INTRODUCTION Feb 22, 1959 Arthur Radebaugh Sunday Comic Strip It is said that Henry Ford had the masses, is said to face a a vision that went beyond revolution as large as that of a building the Model T, and century ago. The new beyond reinventing revolution is the prospect of manufacturing. His vision was wide spread use of to “bring mobility to the autonomous, shared, and masses.” Ford also foresaw electric vehicles. This report that, if he succeeded, an will examine the nature of this entire new infrastructure of presumed revolution in roads, gas stations, roadside mobility and most importantly diners and motor courts the realistic prospects for the (motels) would emerge. What timing of this mobility he needed to do, he believed, revolution. was to build a car that was cheap enough, and that could electric vehicles be built quickly enough, so that the common person could afford one. That is what he set out to do. Within glen hiemstra | futurist.com | oct 17, 2017 twenty years of the introduction of the first Model Impact of autonomous shared T, Ford was well on his way to achieving the larger vision. A little over 100 years later, the world of automotive transportation, or mobility for 1 Autonomous Vehicles happened to sit next to a GM Waymo is well over a billion engineer on a cross-country dollars, and Morgan Stanley flight and as we discussed the put a valuation on Waymo future of cars, he said that if that is more than GM or Tesla GM wanted to it could or Uber. Waymo is in the produce a driverless car, even process of rolling out the back then.) largest public test of self driving vehicles in the U.S., in Ford is matching GM by Phoenix, where Avis has investing a billion dollars over signed on to manage the fleet Who is investing? the next five years in Argo AI, of several hundred cars and its driverless car operation, as vans. Going back at least to the well as investing in tech start- 1950’s carmakers have ups such as Willow Run. Tesla Not surprisingly California is dreamed of driverless has made it a very public the heart of much self driving vehicles. It has been a staple priority to build self-driving auto research and testing. As of science fiction scenarios. tech in all of its products, of the end of September 25, But it began to become a soon to include a semi-truck. 2017, here is the list of potential reality in 2004 when Uber has several self driving companies that have the Defense Advanced initiatives, including investing registered with the California Research Agency (DARPA) with Ford in Argo AI, and Department of Motor Vehicles sponsored its first “grand running its own self driving for the right to test self- challenge” for driverless company Otto, which ran the driving technology on vehicles, refining the splashy demonstration of self- California highways and roads. challenge to an urban setting driving a Budweiser delivery The DMV has issued in November 2007. Now just truck several hundred miles Autonomous Vehicle Testing ten years later, every major through Colorado last year. Permits to the following car company, tech and Lyft is also teaming up with entities: software companies from Ford, as well as doing its own Google to Apple to Intel to demonstration projects in San NVidia, and transportation as Francisco and elsewhere. a service companies like Uber (Permit holders are listed by Google jumped to an early and Lyft are all investing in the date the permit was lead in actually demonstrating driverless vehicle technology. issued) highway-ready self-driving GM paid a billion dollars for test vehicles several years • Volkswagen Group of the driverless tech company ago, and then in the past year America Cruise Automation, and has spun that project off into the • Mercedes Benz invested hundreds of millions • Waymo new company Waymo, under more in Nauto as well as its • Delphi Automotive the umbrella of the larger own driverless units. (It was • Tesla Motors research company Alphabet. several years ago that I • Bosch Google’s investment in • Nissan 2 • GM Cruise LLC Udacity engineers. They The second vision, • BMW have begun testing their exemplified by Voyage, Uber, • Honda self-driving taxi service in Lyft and others, is to develop • Ford The Villages, a 4000- a fleet of self-driving taxis, • Zoox, Inc. resident retirement with the idea being that the • Drive.ai, Inc. • Faraday & Future Inc. community in San Jose. fleet will be owned by one • Baidu USA LLC Other companies, like entity, perhaps the self driving • Wheego Electric Cars nuTonomy, are actively company (Voyage, Uber, Lyft, Inc. testing self driving taxi’s in etc.), the equipment • Valeo North America, Singapore while manufacturer (Ford, GM, Inc. Volkswagen is aiming to Daimler), or by some • NextEV USA, Inc. • Telenav, Inc. introduce fully sponsoring company or • NVIDIA Corporation autonomous mini-vans as perhaps by a major retailer • AutoX Technologies a global taxi service. like Walmart , Costco or Inc Starbucks. In the latter case, • Subaru Two Kinds of Autonomous the company would sponsor Udacity, Inc • Vehicle Visions the fleet, leasing vehicles and • Navya Inc. then reaping a variety of • Renovo.auto There are two basic advertising and customer • UATC LLC (Uber) approaches to the self-driving networking benefits, as well • PlusAi Inc vision. One, best exemplified • Nuro, Inc as fees, from each person who by Tesla, is to make cars • CarOne LLC takes a ride in one of the owned by individuals capable • Apple Inc. vehicles. • Bauer’s Intelligent of autonomous operation. Transportation This provides a benefit to the • Pony.AI car owner both in relieving • TuSimple the owner from some driving, • Jingchi Corp and also, potentially, by • SAIC Innovation enabling a car owner to allow Center, LLC • Almotive Inc his car to roam a local area as • Aurora Innovation a driverless rental or taxi. In • Nullmax fact, it is assumed that Tesla • Samsung Electronics may eventually develop its • Continental own software to manage an Automotive Systems Uber-style cooperative fleet Inc of individually owned cars. • Voyage • CYNGN, Inc When the owners are not personally using the cars, the owner may release the car for One of the companies on fleet use, and reap some of this list, Voyage, is a self- the financial payment from driving taxi start-up led by those who hire a ride. former Apple, Google and 3 Five Leves of Autonomy up, Strobe, in a bid to dominant visions for significantly reduce the cost of autonomy, we can see that To fully grasp the possible Lidar for autonomous autonomous taxis require autonomous vehicle future, it vehicles. There is debate Level 5 autonomy, or at least is important to understand within the autonomy field Level 4 with some kind of the five basic levels of about the level of technology remote assistance. In fact, the autonomy. Here, from needed to achieve level 4 and Phoenix experiment about to DriverlessGuru.com is a good 5 autonomy. Tesla believes be run by Waymo includes the illustration of the levels. Lidar is not needed, but, “Elon idea of a central command center in touch with each car, so that any car that becomes confused by a novel traffic situation will signal the command center asking for instruction, and a human operator in the command center will assess the situation and tell the car what do to. (One can image the frustration that might emerge among human drivers in Phoenix as they wait for a driverless car to receive human instruction from a Almost all new vehicles have is ‘full of crap,’ says Scott command center before it at least Level 2, automation. Miller, director of autonomous moves.) Among commercially sold cars vehicle integration at General Level 3 autonomy for on the road today, only Tesla Motors. The level of individually owned cars is makes the claim that it is technology and knowing what much easier. It can be already at Level 3 in all of its it takes to do the mission, to activated on good roads with cars, with only software say you can be a full Level intact lane markings, upgrades needed to take the 5 with just cameras and predictable traffic, and good cars to Level 4 or even Level 5. radars is not physically weather, and deactivated Tesla provides this level of possible,’ Miller told when these conditions do not autonomy with a combination journalists in Detroit last apply. The same can be true of cameras and on-board week.” (Source: of a car with Level 4 radar. Most other companies https://cleantechnica.com/20 autonomy that includes a full add Lidar, a laser based 17/10/11/cruise-automation- driving package for a driver. sensing system, and in fact buys-strobe-lidar-startup- As the AI capacity of on-board Cruise Automation, owned by elon-full-crap-gm-exec-says/) computing increases, as it will, GM, just in early October When we mix the five levels and thus the learning that can 2017 purchased a Lidar start- of autonomy with the two be shared among cars 4 improves, then more and getting out of a concert venue trivial challenge. The head of more driving situations and at the same time. There are the autonomous driving environments can be handed thus thousands of people program at Carnegie Mellon off to the autonomous milling about, a need for said that this “last 5%” of the system. Eventually individually literally thousands of cars to computing challenge will be owned cars with Level 4 flow though a pick up point at the hardest of all.