Robocars Podcast: The Future of Transportation

Here's a formal debate between Brad Templeton and Raj Rajkumar, a CMU Professor and member of their team that won the DARPA urban challenge on the core question of whether robocars can scale to mainstream levels in the next decade, both technically and from a business standpoint

We talk about the news (Cruise crash) and then I chat with Tomas Ohlson, a founder and engineer at Einride, a Swedish company that is building trucks with no room for a driver, with the goal of speeding up the electrification of trucks as well as automating them. They see a big win in electrification over certain distances and automation as a way to make it happen.

I interview Ezra Goldman, founder of Upshift, which sells a car subscription where you get 4, 8 or 12 days/month of car use, with the cars delivered to you on demand (and picked up and cleaned.) We discuss the merits of this compared to all the other ways to access a car.

Michael Sena edits "The Dispatcher" and has consulted on connected cars and other future transportation issues for Volvo and other OEMs.   We discuss a variet of issues, including the death of Embark and Locamation, the rebirth of Argo.AI, GM's Ultra Cruise, Tesla (again) and BEVs (especially in the cold of Sweden,) Geely and Chinese strength, the viability of self-driving work machines instead of taxis and more.

Mario Herger is back to talk Tesla as we go through the highlights of the 3.5 hour Tesla Investor Day presentations to offer commentary on the most interesting sections.   Also available on YouTube where we play some video.   Recorded live with an audience.

Text article:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/01/25/intels-mobileye-levels-up-to-take-on-tesla-and-others-in-self-driving/ MobileEye (Intel) has risen to be one of the potential robocar leaders.  This is a 27 minute interview with Amnon Shashua, founder CEO of MobileEye and one of the most astute players in the field.   I dig into 4 technical issues listed below.   If you want an introduction to MobilEye's strategy, with a contrast to Tesla's strategy, see the text article, or Shashua's own videos.   They seem to be doing a lot of things right.  Can they deliver?  At one point I describe Tesla FSD of having an MTBF of minutes, sometimes seconds.  In that case I mean any  problem, after that Amnon clarifies he means an accident.   Tesla isn't quite that bad by his definition of MTBF.   Shashua video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mXy0oi8d60 (1 hour)  Summary: https://youtu.be/4EPUQaU72Ao 1:16 New Channel Plans 1:47 Sensor/Perception redundancy and fusion 10:52 REM and Mapping efficiency 12:19 Do we know the algorithms we will need? 21:09 MobilEye Robotaxi plans 29:35 What's Next

A discussion between host Brad Templeton of robocars.com and Mario Herger of The Last Driver Licence Holder on the hot topics raised at the start of 2023.  A raft of topics including: 0:00 Intro 1:17 Waymo and Cruise letters from San Francisco(*) 9:49 Calling 911 on sleeping people and cameras in cars 18:33    Consumer Reports on drive-pilot systems (ADA) 25:18    Mercedes S-Class Level 3 in Nevada 33:18    The Tesla Bay Bridge pile-up (*) 37:52    Tesla's Safety Numbers are Back 45:03    Waymo at the Superbowl 49:22    Running out of Lithium and Toyota (*) 1:01:24    Emissions from AVs (*) 1:10:18    Layoffs at Waymo Via 1:17:20    CES Brad Templeton is a speaker, consultant and writer on self-driving cars who worked on the early Google/Waymo car and has advised many of the big players i the industry, such as Zoox, Cruise, Starship and major car OEMs.   He writes at robocars.com and Forbes.com, providing deep insight into all topics in the future of transport, and analysis and myth-crushing you won't find elsewhere.