What We’re Reading

• Future of $900B US trucking industry could be decided in California (The Trucker, March 23, 2023)

  As tensions continue between trucking labor unions and AV tech companies, who have very divergent views on how autonomy will transform the trucking industry, the California Legislature is again being asked to take sides.

  Earlier this year, members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters vocally backed new legislation proposed by Democratic Assembly member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry. The legislation would require all self-driving trucks to have a human safety operator on board at all times. Proponents view the legislation as a backdoor way of protecting trucking jobs, which they believe will be cannibalized by the new technology. The labor unions’ latest move, as reported here, is to proactively seek to deter the California Department of Motor Vehicles from adopting new rules that would allow self-driving semi-trucks weighing as much as 80,000 pounds on California roadways.  Currently, vehicles of this type are limited to 10,000 pounds.

  Although the rule making process generally takes years and is handled primarily by officials in the Governor’s office, labor unions are attempting to preempt the process entirely through intervention by the Legislature, where they wield considerably more influence through large campaign contributions.

  Teamsters regional Vice President Lindsay Dougherty is quoted as pointing out that California’s more than 500,000 commercial truck drivers wield substantial power in shaping national transportation policy due to their sheer numbers. “So goes California, so goes the rest of the nation,” she said. “If we lose this, we’re never getting them back.”

  On the other side of the argument, the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, an industry trade group that supports self-driving technology, has continued to brand autonomous trucking as a safer form of transportation that will save lives, while simultaneously filling gaps in the labor market by servicing routes that human drivers do not want. 

  It is apparent that this battle is far from over and will continue to be fought on every front possible (indeed, the Teamsters just announced opposition to a Tennessee AV bill), with the prize being a share of the nation’s nearly $900 billion trucking industry. 

• Apple’s Californian Autonomous Car Program Is Larger Than Both Tesla’s And Mercedes’ Efforts (CarScoops, March 27, 2023)

  Apple’s “iCar” plans have been kept largely under wraps in the past year, despite whispered rumors about collaborations with Kia, Toyota, and Porsche. But CarScoops now reports that “Apple is continuing ahead with its plans to bring a car to market. And, in a move that would surely see the company tackle Tesla head-on, it would appear that Apple is throwing its weight behind self-driving tech.”

  California DMV records show that Apple currently employees over 200 autonomous drivers to road test a fleet of 67 cars. These figures place Apple ahead of both Tesla (with 59 drivers and 14 cars) and Mercedes (with 179 drivers and 55 cars), although behind robotaxi frontrunners Waymo, Cruise, and Zoox. The records also show that Apple cars have seen their share of incidents—again, oddly kept under wraps—with sixteen reported crashes.

  While speculative, reports suggest that Apple is targeting an “iCar” release in 2026 at a price tag of around $100,000.

• Waymo is taking on the task of writing a safety case for the entire AV industry (The Verge, March 22, 2023)

  Consistent with its reputation of transparency, last week Waymo published a paper entitled “Building a Credible Case for Safety: Waymo’s Approach for the Determination of Absence of Unreasonable Risk,” in which it proposes a “safety case for autonomous vehicles that ... should serve as a blueprint for the entire industry.” The goal of the paper is to bring consistency to determining when an AV system can be deployed safely, for the benefit of the industry, regulators, and public perception. This is particularly important as recent surveys show that public trust in AVs is actually waning, while proponents have “scant data that proves that fully automated vehicles are safer than human drivers.”

  Waymo historically has been public about its safety statistics and safety measures, releasing data about its public road testing (including crash events), publishing simulation results, and releasing peer-reviewed, scientific studies comparing AV and human driving. “By publishing a blueprint for a safety case, the company is making its most explicit effort yet at influencing the public debate over autonomous vehicles. In addition to the paper, the company also submitted comments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in which it urged the agency not to adopt a ‘prescriptive’ approach to regulations.”

  That said, even with this new publication, Waymo has not made its actual safety case available publicly, as that is proprietary. Nor is Waymo the first to propose a framework, with AV trucking company Aurora having done so two years ago.

  To read Waymo’s complete paper, click here.