What We’re Reading
August 10, 2022
Forget those Tesla crashes: GM says you can trust its autonomous vehicles (The Verge, August 4, 2022)
General Motors has competitive aspirations for both its EV and AV offerings. On the latter, “GM feels like it has an edge. It’s hands-free advanced driver-assist system, Super Cruise, will double its coverage area to 400,000 miles of highways and routes later this year. Next year, the automaker will unveil the next iteration, Ultra Cruise, which GM has said will cover ‘95 percent’ of driving tasks. And its robotaxi division, Cruise, is currently picking up and dropping off passengers in San Francisco as part of the city’s first real commercial autonomous ridehail service.”
In the meantime, GM has launched some educational initiatives to combat actual and potential negative public perception about the safety of advanced vehicle technology. As part of this initiative, GM hopes to address confusion around what is and is not an “autonomous” system—consistent with recent industry recommendations to standardize terminology and the California DMV’s administrative actions against Tesla for alleged marketing misrepresentations.
GM’s president, Mark Reuss, also took to LinkedIn to address AV safety, with an article entitled “Why a safe approach to self-driving deployment is critical to success.” The article is particularly interesting for Reuss’s discussion of the “key areas” GM views as necessary for the safe deployment of AVs, including a “sensor fusion” of cameras, radars, GPS, and LiDAR mapping to create “a “sensory field around the vehicle that assists in keeping it centered in the lane while elevating the driver’s comfort and convenience.” Read the full post here.
U.S. House lawmakers look to jump-start self-driving legislative push (Reuters, August 8, 2022)
Representatives Robert Latta (R-OH) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) have announced plans for a bipartisan Congressional Autonomous Vehicle Caucus “to help educate fellow lawmakers on the importance of self-driving vehicles as they work to revive legislation.” Latta and Dingell hope to introduce legislation to address outdated motor vehicle safety standards and encourage U.S. manufacturing in support of autonomous vehicle development. Read more from Representative Latta’s press release on the Caucus here.
Countering the ‘Phantom Braking’ Phenomenon (WardsAuto, July 18, 2022)
NHTSA opened an investigation into “unexpected brake activation”—otherwise known as phantom braking—earlier this year after receiving over 350 reports of such events in Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
This article, which notes that phantom braking also has been reported in EasyMile shuttles and Nissan Rogue CUVs, provides a technical explanation for the phenomenon.
“Phantom braking is a result of a sensing failure.” Cameras can fail in weather conditions, or because of misperceived objects in the field of vision. While radars are better than cameras, they have a “high level of false alarms.” According to the author, however, 4D imaging radar is the most promising technology to solve for phantom braking. “It is one of the only radars on the market today that can detect objects accurately with almost no instances of false alarms, eliminating the issue of phantom braking and enhancing safety for the driver and others on the road.” Read the full article for more about this type of imaging radar and its benefits.