient game of waiting to see who would take delivery first, a game that he won after a clever last minute order configuration change. Since then, he’s produ

Boom! Amazon buys Zoox for $1.2B; Nvidia and Mercedes partner up for AV tech in Mercedes vehicles from 2024; and Volvo and Waymo partner up, with Volvo getting lidar kit from Luminar.

Dmitry is the Founder & President of Tortoise, an autonomous/teleoperation e-scooter company.

Dr. James Wu Dr. James Wu is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at DeepMap. Prior to founding DeepMap, James built his career at Baidu, Apple, and Google. At Baidu, James served as Principal Architect for the self-driving team. At Google, James was a core member of Google Earth and Google Maps team. James earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Alabama and his BS in Computer Science from Tianjin University. About DeepMap DeepMap is accelerating safe autonomy by providing the world’s best autonomous mapping solutions. We deliver the technology necessary for self-driving vehicles to navigate in a complex and unpredictable environment. We address three important elements: precise high-definition mapping, ultra-accurate real-time localization, and the serving infrastructure to support massive global scaling.  Without a human driver, self-driving cars will have to rely on maps with real-time localization to constantly update changes (such as road conditions, accidents, construction

Amazon Prime recently launched a (ridiculous) new show called Upload. The first 15 minutes show a passable take on an AV future in which the lead character's AV is hacked and he crashes and dies and goes to (virtual) heaven. There's a subtle, implicit reference to the trolley paradox, and a suggested solution to simply "prioritize" your AV according to your preferences, e.g., to prioritize pedestrians over other cars. This is a rambling, stream of conscious discussion in which I try to unpack and destroy this admittedly clever but deeply troubling approach. 

1. GM Ultra Cruise: GM's current semi-autonomous driving tech, Super Cruise, uses onboard HD maps for certain freeways to enable hands-free driving on those freeways that are mapped. Now, GM is planning to expand this tech city streets with so-called Ultra Cruise. 2. E-Scooters are going autonomous as Go X borrows Tortoise's self-driving scooter retrofit kit to shuttle scooters autonomous to passengers and then to parking spots. 3. Delivery bots like Nuro's R2 desperately need better (and more permissive) regulation.

Today we speak with Andy Schaudt, Program Director at the Automated Vehicle Systems group at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.5

Today we discuss Zoox up for sale (and I predict VW grabs them up); Voyage and FCA partner up; Intel brings in Moovit to join Mobileye. 

Today, Ford delays their autonomous vehicle launch to 2022 due to COVID-19; GM’s Maven shuts down; and Audi releases A2D2, their autonomous vehicle training data set.

A fantastic, nearly 1-hour long conversation with Leanid Tsurankou, founder & CEO of Qibus (website), a teleoperation startup.

Today's #podcast episode, Ep148, is live! A fantastic episode with Hoag+Co. partner Martin Adler, PhD and associate Nick Reed, PhD (btw, search YouTube for his TEDx talk on autonomous cars!) coming at us from Amsterdam and Oxford, respectively, as we discuss the impact of #COVID on the #AutonomousVehicle industry. Have a listen now, and catch up with the last few episodes that I forgot to share! #covid19 #autonomousvehicles #autonomouscars #mobility #driverlesscars #tesla #selfdrivingcars #deliveryrobots #autonomousdelivery #covid_19 #coronavirus

We address the question why AVs all look like bread loaves; BMW's approach to AV design; and further discussion on COVID's impact on AV, in this case, looking at Voyage.

#146-Covid's impact on delivery, testing, and regulation @hoagandco @autonomoushoag hoagandco.com

A few thoughts that came to my mind a few days ago. I put them to paper, and now I'm putting them to video, too. In light of the unthinkable global threat of #COVID19 (#coronavirus), and the recent turn for the worse in my home country of the USA, here's a bit of optimistic "historical patriotism" to offer some global hope and inspiration. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/autonomous-cars-with-marc-hoag/message

A fascinating conversation with Tal Cohen of Drive TLV, a Tel Aviv-based tech accelerator focusing on all things automotive, autonomous vehicles, and mobility.  @hoagandco | hoagandco.com @autonomoushoag YouTube.com/AutonomousCarsWithMarcHoag

A really great conversation with Allison Kender on all things passive safety -- crash structure, crash testing, etc -- and how it relates to, and needs to change, in anticipation of future autonomous vehicle  designs. @hoagandco | hoagandco.com @autonomoushoag YouTube.com/AutonomousCarsWithMarcHoag

A fantastic conversation with the co-founder & co-CEO of Munich-based tool qualification company Validas AG (http://validas.de) Oscar Slotosch. hoagandco.com | @hoagandco | @autonomoushoag | YouTube.com/AutonomousCarsWithMarcHoag

A fantastic conversation with the founder of UK-based Oxbotica (oxbotica.com) and their hardware/software AV platform. @hoagandco hoagandco.com @autonomoushoag YouTube.com/autonomouscarswithmarchoag