What We’re Reading

• Godfather of Self-Driving Cars Says the Tech Is Going Nowhere (Futurism, October 9, 2022)

  While industry proponents continue to project unbridled optimism for AV technology, Anthony Levandowski, widely considered to be the “OG” of commercial autonomous vehicles, recently pumped the metaphorical brakes on the future of self-driving vehicles. According to Levandowski, who co-founded Google’s self-driving division now known as Waymo, "[y]ou’d be hard-pressed to find another industry that’s invested so many dollars in R&D and that has delivered so little." Levandowski insists that, despite investments of over $100 billion, the self-driving commercial industry “still amounts to little more than a bunch of glorified tech demos.” 

  Levandowski joins a growing faction of industry insiders who question the future of self-driving technology, which they believe may be decades or longer away from sufficiently safe commercial deployment despite staggering sums of capital investment. In an interview with Bloomberg, Levandowski asked, “why are we driving around, testing technology and creating additional risks, without actually delivering anything of value?” Similarly, George Hotz, founder of the open source assisted driving company Comma.ai, told Bloomberg, “[i]t’s a scam. . . . These companies have squandered billions of dollars.”

• Lyft exec was wrong about driverless vehicles – but he still believes in their potential (CNBC, October 11, 2022)

  Lyft co-founder John Zimmer recently acknowledged that his prediction that self-driving vehicles would largely supplant traditional driver operated vehicles by 2021 was overly optimistic and missed the mark. But contrary to naysayers like Levandowski and Hotz (see article above), Zimmer still believes his company can help bring about revolutionary change to transportation—just on a different timeline than he first envisioned. “Creating a car that sees better than humans and reacts better than humans is very difficult. And so it’s just taking more time, but I don’t have doubts that it will happen,” Zimmer said.

  Lyft will continue to use AVs in tandem with traditional drivers for the foreseeable future, which is why Zimmer is convinced the company is poised to grow in both areas. “I’m extremely confident that autonomous vehicles will roll out on existing ride-share or transportation networks,” he said. “I think we will be quite important to the AV transition.”

  The article also highlights Lyft’s strategic use of partnerships to deploy more self-driving vehicles, which can help offset the growing cost of vehicle ownership as well as shifting or spreading liability risks in the event of an accident. With nearly 20 million active users and billions of dollars invested in fleet management, pricing algorithms, and other back-end services, Lyft appears well-positioned to leverage its expertise in these areas. 

• Consumer comfort with automated vehicles may be overstated – J.D. Power (CBT News, October 5, 2022)

  Just as industry experts question the future of autonomy, the J.D. Power 2022 US Mobility Confidence Index (MCI) study found that consumer readiness for automated vehicles remains low, continuing a downward trend since 2021. “I am not ready to trust my life to a fully automated vehicle. I need time to trust the system’s capabilities,” said one respondent.

  The study also found that 56% of respondents confused FSD capabilities with the driver-assist technologies available today, lending support to the notion that autonowashing continues to be a major impediment to the reliable and safe implementation of autonomous technology. “These results provide further evidence that many consumers lack a clear understanding of the current status of automated and assisted driving technologies,” said Bryan Reimer, Ph.D., a research scientist in the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics AgeLab and a founder of MIT’s AVT consortium.

• Despite warnings, many people treat partially automated vehicles as self-driving (IIHS-HLDI, October 11, 2022)

  A new IIHS-HLDI study provides more evidence of driver confusion with its findings that “drivers who use partial automation on a regular basis often treat their vehicles as fully self-driving despite widespread warnings and numerous high-profile crash reports.” The study examined the incidence of behaviors such as eating or texting while driving among Cadillac (Super Cruise), Nissan (ProPILOT), and Tesla users, along with driver perceptions of the technology. As summarized by IIHS researcher Alexandra Mueller, “[t]hese results from frequent users of three different partial automation systems once again drive home the need for robust, multifaceted safeguards.”