From Cruise Automation's aspiration to eventually serve rural communities to Volvo's inter-urban and Daimler's urban autonomous vehicle concepts, the "where" of mobility technology is increasingly overtaking the "how." In the spirit of this transition the gang takes a look at how a more collective approach to new technologies like autonomous vehicles and micromobility could help them live up to their utopian sales pitches.
On this episode of the Autonocast: Alex locates Waymo in the "Chasm of Annoyance," Ed thinks the TRI-Uber alliance is less crazy than you do and Kirsten provides an important update about Ze Byton Life. Plus Alex shares his pro tips for experiencing Pebble Beach on just five dollars per day.
Fresh off her vacation in Africa, Kirsten tells Alex and Ed all about mobility in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. The gang goes on to discuss whether Uber should get rid of its autonomous vehicle development program, how Argo and Ford are cross-pollinating their engineering talent through collaboration, and why Bird is working on new technology to cut down on scooter abuse.
Test facilities for autonomous vehicle development are sprouting up around the world, but today we take a look inside one of the originals: MCity, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Greg McGuire is the lab director who oversees both the fake city that makes up the test facility and the fleet of vehicles that that performs research there. A veteran of Zipcar, Greg explains his obsession with new mobility technologies and how his team is facilitating multidisciplinary research into a wide variety of problems in order to serve a diverse group of partners.
On-demand mobility sounds great, until demand dramatically outstrips supply and you're left stranded or surge pricing kills the value proposition. Meanwhile, rental vehicle fleets are being squeezed by declining demand, utilization and margins. A couple of veterans of the ride hailing and rental businesses saw opportunity in these two challenges, and are building a platform called Autofleet to redirect underutilized vehicles into ridehailing or delivery services. CEO Kobi Eisenberg joined the show while we were in Tel Aviv to explain his vision for a platform that can spin fleets up and down the way Amazon Web Services spins virtual machines up and down.
With Kirsten off conquering the Namib Desert, and just generally being cooler than us while on vacation, we call on the services of our guest co-host former PolySync CEO and current roofing enthusiast Josh Hartung. Between the Tesla going-private craziness, a recent IIHS test of Level 2 driver assistance systems and the autonomous drive sector's sojourn in the trough of disillusionment there's a lot to talk about. It may not be as cool Kirsten's African adventure, but we do what we can.
As reality sets in for the autonomous drive technology space, the long-term goal of Level 5 and ubiquitous ridesharing is giving way to more limited, pragmatic deployment scenarios. One of the opportunities that is coming into focus in this shift is autonomous trucking and freight delivery. On today's episode, we speak with one of the first people to see the remarkable opportunities in this space: Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, CEO and founder of the autonomous trucking pioneer Starsky Robotics.
After a visit to the historic Henry Ford Museum, Alex is fired up about grassroots electric racing. The gang also discusses Tesla's new leaked interior renderings and Kirsten's "highly cited" story about Uber's new approach to autonomy. Also, Ed has a new job!
One of the hardest problems in the automated driving stack involves predicting how multiple pedestrian targets will behave. That's the problem that Cambridge, MA-based startup Perceptive Automata is tackling head-on with a unique approach to deep learning that builds on research into human perception. Co-founder and CTO Sam Anthony joins the show to explain how he's teaching self-driving cars how to tap into he power of the human glance.