Dice.com has a couple of articles up about the huge demand for self-driving car engineers. And my cricket buddy from Ford, Jinesh Jain, is featured!
So I thought Iād share some of Jineshās quotes.
āItās helpful to know C++ or to have experience with human-machine interaction. But being adaptable and a quick learner is more important since companies that design and build robotic cars may be using a different mix of technologies or applying them in different ways.ā
And I like to think that this quote is specifically directed at meĀ š
āSuccessful candidates bring a fresh set of eyes and new ideas. The auto industry is on the cusp of a great transition so, weāre looking for people who can drive innovation.ā
Jinesh is great. You should work on self-driving cars so you can meet him!
Mobileye announced that it will move from focusing on driver assistance components to a focus on fully autonomous vehicle components. However, Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua declined to state who broke up with who.
This is a huge surprise to me, although in hindsight there were some signs.
Immediately after the announcement of the first Tesla Autopilot fatality, Mobileye and Tesla issued conflicting statements about whether Tesla could have used Mobileyeās technology to prevent the crash. Mobileye said its products were not yet designed to handle that type of situation, whereas Tesla indicated the sensor data could be used to avoid future such accidents.
That was a surprising amount of daylight between two normally tight partners.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk also tweeted some positive statements about progress being made with Bosch, which is Teslaās radar vendor. The absence of any such statements with Mobileye was conspicuous.
Finally, there have been on-again-off-again rumors about whether Tesla was looking for a different computer vision vendor for years.
Writing all that down, Iām thinking maybe this wasnāt such a shock after all.
A small team of us from the Udacity self-driving car team will be at the Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence panel tonight, which focuses on Self-Driving Cars.
Please come out to meet us!
Sorry, I should have posted this information much earlier. The event opens in five minutes and the panel starts in an hour, so unless you happen to live right next to the NVIDIA campus (the host site), it might be impractical to attend.
NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind recently announced that automakers ācanāt wait for perfectā in the release of self-driving technology, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Rosekind declined to address the May fatality involving Autopilot because NHTSA is investigating the incident. The agencyās main objective, he said, is to reduce traffic fatalities, which rose to 35,000 in 2015, an increase of 8% compared with 2014.
āWe should be desperate for anything we can find to save peopleās lives,ā Mr. Rosekind said.
That strikes me as just right.
Unrelated FunĀ Fact
The building in the cover photo here is my old office when I worked for Ford, and the driver in the photo is my old boss Tory Smith.
Today The New York Times banged on one of my favorite drumsāāāthe need for test tracks for autonomous vehicles testing.
Some Michigan lawmakers are pushing for a centralized national test track for autonomous vehicles.
āWe know we need a national testing and validation site,ā Senator [Gary] Peters said at an automotive digital security conference here. āWe need one in place where all the auto companies can come together.ā
Despite my love for test tracks, I am not crazy about a centralized test track run or funded by the US government. But maybe we take what we can get.
The Times lists several of the leading contenders:
GoMentum Station near Silicon Valley, in California
MCity in Ann Arbor
A site near Blacksburg, Virginia, run by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
Willow Run, the new General Motors test site in Michigan
There is also Castle Rock (Google) and Pittsburgh (Uber), although those donāt merit a mention in the article.
One of the first questions we got was, āAre there enough jobs to make this worthwhile? Itās just Google and Tesla, right?ā
There are so many jobs!
Transportation-as-a-Service
Uber is building out their own autonomous vehicle division in Pittsburgh.
GM just announced that Lyft will be running GMās first production run of self-driving cars.
Tech Companies
Google is the most famous tech company working on self-driving cars, but Baidu is working on this as well. Lots of rumors indicate Apple might be working on this.
OEMs
Every OEM has a team, or multiple teams, dedicated to self-driving cars. Tesla, Ford, GM, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru, Kia, Volvo, and the list goes on.
Startups
Startups like Otto, Comma.ai, and Zoox are hiring as fast as they can.
Tier 1 Suppliers
Companies like Delphi, Bosch, and Continental are known as Tier 1 suppliers. They sell automotive-grade hardware in bulk to OEMs, and they badly want to win these contracts.
Tier 2 Suppliers
Tier 2 suppliers span a range of specialties, and typically sell their components to Tier 1 suppliers, who in turn package it up for OEMs.
This is a huge category!
In computer vision there is Mobileye, in mapping there is HERE, in processors there is NVIDIA and Intel, in lidar there is Velodyne. So many suppliers!
This is just a sample list of who is hiring. There are a lot more companies, and right now demand for talent is far outstripping supply. It is a great time to go to work on self-driving cars!
Elon Musk dropped a pretty big blog post on the world yesterday.
I donāt think I could do any better than pull out two quotes, and encourage you to read the whole thing.
The first master plan that I wrote 10 years ago is now in the final stages of completion. It wasnāt all that complicated and basically consisted of:
Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive
Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price
Use that money to create an affordable, high volume car
Andā¦
Provide solar power. No kidding, this has literally been on our website for 10 years.
And:
So, in short, Master Plan, Part Deux is:
Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning Enable your car to make money for you when you arenāt using it
We are building a Self-Driving Car Nanodegree at Udacity!
Please sign up here if you are interested in learning more. Limited enrollment will begin later this summer.
The Self-Driving Car Nanodegree involves courses and projects that will give you hands-on experience with deep learning, robotics, computer vision, sensors, and hardware. It will be a blast.
One of the best parts is that Sebastian Thrun will be leading the nanodegree with me!
Sebastian is the co-founder of Udacity, and also a rockstar in the world of autonomous vehicles. Before Udacity, Sebastian launched Googleās Self-Driving Car program. And even before that, he won the DARPA Grand Challenge self-driving car race as a Stanford professor.
I have had so much fun learning about self-driving cars with Sebastian, and Iām confident you will, too.
My own career in self-driving cars started with Udacityās Artificial Intelligence for Robotics course, and I followed that with an arduous combination of online courses and projects and networking.
Our goal with the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree is to create a program that is fun and comprehensive and not at all arduous.
Most of all, we want to help you learn the skills and techniques from the most advanced autonomous vehicle companies in the world!
So, please, sign up here to learn more, and join us as part of the first class of self-driving car engineers at Udacity!
Germany is considering requiring automotive manufacturers to include the equivalent of airplane black boxes in new automobiles.
Manufacturers will also be required to install a black box that records when the autopilot system was active, when the driver drove and when the system requested that the driver take over, according to the proposals.
This seems like it could help a lot, and increase accountability and trust in automotive manufacturers. There are privacy considerations, and hopefully this can be done in a way to mitigate those issues.
Iād love to see the industry voluntarily adopt a standard and opt-in, but if it has to be done by law, this seems like one of the higher-value regulations Iāve seen.
Despite my best intentions, I spent almost all of today car shopping.
My wife and I have only one car, a single 2004 Toyota Camry. Itās great, but for years we have been talking about getting a second car, even doing test drives, and never buying anything.
With a seven week-old baby, plus two dogs, however, I think weāre finally going to have to get another car.
So I looked at a lot of different cars today, particularly small crossover SUVs, and with a special focus on driver assistance technology.
In lieu of big writeups, here are a few sentences on each.
Subaru Outback: Thereās a lot to love about this car. They offer a terrific Eyesight ADAS package on almost all trim levels. Eyesight includes adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, automatic headlamp adjustment, rear cross-traffic alert, and blind-spot alert. Plus Subarus hold their value incredibly well, although they are a little pricier than comparable vehicles.
Toyota RAV4: Super-smooth ride. Great car at a great price. No ADAS features at any trim level, though.
Mazda CX-5: Terrific car. It felt similar to the Outback, if maybe a little smaller. Mazdaās i-ACTIVESENSE ADAS package is comparable to the Outbackās Eyesight. However, Mazda only offers ADAS on their highest-end, Touring trim level.
Fiat 500e: Changing gears entirely, I checked out Fiatās cute and awesome 500e all-electric model. It feel about the size of a Mini or a Volkswagen Beetle, which could be awesome for a pure commuting car. Plus the all-electric drivetrain makes it eligible for California HOV stickers. No ADAS features except a backup camera, though.
Honda CR-V: Back to crossovers. The CR-V is an awesome and economical car. And Honda has introduced a suite of ADAS technologies called Honda Sensing. Basically, this includes adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning. Honda Sense is only available on the top trim level, though.
Ford Fusion Energi: Back to small electric vehicles. This is a small car, but bigger than the Fiat 500e, that is all electric and 70 miles to the charge. No ADAS features, but it does come with the all-important HOV stickers.
Ford C-MAX: A little larger than the Fusion, the C-Max is electric with a gas tank, which gives it a range that the Fusion Energi doesnāt have. The HOV stickers are hit-or-miss, depending on whether the dealer applied for stickers before the DMV ran out for electric+gas drivetrains.
I still need to pick a car, thoughĀ š
Plus I havenāt yet tried out the German models. I worry they might be out of my price range, but I hope to test out the crossover models for BMW, Mercedes, and Audi this week.
David Silver 