What We’re Reading

• Here’s Where American States Stand On Laws Around Autonomous Cars (HotCars, January 21, 2023)

  Which US states have enacted laws governing the autonomous operation of vehicles on public roads? According to this survey, the answer is “most states”—specifically, as of January 2023, thirty-four states have some type of legislation related to AVs. But certain caveats apply:

  • Laws in Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana limit the deployment of autonomous technology to commercial purposes.

  • Laws in twelve states, including Connecticut, New York, and Ohio, only allow for the testing of AVs.

  • Michigan allows “testing of any automated vehicle, while it allows for deployment only in the case of ‘on-demand automated motor vehicle networks,’ where most states will allow only one or the other.”

  • Other variances include whether the AV needs to have a licensed backup driver and whether and to what extent the car needs to be insured. [E.g., as we noted a few weeks ago, Washington recently enacted laws requiring companies testing self-driving tech to carry insurance with a minimum of $5M in liability.]

  • State laws also may treat AVs differently depending on a given vehicle’s SAE level of automation. For example, in states “such as Florida, Georgia, or North Dakota, Levels 4 and 5 are considered fully autonomous and don’t require a licensed human driver.”

  For a more global view, you can click through Forbes’s interactive “AutonoMap” to see “the growing number of places where mostly autonomous vehicles are out on roads and sidewalks carrying members of the public or cargo for them with no safety driver or other employee in the vehicle.”

• Tesla needs to start acting more like Toyota and GM if it really wants to win the electric car race (Business Insider, January 21, 2023)

  For more than a decade, Tesla has dominated the EV market with disruptive innovation and a novel direct-to-consumer model. Tesla’s vertically integrated business model, which allows it to control almost every aspect of the production cycle from design to sales, has enabled Tesla to become the industry leader in the EV market by a large margin. With a simple, high-end, four vehicle line-up (the Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X cost between $44,000 and $120,000), Tesla shipped 1.3 million units globally last year. Domestically, approximately 65% of all EVs sold in 2022 were manufactured by Tesla. According to Elon Musk, Tesla anticipates selling 20 million cars in 2030, which is more than the current output of Toyota and Volkswagen combined. 

  Despite its success, however, many industry experts say that Tesla will need to expand its limited lineup to maintain its status as the EV leader in the auto industry. Specifically, industry watchers maintain that Tesla’s market dominance may soon end if it does not offer more affordable, mass-market options similar to legacy automakers like Toyota and GM, who have a full spectrum of vehicles that go from entry level models at $20,000 to luxury models well in excess of $100,000.

  According to Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, “it will take a few more years before the buyers of EVs expand enough that they need a range of products, and Tesla needs to be there when the market is ready. ... Tesla can't be a top player or reach its lofty goals with just a few models.”

  Although Tesla has hinted at plans for manufacturing a $25,000 compact car or hatchback, it’s currently unclear when these cheaper, smaller vehicles will actually be available in the US. 

• Tesla staged Autopilot demo video, says director of software (The Verge, January 19, 2023)

  In 2016, Elon Musk tweeted a “much-hyped” video entitled “Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas” that appeared to show a Tesla vehicle “driving by itself” using Autopilot technology. But Tesla’s director of Autopilot software, Ashok Elluswamy, recently testified under oath that the video was, essentially, merely aspirational (sound familiar?) and not an accurate reflection of current technology. He also testified that Elon Musk knew about and approved the video, saying it was “fine to hardcode it.”

  According to Elluswamy’s testimony, the Tesla in the video was actually driving a predetermined, mapped route; “[i]n other words, Tesla’s Autopilot was not capable of dynamic route planning, instead requiring the company’s engineers to map out the route it would take for the purposes of the promotional video.”

  The deposition of Elluswamy was taken in a lawsuit filed by the Estate of Walter Huang, who died in 2018 when his Model X drove into a highway barrier. The full transcript is available at the end of the article.