Headlines for the Week of June 11th, 2018

Daimler Defeat Devices Doom Diesels

In Germany this week, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer made like a middle school principal and called Daimler CEO Dieter Zietsche to his office. On Monday, he asked a sheepish Zietsche if he know how exactly five cheating devices were found in new Mercedes diesel engines. Of course Dieter claimed he had no knowledge of such a thing and that it was his classmate Martin Winterkorn over at Volkswagen who was the cheater! Well, said Principal Scheuer, he didn’t believe that, but he did believe that Daimler had put defeat devices in as many as one million recent Mercedes cars to try to skirt the Euro 6 emissions standards and that, to make things right, Dieter would have to do the equivalent of resubmitting his homework. Which in automotive terms is recalling 774,000 of their latest model diesels. All joking aside, these cars were probably designed after Volkswagen’s dieselgate scandal came to light, so just how was it Daimler thought they were going to get away with this? And how far does this dieselgate rabbit hole go? The more they cheat, the more it seems like diesel cannot be made clean and really has no future.

Tesla Drops Employees, Props Autopilot

Just one week, I’d love to go through Feedly, which is an RSS reader I use to aggregate my news and think, “oh wow, not a single notable thing about Tesla this week, I guess their 5,000 vehicle production rate is humming along smoothly.” Sadly, that was not this week and they remain the brand mentioned more than any other on my and most websites.

First, some lawsuits; one from an employee who alleges he was fired after he expressed concerns about workplace safety, and another who claims he was ousted after expressing interest in joining a union. Both are crimes, both will probably be settled to nobody’s satisfaction, and both have been denied by the company. Why cover this? Because such rumors have been floating around for a long time and the more we hear about them, the more it seems Tesla has a toxic culture of secrecy, cover-ups and anti-union sentiment, which is a problem when it comes to protecting workers’ rights and well being. Also because no other company is having this sort of problem, at least not visibly.

Then came the news that Tesla is laying off nine percent of their workforce in an effort to streamline efficiency and gain better profitability, which is to say “any profitability at all.” It sounds like the cuts will come primarily from salaried positions because they need all hands on deck for the production of their vehicles. Despite planning factories in Shanghai and Europe, Musk still claims he won’t have to raise any new capital and that the company will be profitable by the third or fourth quarter of this year, so this culling is probably critical to getting there or close.

Finally, hot on the heels of a report from the Association of British Insurers and Thatcham Research indicated that calling vehicles “autonomous” led to dangerous grey areas and driver over-reliance on technology, Tesla announced that they will begin rolling out full self-driving features this August. Details are scarce (as they are on the fact that the next Roadster will apparently have rocket thrusters), but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that people are too dumb for this technology. If you hear the word “autonomous” and you immediately stop listening to anything else and immediately start thinking that cars are going to do everything for you, you should not be allowed as a passenger in a car, let alone driving. Seriously, hop on a train.

Toyota Drops Cool Bill on Grab

Any time a car maker spends a billion dollars, it’s going to get some attention, and that’s just what Toyota did this week when it took a stake in Singapore’s Grab Holdings, which is Southeast Asia’s largest car hailing service, a company that drove Uber out of their home markets. That Toyota had to spend so much to buy in indicates not only the growing value of ride sharing, but the view among car companies that they think that traditional vehicle ownership is going to be majorly disrupted by car sharing and autonomous ride hailing services. Toyota’s big cash drop means they’ll get a seat on Grab’s board of directors, which analysts say almost guarantees that Grab will start buying Toyota cars for its service. As they say, you gotta spend money to make money, and with $54 billion in cash laying around, I’d say Toyota has some they can spend! Toyota has increased partnerships and investments in a bunch of automotive disruption companies that focus on ride hailing, ride sharing, electric vehicles and autonomous cars, so they are hedging their bets that one or more of those is going to take off and they’ll be well-positioned to take advantage. Once more, Ford should be taking note of how Toyota does business before they have to kill off their entire passenger car production because they didn’t plan well enough.

Autonomous Vehicles will be SO GREAT

Even though autonomous cars aren’t very good right now, they won’t always be glorified assisted driving systems. According to a report by Security America’s Future Energy, autonomous vehicles will be so great for everyone and will lead to an incredible $796 billion in total annual benefits by 2050. This comes from congestion mitigation and economic impact as well as the totally super easy to quantify “quality of life improvements.” It also means cost cutting for taxis and truckers since those hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs will be taken over by robots, and it’s like you always hear those people who lose their jobs to robots say, “but my quality of life is so much better now that I’m unemployed.” This report is full of bogus or at the very least dubious data and projections, including safety because, as we’ve been learning lately, safety isn’t exactly guaranteed by autonomous vehicles. Maybe by 2050 they’ll have it all figured out. That’s only 32 years or so from now.

Food in Fords Making Moves in Miami

Speaking of autonomous vehicles, when Ford isn’t buying old train stations in Detroit to slap their logo on, they’re building customized Ford Transit Connects to act as Postmates food delivery vehicles in Miami. The small vans will be equipped with curbside lockers to hold food, which will be placed in the car by the restaurant after a customer places an order through the app. The food will then be taken to the customer who will receive a locker number and code to unlock the locker. Car arrives, customer gets food, and we all move on with our lives without having to make polite small talk with the delivery person while you try to decide how generous you will be with the tip. In the wake of vacating sedan and small car sales, Ford may be jumping in with both feet on this “autonomous mobility” movement sector and this pilot project could help inform systems and layout for an entirely food delivery-focused vehicle sometime in the future. I look forward to the Domino’s Transit that will cook my pizza while it’s on the way to my house. I don’t mind having to cut it because it’s not like the people at the store actually do it worth a damn anyway.

China Proves U.S. IS Not so Bad

Starting on July 1st of this year, China will be rolling out a voluntary system by which all new cars will have RFID chips placed on the windshield of vehicles, thereby allowing the Chinese government to use its dense network of surveillance technology to track you wherever you go. If you’re thinking, “well at least it’s voluntary,” starting in 2019, it won’t be anymore, and all of those 30 million or so new cars sold in the world’s largest car market every year will be equipped with these chips. China already has a number of surveillance systems, including incredible facial recognition technology, in place that use artificial intelligence to track criminals and shame people with high debts or for petty shit like jaywalking, so this is just another way of maintaining social control, and probably another way in which China can expand its incredibly creepy social rating system. While it sounds like this is yet another step on China’s journey into a dystopian nightmare, bear in mind that we all carry around cell phones equipped with RFIDs, so this could already be happening in the U.S. without your knowledge.

Dieselgate Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Despite beginning in 2015, here we are three years later and Volkswagen is still dealing with the consequences of their diesel cheating scandal or “dieselgate.” They set aside 28.5 billion Euro to cover the sprawling fines and lawsuits stemming from their inability to make clean diesels that won’t kill us with excess carbon pollution, but just this week they were hit with another one billion euro fine from the German government for the same scandal. The Germans’ investigation was apparently much more exhaustive than the one we had here in the U.S. because it took way longer, but also resulted in lower fines. Add to this the fact that former owners of cheating diesel cars in Vermont and Arizona will receive $1,000 for the hassle of having to turn their cars back in and this thing only gets more expensive for Volkswagen.  In any case, they have to be getting close to putting this whole thing behind them. Just too bad the millions of people in Europe who will likely die early from inhaling those diesel fumes won’t be able to. SAD!

Fishy Filings Could Trouble Toyota

For the last…ever, people and politicians have been saying “where are the jobs?” and this year, Toyota and Mazda came through, committing to spend $1.6 billion on a new plant in Alabama, where everyone was super happy to greet them. Well, almost everyone, because the Center for Biological Diversity has been saying for years, “what about the fish?” Specifically, the Spring Pygmy Sunfish, which is a rare species and could theoretically be driven to extinction by the construction of the factory and the various infrastructure and activities around it. In a lawsuit filed this week, the Center alleges there hasn’t been enough legal protection for the fish’s only known habitat near the factory location, and they’re hoping to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to make some special efforts to protect the important characteristics of the apparently critical habitat. All this for a small striped fish that rarely exceeds an inch in length and has already been presumed extinct twice before someone found one living somewhere. But being the relative conservationist that I am, it strikes me that it can’t be that hard to accommodate some small fish, plus what if there’s like a butterfly effect where if this fish dies, Elon Musk never colonizes mars? Talk about a disaster.

Fuel Economy Matters, but Does it Really?

A new study released this week by Consumers Union and sent to me by AllWaysDrive Blog minion Jordan revealed that, among 19 popular vehicle features, almost 1,900 drivers chose purchase cost, reliability, safety and fuel economy as their top four most important, in that order. The researchers also asked study participants which vehicle they would prefer and participants generally chose options that cost 25% more but increased reliability, safety, and fuel economy. Less important were acceleration and performance, which surely indicates that this study polled the wrong people. Setting aside the fact that the study’s sample size was relatively small compared with the total car buying public, this isn’t really reflective of reality, with the average cost of cars climbing and the average fuel economy of new cars sold actually decreasing since mid-2014 with the booming sales of SUVs and crossovers. So there’s obviously a disconnect between what consumers say they want in an ideal car and what they actually end up buying. Go figure that people can’t be trusted to tell the truth!

Cars Drivers Drive the Least

If you’ve looked on the app Autolist for a car, which I highly recommend you do, you’ve probably seen a bunch of “online only” results from a company called Carvana, which will deliver vehicles to your door in a sort of backwards dealership kind of situation. Well, they also come up with lists, apparently, and after analyzing more than 1.6 million automotive sales from January through May of this year, they’ve come up with a list of vehicles they say get driven the least each year. In the top 15, you get your regular list of high class Mercedes and BMWs that are someone’s “treat yoself” vehicle when they’re not driving their ’94 Ford Ranger back and forth to work, and the same go with the Sunday cars like the Maserati Ghibli, Lexus RC, M4 and sure, even the Volkswagen Beetle. Also on the list are the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3, which people don’t drive because of range anxiety and the Smart ForTwo which people don’t drive because it’s crap. But there are cars on the list like the Mini Cooper, VW Golf Sportwagen and Buick Encore, which are just sort of normal cars. Why are you not driving your Buick Encores, people? Is it because you’re tired of people asking “oh, that’s a Buick?” But leading the list are the Porsche 911 and Chevy Corvette, which are driven just 4,700 and 4,500 miles per year on average, which is just a crying shame because they are both some of the best cars to drive. You stupid collectors are ruining everything!

Fifth Gear Returns this Fall

After the bummer news last week that Matt LeBlanc was leaving Top Gear after his third season, we got a boost this week with the news that competing show Fifth Gear would be returning this fall, with old hosts and top blokes Tiff Needell and Jason Plato once again hosting after a three year hiatus. Fifth Gear never had the budget of Top Gear, didn’t do the crazy stunts and always focused less on the antics of three weird oldies instead of the cars themselves, which was always attractive to the real car nerds out there, even if it was a bit tougher to get the significant others interested. As I mentioned when the old Top Gear crew left for the Grand Tour, more car shows will never be a bad thing and, even if Vicki Butler-Henderson doesn’t return, I’m going to try to find a way to tune in here in the States, and so should you.

Ford Files Patent for Existing Thing

When they’re not buying train stations, delivering Miami’s to-go-orders or killing off popular vehicle models, Ford is busy filing patent applications for silly things that have existed for decades. Recently, the company applied for a patent for a screen that drops from a car’s tailgate to provide a privacy curtain. One could imagine this being especially handy at the beach for changing out of a swimsuit before hopping back into the car or for doing your business while out in the woods or when overcome with a sudden case of bowel evacuation syndrome because you ate curry for lunch and you knew it was risky but decided dammit, Darryl, just go for it. In any case, these screens have been around for years and you can buy them on Amazon if you’re the type of person who chooses not to think about if someone could just look through the windshield and see you despite the privacy curtain. The difference here is that they will apparently be built into the tailgate instead of being an add-on you purchase separately. There’s also a variant that deploys into an awning, basically giving you a shady spot to sit behind your car on sunny days. Plus, with the fact that the Mustang will be the only Ford vehicle without a hatchback or tailgate, this means they could apply it to almost every single car in their U.S. lineup! Hooray for small victories? 

Infrastructure, Now with Stuffed Crust

After so many campaign promises by so many politicians to address the country’s crumbling infrastructure, we are finally starting to see some progress being made. Oh, wait, did you think the government was doing something? Oh, no, sorry. We can’t even get a coherent trade policy. The entity currently working on restoring our roads is actually Domino’s Pizza. Under the guise of creating a smoother ride for their delivery vehicles so our pizzas don’t arrive in a jumbled mess, Domino’s is fixing potholes from California to Texas to Delaware and, after paving over the road canyons, painting them with a very tasteful Domino’s logo and their tagline, “Oh yes we did.” Yes, this is a publicity stunt and yes it’s working but hell no, I don’t mind driving over Domino’s logos in the streets instead of feeling the jarring crash of a six-inch deep pothole and wondering if my wheel has bent so much I won’t make it home. Oh yes you did, Domino’s, because oh no, our elected officials can’t.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of June 4th, 2018

EVs Are Takin' Our Jerbs!

Electric vehicles are all fun and games except for the fact that they contain 30% fewer parts than internal combustion vehicles. While, to most of us, that’s a good thing because it means less can go wrong, it also means there’s less to make. So while many new jobs are created in the fields of battery and motor technology, in Germany alone, as many as 75,000 engine and transmission jobs may be lost if as many as 25% of vehicle sales are electric by 2030. German labor representatives are on the case now, trying to put together plans to maintain jobs by retraining workers in new, relevant fields, or basically, what we refuse to do in America while instead pandering to people who don’t want to give up their careers working in unskilled labor areas that are obsolete. At least one country understands progress!

WRC goes All-EV

The FIA World Council this week approved big changes to the World Rally Championship, moving vehicles to a common motor setup, and those motors will be all-electric. They’ll also use common batteries and a common chassis, but the parts around those - suspension, steering, equipment, etc. - will be up to each team. In that regard, it won’t be entirely down to driver skill because they’re all driving the same car and they will all have the same power, 670 horses from twin electric motors powering all four wheels. The common components will help keep costs down, which has been a growing problem in racing across many series, and is the reason there’s only one team in the top level of the World Endurance Championship. Plus, the relatively short sprint distance of rallying is much more well-suited to electric vehicles compared with endurance racing because of range concerns. I think for many viewers and spectators though, it’s going to be hard to get over hearing the absolute chaos of turbocharged motors hurtling steel and plastic through woods and along cliffs. As for the people living along those cliffs though, they’ll probably really appreciate it.

GM Exec Crashes at Really Bad Time

If you’re a skilled driver who loves vehicles and you happen to crash a car on the track during an Indy car race, chances are you’ll be a bit sheepish but it’s okay, you’re a race car driver and this happens sometimes. But if you happen to be the pace car driver and you wreck the pace car, causing a half hour delay in the start of the race because you spun your Chevy Corvette ZR1 into a wall, you will feel mortified. One can’t help but feel a bit sorry for GM EVP of Global Product Development Mark Reuss, who did just that before the Detroit Grand Prix of Belle Isle this week. Even Indy 500 winner and fast circle man Will Power jumped to his defense saying the corner Reuss took is a bit off-camber and unloads the rear wheels, causing slippage. He even went so far as to issue a really painful apology that he 100 percent didn’t have to do because if you can’t imagine feeling exactly how he felt when he crashed that car in front of thousands of people, you need to be put on an island far away from people because you are a sociopath.

Come On and Take a Free (Autonomous) Ride

Great news for Californians as a new rule has just gone into place allowing you to be picked up by a fully autonomous vehicle. In even better news, the companies running these vehicles can’t charge you a fare for the journey because this is all in the name of testing technology and not capitalism. Well it’s in the name of future capitalism. But focus on free today. Problem is, only one company has applied for a permit to test fully autonomous vehicles in the state, and these systems aren’t exactly totally safe, as we’ve been seeing recently, so maybe don’t hold out for a rare free ride from a company that may kill you.

Tesla Investor Call Sans Fireworks for Once

Tesla held its annual stockholders meeting this week and we got some answers to boring bonehead questions without a healthy dose of attitude for once. The bad news is there is no real super interesting news, but the good news is there’s no real super interesting news. Musk said production of Model 3s is humming right along and they anticipate reaching 5,000 units per week by the end of this month, but right hand drive and base models are still going to have to wait until next year. He said the Model 3 was beating its rivals in sales, namely the BMW 3 series, Audi A4, Lexus IS and Mercedes C-Class. Hidden in that little gem was the fact that nearly a quarter of all Model 3 reservations have been canceled, either by the company or by buyers. While that sounds like bad news, to have that many cancellations and still be outselling the competition really illustrates the ongoing hype around and interest in the car. Finally, Musk said the Model Y was on schedule for release in 2020 along with the new Roadster and Semi. He also hinted that sometime after that, Tesla would be working on a Volkswagen Golf-sized hatchback, which makes sense since it’s the best-selling car in Europe. One can’t help but wonder if, by the time they get around to it, if Volkswagen won’t already have a mass-market electric hatchback on sale, beating them to the punch. Between the eGolf, the Golf GTE and the various VW ID cars, they have an awful lot of irons in the fire.

Lamborghini Awaits Worthy Battery Power

As for Tesla’s competition, they won’t be getting any from Lamborghini, at least for a while because the Italian supercar manufacturer says no battery exists yet that is worthy enough to be bestowed upon one of their raging bulls. Chief Technical Officer Maurizio Reggiani said that they’re aiming for brutal acceleration, a top speed of at least 186 and the range to be able to complete three laps of the Nurburgring. Given that the Nordschliefe is only 12.9 miles, achieving a range of 40 miles seems awfully doable, but I bet you’d be surprised how quickly that range disappears when you’re pushing a Lamborghini as hard as it’ll go around the German forest. But one needs only look at Tesla’s Roadster for evidence that batteries with incredible acceleration and high top speeds remain only a few years away. Even their top of line Model Ss feature an aptly named “insanity mode” which is damn quick. Lamborghinis, however, are permanently stuck in insanity mode, which is sort of why we like them so much.

Your Next Honda, Powered by GM

Tell me if this sounds familiar – A friend of yours is shopping for a car and wants something efficient, so you suggest the Chevy Volt. You get the response, “Yeah, but I want something reliable, so I’m thinking Prius or Insight." Well, the next time you have that conversation, you can fire back, “Yeah, well Honda likes General Motors’ battery technology so much that they recently signed an agreement to use their batteries in future electric vehicles.” Because that just happened this week. If you really want to turn the screw, you can say something like, “Honda is so far behind on battery technology, the deal really isn’t even a collaboration. The deal basically just gets GM a better deal because they can buy more batteries in bulk and then give them to Honda. They may be collaborating on hydrogen fuel cells in a more equitable partnership, but if you buy a Honda electric vehicle in the future, just know you’re basically getting a GM.” That’s not entirely true because motors and transmissions and well, the rest of the cars will be different, but sometimes it’s just good to knock people down a peg or two if they’re blindly brand loyal.

Hyundai’s Connected Car Tech Detailed

Are you the type of person who is too lazy to swipe a credit card or get out of your car for some nachos? Well Hyundai is designing a system just for you! Their Hyundai Digital Wallet and access to purchasing platform Xevo will allow drivers to pay for things like food and fuel and parking directly from the car without having to reach into your pocket or purse to get your preferred payment method. Before long, the steering wheel can just be replaced with a robotic arm that shoves churros into our mouths as the vehicles drive themselves to our destination.

While everyone loves churros, not everyone loves big brother, and a portion of Hyundai’s connected car tech pertains specifically to driver analytics, which the car will collect and share with a company called Verisk, who will give you a Verisk Driver Score, which can then be passed on to your insurance company if you either give them permission or simply don’t tell them not to. This is allegedly to offer tips and discounts on courses to help improve driving and not to tattle to your insurance company that you’re a dangerous driver, but I think the rest of the world can join me in issuing a collective fuuuuuuuuck that on this plan. Some drivers certainly could use some help not sucking, but I will hold myself responsible for informing them of their inadequacy by way of horn blaring and wild gesticulations.

Hyundai Missed the Diesel Bus

And poor Hyundai, they really try, but sometimes, they just kind of look like the guy at a hockey game who is so busy playing Pokemon GO that they miss a goal getting scored and then look up like “oh, what happened, do I clap now?” This week was one of those times because immediately after Nissan and Renault announced that they were both discontinuing development of diesel engines, Hyundai bursts into the room and is like “here it is, our new 2019 Tucson, which features a mild hybrid diesel engine!” Everyone’s like “oh, did he not hear the news?” I mean, truth be told, Mazda has some diesels coming up too, but these are going to be hard sales in Europe where diesels are tanking harder than the Las Vegas Golden Knights right now.

Most & Least Expensive Cars to Insure for 2018

Speaking of insurance, we got a couple of lists today of the most and least expensive cars in the country to insure. The top five most expensive included the Dodge Challenger, which no doubt made the list because of its Hellcat version, and the Toyota 86 and Mitsubishi Lancer, which made the list because they’re driven by young reckless kids. Topping the list though were the Mercedes S-Class and the Tesla Model S, undoubtedly earning their places because of high repair costs and the incredible amount of technology in each.

As for the cheapest to insure, there were predictably a bunch of Toyotas and Hondas, some GMC vehicles, most full-size trucks and, interestingly, the Chevrolet Corvette, which clocked in as the 12th cheapest car to insure. Ahead of it were a bunch more trucks and luxury crossovers and the Jeep Wrangler, which was number six, but the absolute cheapest car to insure in the U.S. this year was the Subaru Outback with its Eyesight forward collision avoidance technology. On average, buyers paid just less than $540 total per year, which is just about half my bill for the GTI, which is only moderately depressing. But it makes sense. They have great visibility, good reliability, good crash test ratings and are driven by crunchy dog-having, oatmeal-loving hippies who never exceed the speed limit and clean up their campsites after themselves. Not that insurance companies would profile people like that. 

Coder Boy’s Wild Ride

In a bizarre story from Virginia this week, a National Guard soldier got hopped up on drugs and stole an armored personnel carrier, then got engaged in a not-so-high speed chase with police after which he was arrested and charged with a whole slew of crimes because, go figure, the National Guard doesn’t appreciate you stealing their things. An APC is basically a tracked tank but without a turret and with a larger interior to accommodate the transport of troops. It’s big, it’s tan, it’s hard to miss flying down the streets of Richmond. Making the story even more bizarre is that this soldier is a sort of well-known coder who made an anti-social justice variant of a secure web browser and tried desperately to get the attention of an accused sexual abuser. Nobody is still sure why he stole the APC but cocaine is a hell of a drug, so maybe he decided “well, it’s there and probably more fun than an Uber home.”

It’s Rainin’ Merde

Finally, in truly disgusting news this week, a woman and her son in British Columbia, Canada were driving along at about 160 miles or a billion kilometers as they call them up there, from Vancouver when they were suddenly struck by a cascade of what appeared to be sewage flying through their open sunroof. One minute, you’re cruising along enjoying one of the many beautiful days the Pacific Northwest has to offer, the next, you’re getting pink eye from someone taking the afternoon flight from Philadelphia. The driver suspects it was sewage from a plane that just so happened to have the supreme bad timing and placement to hit her open sunroof, which is possible, but rare and hardly a reason to keep your sunroofs closed out of sheer paranoia. But can you imagine how much worse it would’ve been if she had been driving a convertible?

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Headlines for the Week of May 28th, 2018

Tesla Hits Emergency Vehicle...Again

Let’s see if you’ve read this one before - A man’s driving his Tesla Model S and decides to relax a bit so he kicks on the Autopilot mode, which is working great, keeping him in the lines and evenly spaced between cars right up until the point where it runs him full speed into the back of an emergency vehicle. Oh, sounds familiar? It’s sort of becoming a thing, isn’t it? Except this time it wasn’t a firetruck, it was a Laguna Beach Police Explorer.

Photo by ABC News

The driver says autopilot was on, but we don’t know for sure yet if that was the case. What certainly is the case though, is that the driver was most definitely not fully attentive, which they are supposed to be when driving in autopilot mode because, guess what? People who are fully attentive will be driving, not letting the car do it.

It’s so widely accepted that people do not pay attention when the car is in autopilot mode that Shutterstock now has a stock video of a “sleeping” driver cruising along in a Tesla as it drives itself. This is about the time Elon Musk chirps up and howls at the media for covering another crash of his when there are millions of crashes every day. He’s not wrong here, especially since only minor injuries were sustained by the Model S’s driver in Laguna Beach. But it’s like when my mom let me have a rubber band gun when I was ten - I was given strict guidelines for how it could be used and then I went and shot my brother in the eye. I wasn’t aiming for his eye but hey, his eye got in the way of my shot. Shit happens. And guess what happened then? Yeah, my mom took away the rubber band gun. If people continue to demonstrate they cannot be trusted to use a technology the way it is designed to be used, then it’s either designed wrong or needs to be taken away until people behave. And yes, I realize this could be said about motor vehicles in general, but driving is a privilege and not a right, which the state can take away if you are truly and repeatedly bad at it! But given that Elon’s out there making my rubber band gun look lame with his flamethrowers and journalist credibility ratings services, I doubt he’ll have time to see the sense in my argument.

Tesla Gets Thumbs Up after Thumbs Very Down

After Consumer Reports knocked Tesla’s Model 3 for braking performance worse than a Ford F-150, Elon Musk first had a tantrum, then said everything could be fixed with an over-the-air firmware update, presumably to re-calibrate regenerative braking and increase the performance of the actual brakes on the vehicle. Less than a week later, out goes the update and in comes a big thumbs up from Consumer Reports, who have now bestowed their coveted “recommended” rating upon Tesla’s smallest car. I said last week that it would’ve been nice for the company to get it right the first time, but I’m probably being a little harsh, because almost no company gets their cars right the first time. Look at Ford, who has been making vehicles for a hundred years. They’ve recalled my wife’s Fusion three times now for different things. But with the Model 3, no recall is required. They just upload a fix, your car downloads it and boom, you’re good to go with better performance. It’s really honestly impressive that is even possible now, but as the owner of a phone that has been bricked by an over-the-air update, I can say it’s not a completely foolproof plan to avoid recalls. But good on Tesla for addressing a problem swiftly.

California Unveils Digital License Plates for Idiots

On the subject of California, the state unveiled new digital license plates this week, which are basically e-readers flipped on their sides that display your license number and have a GPS tracker, allowing big brother to see how often you drive past your ex’s house to see if someone new is staying over before you head back to your lonely apartment for a dinner of cheese and sadness. The plates can also display other messages, like advertisements while vehicles are parked, which is just exactly what the world needs more of. And they can be tracked if your car is stolen by a criminal stupid enough to not remove the license plate as the very first thing after actually stealing your car. They will be available for purchase through dealerships at a cost of $700, excluding installation costs and a $7 monthly subscription fee, while I’m not sure what you’re subscribing to other than the appearance of being a sucker. I could now go into how pointless and stupid this is, especially considering it goes on the most vulnerable part of your car in the event of fender benders, but I think you get the point already.

Weekend Motorsports Roundup

There was some racing going on this weekend, all over the place, starting with the Monaco Grand Prix in, well, Monaco. The famous city circuit is known for being tight and showcasing the technical skills of drivers rather than the flat-out speed of the cars and this year was no different. In fact, speed mattered so little that Daniel Ricciardo was able to win the race with a broken car down about 160 horsepower from Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari behind him. In fact, every single driver who finished the race finished in the same position that they started after qualifying. So apart from pit stops, no real passing, which does not make for very compelling racing.

Speaking of uncompelling racing, the Indy 500 was also this weekend and it was won by Will Power, who managed to go around in circles faster than all the other drivers who went around in circles. Congratulations to fast circle man Will Power.

In more exciting racing news, the inaugural Americas Rallycross event took place this weekend in, um, not Americas. It’s taking the place of the Global Rallycross series that went belly up so it’s maybe not so surprising to see the cars racing at Silverstone in the UK. In any case, ex-German Touring Car racer Timo Scheider finished second in qualifying. Normally, second place finishers and qualifying laps aren’t notable except this one is because Timo finished it with his hood flipped up over his windshield. Stop and put it down? Ain’t nobody got time for that! Especially when every second counts and you’re going sideways so often you can just use your door windows to see where you’re going. And perhaps it’s because the course requires so much sideways driving that the winner of the actual event was Tanner Foust, former Top Gear US host who is incapable of driving in a straight line or swearing, and with whom I want to be good buddies. Congrats, Tanner!

Audi’s Bringing Cameras and Efficiency

What has been a key feature on concept cars for years may become a reality on the forthcoming Audi E-Tron. Whereas previously US law mandated that cars come equipped with side view mirrors, a revision to that regulation (we are in the age of deregulation, after all) will mean car companies can now use cameras and screens instead of glass. The advantage here is that wing mirrors generate drag that can cost electric vehicles as much as three whole miles of range, so by eliminating them, car companies can get better range out of their batteries and charge you thousands more for expensive cameras and screens instead of cheap mirrors and plastic housings. There aren’t many other advantages of cameras. Glass mirrors allow you a 3D stereoscopic view of what’s behind you, allowing for better depth perception, they don’t have screens that wash out in direct sunlight and they aren’t blinded by headlights when it’s dark. But progress, Audi will say, to which I respond, I’d rather sacrifice three miles of charge to be able to better see what’s on either side of me.

U.S. Production Update

Several companies announced new plans for U.S. production last week, some of which I’m sure a certain politician will use as evidence that his trade war threats and tariffs are paying off despite no credible evidence of a connection. First, Hyundai is investing $388 million towards building a new plant in Alabama where motors for the Sonata, Elantra and Santa Fe will be built. This of course means more jobs for hard working Americans, but at the same time, only fifty hard working Americans will be able to find new work there.

But Nissan is going the opposite direction, scaling back their North American production by 20 percent to adjust to falling profitability. Low demand has led to greater incentives and more fleet sales, which have decreased profitability for Japan’s second largest automaker. Fortunately, no employees are being let go at the two assembly plants in the US and three in Mexico, but I guess they’re going to be able to spend more time making sure all the bolts are tight on those Maximas and Rogues.

EVs Could Cost Governments Billions

Right now, many governments are investing in subsidies for electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them, but that may not last too long because the same cars that governments want us to drive could end up costing billions in lost tax revenue. Right now, gas taxes are a huge source of funding for infrastructure support, but as EVs don’t use fuel, that revenue could dry up. The International Energy Agency estimates that, if 30 percent of new car and truck sales by 2030 are electric (which is hugely ambitious), governments worldwide could be missing $92 billion in tax revenue. Obviously that’s going to have to be made up somehow, whether through distance driven taxes or maybe via our electric bills. Otherwise those potholes and crumbling bridges will never be replaced.

Cars are Too Expensive

A new report by CNBC has revealed that the average monthly payment for a new vehicle is a whopping $523, in addition to the fact that loan terms extending as far as 96 months, or eight years, is becoming far more common. Average length is around 67 months, so somewhere in between five and six years, and the total amount borrowed for vehicles rests at around $31,500. All of these numbers represent unprecedented highs, which is a problem considering interest rates are increasing, averaging now 5.17 percent on new vehicle loans. It’s even more of a problem when you consider that, according to my buddy Chuck at the Federal Reserve, the average disposable personal income per capita is just $44,000, which equates to less than $3,700 per month. According to LendingTree, the average monthly Mortgage payment is around $1,100, meaning Americans are spending more than 43 percent of their income on just their car and their house. That may not sound like much, but as the price of goods and services like food and health care increase, consumers are less able to afford their lifestyles. Plus that disposable income number includes benefits and employer contributions to 401ks and pensions. If this sounds familiar, a similar thing happened in 2008 when housing prices were crazy high and we know how that all turned out. But it’s probably fine, guys. After all, 90-day delinquent loans only increased to 4.3 percent this past quarter and Bloomberg reports that people are prioritizing cell phone bills over their auto loans and credit cards, with PeerIQ CEO Ram Ahluwalia saying “the car is no longer a central asset.” But it’s fine.

Uber Pads Wallet, Prepares for IPO

Fresh off surprising Pittsburgh’s mayor with resuming autonomous vehicle testing in the city, Uber now wants to be the “Amazon for Transportation,” according to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Between its ride hailing service and UberEats, the company is doing pretty well financially and hopes to act as a platform for all sorts of transportation solutions, including public transit, ride sharing and even biking. It looks like others are buying this too, with Japan’s Softbank having taken a large ownership stake in the company. Softbank also announced this week that they’re investing $2.25 billion in GM Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous vehicle division, which may open up some doors for Uber to test with vehicles other than Volvo’s, and will allow GM to operate on Uber’s platform. But more than just some Japanese money, Uber wants our money as well and is on course for an initial public offering next year, where individuals with more hope than brains can spend their hard-earned money to purchase stock in a company that is still burning cash and doesn’t really have a solid path towards profitability, at least until its autonomous program cuts out all its human drivers. But Skynet doesn’t go live until 2047 in most Terminator timelines, so I think we’re good for a while if you want to get in on the ground floor.

Jaguar Land Rover Goes Muddin’ (Autonomously)

Jaguar Land Rover announced this week that they are developing a system called Cortex, a project that hopes to develop level 4 and 5 automation for off-road driving. Currently, autonomous systems rely on digital road mapping pretty extensively, so an off-road system would have to depend more on cameras evaluating the terrain ahead and adjusting the vehicle correspondingly. In theory, this will render the Cortex system more advanced and reliable than most other systems at adapting to unplanned changes in conditions. Head of the company’s connected and autonomous vehicle research program Chris Holmes said “It’s important that we develop our self-driving vehicles with the same capability and performance customers expect from all Jaguars and Land Rovers,” which I can appreciate. What I can’t appreciate is someone wanting to take their car off-road, but wanting the car to do the driving when you’re actually off-road. It’d be like designing a race car to drive itself, but with a race car driver as a passenger.

Duct Tape Fixes Everything

If you’ve been on YouTube, and I’ll assume you have, you probably know that there’s a video for how to fix virtually everything, and many of those fixes involve duct tape. Now there’s a video of how you can repair a flat tire with duct tape, except repair is really the right word, but rather “replace.” Some intrepid MacGyvers  who had a wheel without rubber decided to see what would happen if they wrapped the wheel in 20 rolls of duct tape and the results are, well, somewhat surprising in that the car definitely functioned afterwards. Granted, the non-sticky side offers virtually no grip, will tear under any torque and are utterly and completely unbalanced on the wheel, you can actually drive on a tire made of duct tape. That said, 20 rolls of duct tape cannot possibly be cheaper than a tire, so please leave this where it belongs – as a goofy stunt done by YouTube people.

Prius Greatly Improved with 8X the HorsePower

Photo by The Fast Lane Car

I’ve driven a Prius or two in my time and, not being the type of person who really appreciates driving in a super efficient sort of way, I can’t say I really appreciated the car. Now though, some nut jobs have gone and vastly improved the car by taking pretty much everything and throwing it out. The standard second generation Prius body of the vehicle in question now resides on a tube frame that also happens to house the motor from a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, which has been upped from its 707 horsepower to put down 800 at the wheels. Whereas the normal second generation Prius took about ten seconds to get to 60 miles per hour, this car now takes less than ten seconds to go an entire quarter mile and makes a divine sound while doing so. As for gas mileage? I’m gonna guess somewhere around 3 or 4, which does seem a bit thirsty when compared with the original.

Matt LeBlanc to Leave Top Gear

I’ve been catching up with the Grand Tour recently, which is a good show with some funny old guy that feels like an old couch – comfy, familiar, and a little stale. In comparison, Top Gear in the post-Chris Evans seasons feels fresh and interesting and fun and I find myself wishing for more episodes of it rather than the Grand Tour. One of the reasons it’s been so good is Matt LeBlanc, who unfortunately has announced that he will be leaving the show after next series because of time and travel constraints. I get it – he’s American and has to go to the UK for filming, which takes him away from family and friends for a considerable amount of time. In any case, Top Gear will continue on with Chris Harris, who is also excellent, and Rory Reid, who is a genuinely funny guy. But who will replace Joey? Chandler Bing?

Chrysler to Disappear with Fiat?

FiatChrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne will outline the next five year plan for the company’s car brands – a plan he will not oversee since this is his last year in charge of the company. In the last plan set forth in 2014 titled “Our Time Has Come,” Marchionne stated that Chrysler would have eight vehicles in its lineup by 2018, including two plug-in hybrids. As of last count, Chrysler has two cars, the Pacifica and the 300. I guess three if you count the Pacifica Hybrid as a separate vehicle, but still nowhere near eight total models. Gone is the weak 200 and the planned 100 compact sedan and various crossovers never appeared. FiatChrysler apparently got distracted with its brands that were actually doing well, namely Jeep, Ram and Ferrari, and didn’t really put any effort into either Fiat or Chrysler, both of which have crappy, unappealing lineups that are struggling to move cars amid poor reviews and a complete lack of buyer interest. How crappy you ask? Well the company has had to recall 4.8 million vehicles this week because their cruise control may not turn off, which seems like a pretty important thing to be able to turn off. Apparently braking still works to slow the car but people are idiots and may panic if their car doesn’t slow when they disengage cruise control.

Rumor now has it that Marchionne will announce tomorrow that Fiat will exit the U.S. market and Chrysler will exit the rest of the world, remaining for sale only in the U.S. My question is, why stop there? Chrysler has destroyed any sort of goodwill it had in buyers loyal to the brand by not coming out with anything new recently and the Pacifica could just be renamed the Dodge Grand Caravan, and that’s really only because Waymo just ordered 62,000 Pacificas for its autonomous fleet. Kill off the ancient 300 and you have nothing left to keep the Chrysler brand going. I’ll follow up on this next week when we hear more, but it’s probably not going to be too surprising if, just like Plymouth and most of Ford, we say goodbye to Chrysler.

Porsche Calls Car Collectors Immoral

Porsche Klassik magazine published an article recently addressing the issue of investors buying classic Porsches in order to profit from their appreciation rather than to drive them. The author called out such buyers for “spoiling the market” and “causing an explosion in prices even for ‘normal’ Porsche vehicles.” This is largely true, with prices for even basic air-cooled 993 models skyrocketing due to the desire of people to just buy and sit on cars until someone wants to pay them more for it than they paid. I appreciate good design and vehicular beauty and I think that some cars, sports cars especially, could be considered works of art, so in that sense, I appreciate why one might want to preserve such art. But like good artwork, great cars should be appreciated. You appreciate art by studying it and appreciating its form, and you appreciate cars by driving them.  The article goes on to say “the speculation in which many dealers are currently indulging is heading towards the downright immoral,” and I have a hard time disagreeing. But as baby boomers pass on and the generation saddled with $1.4 trillion in student loan debt comes up, these prices will fall back down. They have to, because otherwise the market for them won’t exist.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

The People Fear the Autonomous Future

Waymo Autonomous Test Locations

If various tech billionaires are to be believed, the future of vehicles is electric and autonomous so none of us idiot humans can continue getting behind the wheel and killing one another. The problem is though, we idiot humans aren’t exactly totally on board with that whole giving up driving thing.

In the wake of several high profile stories about people dying in cars driven by half-baked and implemented-too-early autonomous systems, public fear of autonomous vehicles has grown precipitously, up to 73% of a recent AAA survey. Demographic wise, the biggest jump was in people ages 20 to 37, going from 49% afraid to 64%, while still being the age group most inclined to ride in self-driving cars. Women in particular are scared, with 83% saying they don’t want to ride in autonomous vehicles and a whopping 70% saying they don’t even want to share the road with them. Elon Musk will blame this on negative coverage of fatal wrecks involving autonomous tech. Journalists and safety pundits will blame it on companies rushing out technology that isn’t ready for mass consumption. The truth is, they’re both right, but only the latter led to the former, and although autonomous vehicles may end up being safer than humans, they have to prove it first. As Uber suspends its autonomous testing in Arizona (costing 300 people their jobs, by the way) and others scale back plans to launch driverless cars on roadways, it looks like there’s a ways to go yet.

Source: Tim Stevens/Roadshow

And just this week they didn’t do such a great job proving it. On a drive with journalists in Jerusalem, a Ford Fusion run by LiDAR makers MobilEye, blew through a red light during a presentation of the technology, completely ignoring the signal. Fortunately, there were no collisions and everyone is okay, but it brings to mind Uber’s incident where their autonomous Volvo failed to react to a pedestrian. MobilEye claims their cameras saw the red light, but that the electromagnetic interference from the broadcasting equipment used by the TV crew in the car screwed with the signal from the traffic light transponder, and the transponder signals trumped the cameras, so the car cruised right on through. CEO Amnon Shashua said, “It was a very unique situation, we’d never anticipated something like this,” which is exactly the problem with autonomous technology. There’s no possible way to anticipate all eventualities, so these self driving cars will never be 100 percent safe. The company claims to have fixed the issue but wouldn’t go into just how.

Karen Kasler/Ohio Public Radio

Despite all of this, the morons in Ohio have stated publicly their desire to become the “wild, wild west for self driving car testing.” And in case you think I’m kidding, those were Governor John Kasich’s exact words. For those wanting some more words from the governor, he also said “Computers do not comb their hair. Computers do not text. Computers do not talk on cellphones, and this technology, which is going to be the 21st century technology, is going to save lives.” Yeah, right up until while not texting, combing hair or talking, a computer ignores a red light and t-bones someone to death. Not only is Ohio allowing self-driving cars while other states that have done so are reevaluating their programs, they’re allowing autonomous vehicles without humans in them! Though, a licensed driver does need to monitor the vehicle remotely and be able to avoid accidents in case of system failure. This, to me, smacks of a government that has no idea what it’s doing and is grasping at straws for a way to bring some sort of investment into the state. Sorry, Ohio, but this was really short-sighted, poorly planned and idiotic.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, Uber announced they would resume testing their autonomous vehicles on the streets of Pittsburgh despite the Arizona closure, which was I’m sure very fun for Pittsburgh’s Mayor William Peduto to find out about via Twitter. After the fatal crash in Tempe, Mayor Peduto suspended Uber’s right to test, pending the completion of a federal investigation and that they would discuss how to safely resume after that. The city has outlined several changes Uber must make to continue testing, including limiting speed to 25 miles per hour, which the company is apparently fine with, and they say they met with the city several weeks ago to discuss picking up where they left off. But when the one last thing on your to-do list is “call the mayor,” you may want to get that checked off before hyping yourself on social media.

Oh, and speaking of that federal investigation? There’s some news on that, with the National Transportation Safety Board stating that the self-driving Volvo Uber in Tempe recognized both the pedestrian and bicycle she was carrying and had a full six seconds to react, but instead the system did nothing, not interpreting the woman as, you know, a human. Even at 1.3 seconds before impact, the Volvo safety systems determined emergency braking was needed to avoid hitting the woman, but Uber had disabled their systems so it didn’t interfere with theirs. The NTSB study hasn’t been concluded yet though, and they haven’t settled on a probable cause, so I’m not sure why Uber thinks this meets with Pittsburgh’s Mayor’s “completed federal investigation” ultimatum.

Meanwhile in Norway, the land of my ancestors, a company called Kolumbus has decided the future of buses is now and they will begin rolling out completely autonomous EasyMile EZ10 buses, which accommodate 15 passengers and can reach a blistering 28 miles per hour. Except they won’t be completely autonomous because Norway doesn’t permit fully autonomous vehicles on the road, so each bus will also feature a safety driver. Oh and also the buses won’t be hitting that 28 mile per hour max speed because Norway will require the bus to be limited to just 7.5 miles per hour. Oh and the buses won’t be filled to the brim with 15 passengers because Norway will require the company to haul only six people at a time. But starting in June, those six riders per bus will I’m sure have a great time speaking to their driver and watching casual runners fly by them along their route.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Self Driving Tests Slow, Uber Bows And Pays Out

Last you heard of Uber on this site was after the fatal crash that killed a woman in Arizona. Since that tragic story, there have been several developments for Uber and its autonomous tech program that are probably worth touching on.

First, the Arizona governor Douglas Ducey suddenly decided that his first priority is public safety and sent a letter to Uber suspending their license to test and operate autonomous vehicles in the state. One might argue that giving unregulated, unmonitored rights to a company hurtling three ton death machines around public roads with other drivers and unpredictable pedestrians was not placing public safety first, but hey, we all make mistakes, right? Just some of our mistakes don’t wind up with people dying. Uber voluntarily suspended its programs in California, Pittsburgh and Toronto as well, which is a good PR move since it probably wouldn’t be voluntary for too long.

Shortly after the incident, Uber’s partners and suppliers were quick to wash their hands of responsibility, promptly throwing the ride sharing business under the bus. First, MobilEye, the manufacturer of the LiDAR system insisted that its cameras would undoubtedly have seen the pedestrian, but that it was Uber’s software, responsible for interpreting what the camera sees and computing a corresponding input into the car’s drive, that was to blame. A representative for Aptiv PLC, the supplier who provides the radar technology systems for Volvo, chirped up that all of the XC90’s safety systems that it comes with from the factory had been turned off and that the emergency braking system might have enabled the car to stop or at least slow before impact.

Finally for Uber, what I expected to be a prolonged battle in the courts over liability and one that might set a precedent for how future cases was handled, turned out to be a very quick settlement. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed and the attorney for the family of the deceased insisted that her daughter would have no further public comment. That they settled the matter less than a month after the fatality really goes to show how aggressive Uber must have been in trying to sweep this matter under the rug. While the news cycle does tend to bounce from outrage to outrage, I think those of us with a deep interest in the automotive sector will have longer memories. The only good to come from this is that everyone is now taking a very serious look at just how safe it is to publicly test technology in its infancy.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs
 

Autonomous Vehicles are Not for Safety

Even if you’re not a real automotive enthusiast, you probably heard this week about the incident in Tempe, Arizona where a pedestrian was killed while crossing the road at night. This in itself is not rare. Pedestrians die every day, and Arizona actually has the fourth highest pedestrian deaths of any state, so it’s unfortunately especially common there.  The difference this time it was a Volvo XC90, being driven by Uber’s autonomous technology that struck and killed the woman, and it has understandably led to new questions about how safe autonomous vehicles actually are. The reality though, is that safety is only an occasional byproduct of autonomous technology.

Photo by ABC-15, via Associated Press

But safety is absolutely paramount in testing unproven technologies, and it’s clear that Uber was not doing their due diligence in this regard. At the time of the accident, the Volvo was being chaperoned by one Uber employee who, according to video of the incident, spent his time looking down, either at a phone or at a monitor, not paying attention to the road ahead. Jalopnik called around and pretty much every automaker testing autonomous vehicles uses two in-car minders; one to watch the road and correct any issues with immediate human input, and another to monitor the technology and keep logs of the car’s activity. Uber uses only one, so does Waymo. And we have to remember that Uber isn’t a car company, they’re an app company bleeding funds and trying to come up with a technology as fast as they can to provide taxi service without having to pay human drivers to operate it. It’s not in their best interest to pay to have two people in a car, even if it makes the drive safer.

And there are some extenuating factors in this case. It was really dark and the forward-facing camera in the car shows that, until just about two seconds before impact, the woman was very difficult to see. But those cameras don’t exactly capture the full spectrum of what the human eye can see and it stands to reason that an alert driver might have seen and been able to react to the woman in time to at least avoid her death. What almost certainly did see the woman were the Velodyne LiDAR arrays on the top of the Volvo, for which it being dark or night is immaterial. Velodyne says that the problem probably wasn’t their system seeing the woman, but rather Uber’s software interpreting the shape the LiDAR was seeing as a woman and acting accordingly. Instead, the car didn’t slow down at all and hit the woman at 40 miles per hour as she walked her bike across the street.

And the hardware talking to the software is just one of many ways autonomous vehicles can go wrong. Just like my computer gives me the spinning wheel of death when I try to do to many tasks at once, machines encounter problems sometimes that can either render them unusable, unstable or unresponsive, which becomes a problem when the machines are propelling 4,000 pound death machines down motorways at dangerous speeds. And that’s just to mention factors inside the vehicle. Just this week, a representative from the National Center for Atmospheric Research voiced his concern over autonomous vehicles’ overreliance on GPS because the technology is so vulnerable to interruption due to solar flares, which could render vehicles without knowing how to get where they’re going. 

As for the other side of the equation, the truth is we’ll never achieve 100% safety on the roads because humans are both stupid and unpredictable. We don’t use crosswalks, we pop out from behind things, we generally do our best to confuse and bewilder technology, like wearing billowy clothing that doesn’t make us look like humans, or carrying bikes that make us look like vehicles. Advances in artificial intelligence have computers beating humans in games like chess, Go and Jeopardy, but there’s a long way to go before it can adequately anticipate what us crazy humans are going to do.

So that brings us back to this week, when a woman crossed the road in dark clothing at night and not in a crosswalk, which should not have been a death sentence. And it might not have if Arizona hadn’t made themselves the absolute wild west of motor vehicle testing. Or if Uber had bothered to put a second person in their cars like most other automakers do. There’s a reason most automakers have their own or use closed proving grounds and race tracks to test vehicles in a variety of situations. While nothing can fully compare to real-life testing in scenarios that are difficult to replicate in a closed environment, I would find it hard to believe that they couldn’t have tested a woman walking a bike across the road. 

Since most automakers are testing on roadways with other drivers and pedestrians and no shortage of obstacles, safety clearly isn’t the primary concern of automakers in their rush to get autonomous technology into their vehicles. And if you’ve listened to my podcast, you probably know what I’m about to say. Autonomous cars are not about enhancing safety and reducing pedestrian or driver deaths. They’re about enhancing convenience and making money for both automakers and taxi apps like Uber and Lyft. Autonomous systems are yet another optional add-on for which Tesla, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Nissan and others can feel free to charge us thousands of dollars, which we’re happy to pay because rush hour driving is brutal. The incentive for safety comes not from a sense of duty to improve society, but from a fear of liability when and if something occurs. And now that something has, and the daughter of the woman killed has lawyered up, we’re going to see just how accountable these companies are going to be held when safety is not their first priority.

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Consumer Electronics Show Round-Up

Last week was the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and as vehicles become increasingly laden with technology, the show has become increasingly a car show. Here is a comprehensive round-up of everything CES had to offer petrolheads.

Samsung & Harman’s Autonomous Tech & Digital Cockpit

Technology company Samsung and high-end audio manufacturer Harman teamed up (well really, Samsung bought Harman last year for $8 billion) and showcased a new camera system for autonomous vehicles that included safety features like collision and lane departure warning systems and adaptive cruise control. They also showed off a so-called “digital cockpit” that is basically replacing the entire dashboard of a car with customizable screens that users can set so their profile comes up when they go to drive a car. It’s massive, and cool looking, but do we really need more distracting screens in front of us in cars? They’re kind of aiming to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

Digital Assistants Get Baked (In)

A number of automakers, including Toyota, have announced plans to integrate Amazon’s Alexa into their future vehicles, but a lot of these cars already have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. At CES, Google has announced that the company is rolling out an update to Android Auto this week that will add Google Assistant to compete with Alexa for the title of which AI can more poorly interpret the words “Call mom.” In reality, the list of functions you’ll be able to do with Google Assistant should be pretty impressive, from sending and receiving messages and playing music to reserving parking spaces with SpotHero and ordering coffee from Starbucks, all while keeping your hands on the wheel. Since more than 400 models of car or truck already feature Android Auto compatibility, this could be a major leg up for Google in the digital co-driver space.

Aptiv & Lyft’s Autonomous Rides

Outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, special BMWs outfitted by autonomous car maker Aptiv and organized by Lyft were available to shuttle CES delegates around the city to predetermined destinations. Sure, this is cheating a little bit because users couldn’t just input whatever destination they wanted, but the cars still had to deal with real traffic along their prescribed routes, and they did it without incident. Aptiv expects to have a Level 4 autonomous vehicle suite available to manufacturers like BMW next year.

VW & Uber Partner with Nvidia

Speaking of partnerships, Nvidia took the opportunity of CES to announce deeper partnerships with Volkswagen and Uber. With VW, Nvidia will help out with vehicle automation and AI, specifically for the I.D. Crozz and Buzz vehicles coming in 2022. This will apparently proliferate through Volkswagen’s other EVs as the lineup grows. That AI will also go into Uber’s fleet of self-driving taxis and freight trucks, where it has already been getting a bit of action in the autonomous Volvo XC90s. Uber says it has completed more than two million miles of autonomous driving in its tests.

Kia Niro EV Concept

In addition to the raw technology, we also got a look at some new cars, or at least concepts. One was the Kia Niro EV Concept,  which takes Kia’s Niro compact crossover, throws out its hybrid powertrain, and swaps it for a fully electric system offering 238 miles of range, which is the same as the Chevy Bolt, but in a larger package. The concept is very concept-y with its execution and has a ton of features that’ll never make it into the final car, like some huge screens and two-spoke steering wheel. But let’s be honest, if Kia gets a compact crossover EV to market that has good range and good looks, they will just be printing money come 2020.

Hyundai Nexo FCV

Kia’s parent company Hyundai also got in on the concept car action, unveiling their Nexo flagship crossover, which is a large hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with an electric motor developing 160 horsepower and almost double that in torque foot pounds. It’s not exactly fast at a 9.5 second 0-60, but it’s three seconds faster than Hyundai’s Tucson Fuel Cell Vehicle and has a range of 370 miles, which beats nearly every pure electric vehicle on the market. Plus it’s a crossover, so people will actually buy it. Now the only thing remaining is to figure out a hydrogen filling infrastructure…

Byton EV

Another new electric vehicle startup called Byton showed off their electric crossover at CES this year. It features what they call a coast-to-coast display, which is lovely that they thought enough to cover us here in flyover country. That screen also covers the entire dashboard and they say it will make it to the production model, which will apparently start around $45K and will be manufactured in a plant in Nanjing, China. It’ll get 250 miles of range in the base model and looks really nice on the inside and outside, but in a sort of plain way. It’s kind of a toned-down mix of a Range Rover and Lexus RX - it doesn’t really have an identity of its own, but it’s not ugly, and the screen in the middle of the steering wheel is kind of cool. It also has Amazon’s Alexa baked into it, so voice command should work, well, mostly okay. So why bother having the big screen? In any case, Byton, I’ll believe you can produce this car when you produce it. As we’ve seen with Faraday Future, the automotive industry is no stranger to Vaporware.

Toyota’s e-Palette Concept

One of the neatest automotive concepts at the show was Toyota’s e-Palette concept, which is what they think the future of mobility looks like. Basically, in this future, Toyota manufactures the hardware, basically a vehicle shell that is highly customizable. It could be a delivery van, a ride-sharing vehicle or mobile e-commerce platform. Since it’s all modular, it can even be all those things within the span of a day. While Toyota provides the hardware, companies would be the software designers, creating unique user experiences for the occupants or people to whom items are delivered. It’s an interesting idea and could be a workable concept, especially in cities. For now though, we’ll just have to rely on Tony in his red Toyota Avalon, who is only four blocks away but Lyft says it’ll take him 14 minutes to get here.

That’s all the major stories from CES this week, but we’re on the verge of the Detroit Motor Show, so stay tuned for that next week! 

Authored by
Devlin Riggs

This story originally appeared in the AllWaysDrive Podcast. Subscribe now and get the latest news every week!