Autonomous Vehicles, LEAF and others...

[GRA]

This dates from a week or so ago in the Bay Area, but got busy and forgot to post it:

First Company Approved For Autonomous Passenger Vehicle Program

https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/First-Company-Approved-For-Autonomous-Passenger-13486604.php

A Silicon Valley startup won permission Friday to offer rides to passengers in autonomous vehicles that have a trained test driver present.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved Zoox to be the first company in a pilot program that will test autonomous cars that have a driver ready to take over if needed.

Companies participating in the "Drivered AV Passenger Service" program will submit data on incidents and passenger miles traveled in the test vehicles, along with passenger safety and consumer protection elements, according to the utilities commission.

In addition, the program will test autonomous cars that are zero-emission vehicles. . . .

[GRA]

ABG:

GM Cruise, DoorDash partner for autonomous food delivery
They'll deliver takeout and groceries in San Francisco

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/01/04/gm-cruise-doordash-autonomous-food-delivery/

. . . The test, which kicks off early this year, will begin by delivering restaurant food to select DoorDash customers using Cruise autonomous vehicles. Later, the partners seek to expand the program to deliver groceries from select DoorDash grocers using the driverless cars. . . .

[GRA]

GCC:

UC Santa Cruz prof suggests self-driving cars will torpedo parking pricing as effective congestion management policy; “incentive to create havoc”

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/02/20190202-ucsc.html

With no need to park, autonomous vehicles (AVs) will clog city streets and slow traffic to a crawl, according to a new paper by University of Santa Cruz transportation planner Adam Millard-Ball, an associate professor of environmental studies. However, a policy fix could address these problems before autonomous vehicles become commonplace, he suggests. His paper is published in the journal Transport Policy.

In this paper, I identify and analyze a new channel through which AVs will have unambiguously negative environmental consequences—the removal of parking pricing, one of the most effective congestion management policies, from the urban transportation policy toolbox. AVs not only can avoid parking charges through cruising (that is, circling around while waiting for a passenger), but also have the incentive to seek out and exacerbate congestion—even gridlock—in order to minimize costs to their owners. . . .

… This paper suggests that the parking behavior of autonomous vehicles would land cities with a twofold blow—a dramatic drop in the cost of parking that encourages more trips by car, and greater vehicle travel and congestion from each trip due to cruising, returning home, and traveling to free on-street spaces. The reduced price of parking would likely increase vehicle travel to dense, urban cores by 98%, while cruising and travel to and from remote parking spaces would add a further 8%.

Fundamentally, AVs will negate one of the central pillars of Transportation Demand Management programs that seek to reduce vehicle travel in downtowns, university campuses and other employment centers.

—Millard-Ball (2019). . . .

Under the best-case scenario, the presence of as few as 2,000 self-driving cars in downtown San Francisco will slow traffic to less than 2 mph, according to Millard-Ball, who uses game theory and a traffic micro-simulation model to generate his predictions.

“It just takes a minority to gum things up,” he said, recalling the congestion caused at airports by motorists cruising the arrivals area to avoid paying for parking: “Drivers would go as slowly as possibly so they wouldn’t have to drive around again.” Free cell-phone parking areas, coupled with strict enforcement in loading areas, relieved the airport snarls, but cities will be hard-pressed to provide remote parking areas for self-driving cars at rates lower than the cost of cruising—which Millard-Ball estimates at 50 cents per hour.

Even when you factor in electricity, depreciation, wear and tear, and maintenance, cruising costs about 50 cents an hour—that’s cheaper than parking even in a small town. Unless it’s free or cheaper than cruising, why would anyone use a remote lot?

—Adam Millard-Ball. . . .

Regulation also falls short because, as Millard-Ball puts it, “It’s difficult to regulate intent. You can pass a law saying it’s illegal to drive more than 10 minutes without a passenger, but what if the car is picking up a parcel?”

Millard-Ball proposes congestion pricing—which can take different forms but essentially amounts to a user fee—as a solution. In London, motorists pay a flat fee of £11.50 (about $15) to enter the city center. Singapore and Stockholm employ similar models. More sophisticated models could charge by miles driven, or assign different fees to particular streets.

Economists and environmentalists agree that congestion pricing effectively reduces congestion and pollution, but it’s a politically fraught strategy because it raises the ire of commuters. Millard-Ball sees an opportunity here.

As a policy, congestion pricing is difficult to implement. The public never wants to pay for something they’ve historically gotten for free. But no one owns an autonomous vehicle now, so there’s no constituency organized to oppose charging for the use of public streets. This is the time to establish the principle and use it to avoid the nightmarish scenario of total gridlock.

—Adam Millard-Ball

Moreover, he noted, self-driving cars could be outfitted with devices that would give policymakers options for levying fees based on location, speed, time of day—even which lane the vehicle occupies. . . .

[cwerdna]

Family of homeless woman killed by driverless Uber blames City of Tempe for paving job, sues for $10 million
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html

[GRA]

GCC:

Mercedes-Benz researching “informed trust” of autonomous vehicles

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/02/20190204-mbtrust.html

Mercedes-Benz considers empathy and trust to be central factors for the acceptance of self-driving vehicles. For people to have trust in the machine, they must immediately and intuitively be able to recognise what an autonomous vehicle intends to do. Mercedes-Benz is conducting research into this “informed trust” with the help of the “cooperative car”.

The cooperative car is based on an S-Class, and features 360-degree light signaling. Turquoise lights on the roof indicate autonomous driving mode, and provide information on what happens next.

Continuous light shows that the vehicle is in autonomous driving mode, whether moving or stationary.

Slow flashing means that the vehicle is braking.

Rapid flashing announces that the vehicle will shortly be moving off.

Alternative light display concepts are also being tested with this vehicle: turquoise light strips in the windscreen, the radiator grille, the headlamps, the exterior mirrors and the lower area of the windows indicate to pedestrians and other road users that the vehicle is operating in autonomous mode.

Short rows of illuminated dots on the roof tell other road users that they have been recognized. In the process, only those pedestrians or cyclists whose path coincides with that of the vehicle are given a light signal. In doing so, the cooperative car recreates the natural eye contact that would have taken place between the driver and pedestrians.

The cooperative S-Class also informs its surroundings that it is about to go into operation while it is still at the side of the road. The light strips around the vehicle emit an appropriate light signal. The exterior mirrors fold out, and first the rear then the front of the vehicle lifts up. These movements resemble a living being that is waking up and stretching. People can understand this communication intuitively, Mercedes-Benz suggests.

Studies have shown that pedestrians prefer 360-degree communication in turquoise. 360-degree light signalling is particularly important when it comes to keeping pedestrians informed. These are the findings from several light studies that Mercedes-Benz carried out in Sindelfingen and on the Immendingen test site, which was opened in September 2018.

The research examined how pedestrians react to differently signalized autonomous vehicles in various traffic situations. It became clear that light signaling has a strong effect on the acceptance of autonomously driving vehicles, as well as on how safe pedestrians feel.

In particular, people want light signaling in situations where there was hitherto interaction with the driver. For example, people are used to seeking eye contact with a driver when they want to cross a road. If light signaling is communicating that a vehicle is in the autonomous driving mode, pedestrians can feel safe even if the vehicle occupants are obviously not paying attention to the traffic situation.

The majority of participants in the study preferred turquoise as the signaling color; all participants favoured a 360-degree display. Mercedes-Benz is contributing its findings from these studies to assist work being carried out on autonomous driving by SAE International. There Mercedes-Benz recommends the use of turquoise, a color which has not previously been used in the automotive sector, to enable 360° signalling. . . .

[goldbrick]

^ As a bicyclist and occasional pedestrian I think this is a great step forward for autonomous cars and a great idea.

[cwerdna]

Nissan-Renault alliance to join Google on self-driving cars
Automaker group goes all-in on outside partnerships for future of driving
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Compan ... iving-cars

[cwerdna]

Apple Reports (CA) Self-Driving Car Disengagements to DMV, Earns Worst Rank
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/12/ap ... ts-report/
(CA) Disengagement Reports 2018 – Preliminary Results
https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/ ... y-results/

Hope the 2018 data shows up soon at https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detai ... us/testing. Will be interesting to see if Tesla reports 0 autonomous miles driven on CA public roads again.

Keep in mind all of the above is only for CA public roads.

[cwerdna]

^^^
Data is up at https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detai ... eport_2018. And yep, Tesla reported 0 miles (again) for 2018.