Hiring Growth

Companies in the auto-tech space are growing fast.

A former Uber exec suggests that over half of Uber’s 4,000 current employees may have been hired in the last six months.

Tesla has over 1,000 open jobs, and has grown so much that it has run out of parking spaces at its headquarters.

Nonetheless, Matthew DeBord at Business Insider believes that Tesla hasn’t hired enough staff in the traditional auto-manufacturing roles.

Musk’s company will probably be able to build and deliver roughly 50,000 vehicles this year. Next year, the total could get close to 75,000–100,000. But these are pretty small totals compared with the major players. Ford and GM build that many cars in a month and could easily assemble far more, if the market demanded it.

On yet another hand, however, Tesla’s new Nevada gigafactory is huge and holds space for all those manufacturing employees.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Ford and Google

Since the announcement that Ford and Google are setting up a partnership, there has been relatively little news as to what that partnership will entail.

There has been some recent speculation that Google will work with Ford to turn the Fusion into the first mass-market autonomous vehicle.

Automotive News, however, believes that Google and Ford will build a car together from scratch.

By using Ford-built vehicles, Google would save billions in development costs. It would not have to design, build, test, manufacture and validate cars for safety and emissions. A deal would free the tech giant to focus on developing the automated driving software in use in a fleet of 53 self-driving bubble cars on the road in California and Texas. Those 53 cars, by the way, were assembled in Detroit by Roush Enterprises, a supplier closely aligned with Ford.

Devices like the Nexus phone series provide a model for how such a partnership would work. Google would provide the specs, and the partner would do the manufacturing.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Accidents

The Motley Fool has published a list of important numbers for self-driving cars.

Many of these numbers are familiar for industry followers. Google has 53 self-driving cars, that travel at 25 mph, etc.

However, two number stand out.

6 states currently permit autonomous vehicles. However, several more states, like Virginia and Texas, state that autonomous vehicles are allowed by default. Perhaps I am biased as a Virginian, but I suspect development may shift to those states with the fewest restrictions.

The other number that stands out is actually an inequality. “61,883 < 730,000”. Actually, 61,883 <<< 730,000.

The Motley Fool does a good job putting those numbers in context. In the last six months, Google vehicles have been involved in one fender-bender per 61,883 miles. The national average, however, is 730,000. Which indicates that human-driven cars are much less likely to be involved in accidents than Google cars.

There are a few considerations, to be sure. For one, Google cars have never been “at fault” in these accidents. It’s always been the driver of the other car who has been at fault.

Also, Google has to report all of its accidents, whereas many human drivers cause minor accidents and never report them.

Nonetheless, the huge disparity in these numbers indicates that Google cars may need to get less accident-prone before they are released to the general public.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Transit Planning

The Virginian-Pilot reports an interesting story about the difficulty of conducting transit planning at the dawn of the autonomous vehicle age.

There are no huge revelations, but it’s an insightful case study of yet another subset of jobs that self-driving cars will change, although maybe not “disrupt”.

“We do have some plans that we’d like to do in the next few years,” she said. “I think the topic has brought us more questions than answers.”

Questions like:

  • When will the technology fully be adopted and what impact will it have on traffic flow? How will automated cars and regular drivers interact?
  • If cars are able to move closer to one another without drivers, how much more capacity will an existing road be able to have? HRTPO says a current interstate lane can handle nearly 2,300 cars an hour. Self-driving technology means maybe 20 or 30 percent more could occupy that same stretch of highway.
  • Would the technology make future projects currently being planned become obsolete? If so, how does that change funding and project priorities?
  • How will drivers’ safety be affected?
  • How does the law adapt to impaired individuals in an automated vehicle? How do cities make up for speeding or parking ticket revenue if they become a thing of the past?
  • What happens to land use, especially parking, if the cars can store themselves in less-dense areas? Will people move farther away from work if they don’t have to pay attention during a commute?
  • What will it mean for long-term deals like the 58-year tolling agreement between the state and Elizabeth River Crossing to run the Midtown and Downtown Tunnels? A spokesperson said the contract doesn’t mention any stipulations for what would happen if self-driving cars change transportation, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be amended in the future.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Toyota’s Plan for Mapping the World

Toyota is taking a page out of the Waze playbook.

Using “designated user vehicles”, USA Today reports that Toyota will send camera and geolocation data from customers cars back to Toyota’s servers, allowing Toyota to map the world.

This is an interesting strategy, and suggests a reason that cars will go from being a relatively fragmented industry, to a relatively consolidated, network-effects-driven industry.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Consumer Electronics Show

According to media accounts, the vaunted Consumer Electronics Show is turning into an auto show.

Ten percent of CES floorspace will be taken up by the automotive industry.

Notably, however, Google and Tesla — currently the two most visible companies in the autonomous driving space — will not be in attendance.

Faraday Future, however, will be front and center. Tomorrow night the new hot tech-auto startup backed by Chinese billionaire Jia Yeuting will unveil a prototype car.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Buy Your Own Autonomous Vehicle

autoevolution reports that an autonomous vehicle is for sale to the general public. For only $15,000, no less.

In fact, you can purchase the car yourself here, on eBay.

A few salient facts:

  • The current bid is $15,000
  • The auction ends in 21 hours
  • The car was entered in the 2005 and 2007 DARPA Grand Challenges
  • The car was designed by Austin Robotic Technology, in cooperation with UT Austin
  • The car does not include either the lasers or the navigational unit, so the autonomous driving doesn’t work as-is
  • The car is an Isuzu VehiCROSS, which has Kelly Bluebook value of ~$7000

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

BMW and Samsung

Although the Ford-Google partnership is getting a lot of attention, a different, similar partnership is also in the works.

Business Korea reports that BMW, Samsung, and Nuance Communications are partnering to develop “the brains” of future autonomous vehicles.

The initial report is light on the details, although it does note that, “Samsung Venture Investment Corp. made investments worth billions of won in the U.S.-based connected car startup Vinli.”

To be clear, Vinli currently seems to be an Indiegogo project to create a “smart car”.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.

Autonomous Vehicles Players

Fox News 14, in Joplin, Missouri, of all places, runs with a pretty good rundown of the top suppliers for autonomous vehicles.

The article appears to be essentially a re-print of a press release by an industry research group called Vision Systems Intelligence, but it’s a pretty good press release.

Controls

Elektrobit and Vector Informatik

Processing

Renesas, NXP, NVIDIA and TI

LIDAR

Quanergy, Phantom Intelligence, TriLumina, and LeddarTech

Image Sensors

Toshiba, Sony, ON Semiconductor, and Melexis

Safety

QNX

Simulation

Mathworks, National Instruments, dSPACE, and Realtime Technologies

There is a lot more in the article.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on December 24, 2015.