The Future Car Podcast: Will Cowboys or Collaborators Shape the Self-Driving Future?

You may have noticed the bloom is ever so slightly off the autonomous vehicle rose.

With the growing cynicism directed at Silicon Valley and the media’s intense focus on incidents involving self-driving vehicles, autonomous vehicle companies are struggling to win over the approval of the general public.

In this episode, we draw from discussions that include Elon Musk, Eran Shir, and Sam Abuelsamid. All three of these people are leaders in the autonomous vehicle industry. With their knowledge, we will lay out the potential next steps to finding a general solution for self-driving vehicles, how they will become fully integrated into smart city environments, and eventually transform all aspects of transportation overall.

Discussed In This Episode:

Resources:

White Paper: “How vehicle electrification impacts electrical system design”

The Future of Mobility: Transforming Cities

“Autonomous Vehicles Fall Into The Trough Of Disillusionment...But That’s Good”

Elon Musk: The Recode interview

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Sometimes, it seems like technology is developing so quickly that we can’t keep up while simultaneously not advancing fast enough.

Carmakers, such as Tesla, are now taking advantage of the technological advances that allow allthe functionality of a central processor, many discrete components that perform various functionalities, and more, all to be integrated onto a single chip: the system-on-chip, or SoC.

This compute consolidation requires less space and less power consumption, which is ideal for a car that runs off a battery—like many vehicles on the road today. Still, with the high compute requirements for applications like ADAS and automated driving, along with connectivity

features and many other features, power consumption becomes a very real issue.

This episode of The Future Card Podcast dives into the specifics of how and why car makers are taking advantage of this SoC approach.

Discussed In This Episode:

Resources:

“Tesla to start testing new Autopilot Hardware 3 in employee vehicles” by Fred Lambert

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You are always on the go—from city to city, from store to store, and from work to home. For many, they have to rely heavily on their cars in order to function day to day.

Imagine never staying in one place for your entire life, always moving around and seeking out adventures and career opportunities—and then having that independence abruptly stolen away from you.

This is the reality for many people around the world, especially for the elderly and disabled populations.

This is what drove Katherine Sheriff’s passion to shift her career around, from an attorney to a career in autonomous vehicles. Her grandfather lived a life of travel, from serving in the military to living in various motorhomes that allowed him to continuously explore. As he aged, that independence was taken away from him, leaving him stuck in his home for his final years.

The implementation of autonomous vehicles into our societies could starkly change that narrative, allowing everyone the independence they crave and deserve.

On this episode of The Future Car Podcast, Katherine Sheriff and I discuss the hard topics around autonomous vehicle development and implementation, including how to hold a robot accountable for programming hiccups, how regulators grow to understand the technology in order to establish sensible laws, why autonomous vehicles need to earn our trust, and so much more.

Some Questions I Ask:

·     How did your career go from an attorney of the law to autonomous vehicles? (0:56)

·     What do you think poses the biggest challenges to us, from a technological standpoint and a legal standpoint? (4:24)

·     How can regulators understand AV technology enough to make sensible laws? (5:40)

·     What do you think the top regulatory issue is? (8:01)

·     Do you think that the government would ever accept virtual testing? (10:36)

·     In an accident involving an autonomous vehicle, who is at fault? (15:36)

·     Can you treat AV as individual corporations? (34:55)

·     What would you do in your autonomous car on a road trip? (36:14)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

·     What inspired Katherine to pursue her career, making her a thought leader in the AV realm. (1:07)

·     Katherine’s view of the biggest challenges to further technological and legal development. (4:58)

·     About the value of public road testing. (9:50)

·     Why blindly trusting autonomous vehicles too soon is dangerous to society. (16:05)

·     The legal differences between human intention and AI intention. (23:50)

·     The best way to ensure engineers and lawmakers see eye-to-eye when establishing regulations. (33:09)

Connect with Katherine Sheriff:

LinkedIn

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Justin Ho is the co-founder and CEO of rideOS, which TechCrunch described as aiming to be traffic-control center for self-driving cars (though fleets of human-driven vehicles stand to benefit from its services, too). Funded by Siemens' venture arm, Next47, rideOS enables other companies in the industry to accelerate the deployment of their fleets, expand service coverage, and operate safer and more profitable transportation networks, all while benefiting from the scale and performance of the cloud. 

One of the key differences between a human driver and an autonomous vehicle is that autonomous vehicles will be deployed in small pockets within a city with limited capabilities. As the technology for autonomous vehicles continues to develop and mature further, more and more capabilities will be added. Today, aspects of driving—whether that includes harsh weather, damaged roads, construction, etc.—that make it difficult for humans to drive safely also make it difficult for an autonomous vehicle to function safely. As of right now, the solution to help ensure the safety of autonomous vehicle passengers is to reroute these fleets around the constraints that they are not yet capable of solving.

The rideOS technology’s purpose is to accelerate fleet deployment and expand service coverage for companies working on autonomous vehicles. Justin provides this purpose by looking at the use-case: a few years into the future, we’ll have a mix of human and autonomous cars in a city. In order to gather essential information from folks all around a wide area—such as LA—there needs to be Cloud coverage. rideOS in the Cloud helps to provide those services and allow for the efficient operation of different fleets among human drivers.

With the implementation of autonomous vehicles into our society, the cost of transportation per mile will significantly decrease while the demand for transportation will increase. Developing multi-mode transportation—including trains, scooters, etc.—will be a critical part of the future. rideOS’ priorities, however, will continue to focus on ensuring the safe, global rollout of the next generation of transport.

Another major aspect of autonomous cars will be how it impacts the culture around movement and transportation. Right now, most of the demand around autonomous vehicles centers around the ability to move around cheaply, and there are solutions for that. In the future, however, different types of transportation services may offer different transportation experiences, such as a mobile office room.

One of the major trends happening right now is the democratization of education: quality education is available online, open-source, etc., without the requirement to attend a top university Due to the availability of education via the internet, more people are able to collaborate and innovate with fewer barriers.

Connect with Justin Ho

[email protected]

LinkedIn

Resources

rideOS website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Justin Ho is the co-founder and CEO of rideOS, which TechCrunch described as aiming to be traffic-control center for self-driving cars (though fleets of human-driven vehicles stand to benefit from its services, too). Funded by Siemens' venture arm, Next47, rideOS enables other companies in the industry to accelerate the deployment of their fleets, expand service coverage, and operate safer and more profitable transportation networks, all while benefiting from the scale and performance of the cloud. 

Connect with Justin Ho

[email protected]

LinkedIn

Resources

rideOS website

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Amitai Bin-Nun is the Vice President at Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE). There, it’s his job to assist with developing and establishing regulations on autonomous vehicles. His goal is to find a balance between ensuring the safety of people, promoting innovation, and maximizing the potential of the technology used in self-driving vehicles. These types of vehicles are transforming the way we travel; Amitai also shares how beneficial this technology might be for those living with disabilities.

Amitai Bin-Nun has had an interesting ride so far throughout his career. When he first started out, self-driving vehicles were not on many people’s radar. He always had a passionate interest in technology and its role in society. For Amitai, it all started because he didn’t know what to do next after finishing up graduate school. He had an interest in policy and politics and the ways in which science and technology are used and innovated to improve people’s lives. Now, Amitai works at Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), where it’s his job to help governments regulate self-driving cars in a way that still promotes innovation and maximizes the potential of this technology. Another significant part of his job is to articulate why society should care and want self-driving vehicles.

Even though autonomous vehicles are 50 years into development, it’s still in its early stages, the industry’s leaders need to take time to define what “safety” means in relation to autonomous vehicles. Even though a company’s autonomous vehicle may be safer than a human driver, they’re never going to be perfect and will always be scrutinized for it. The more we have a common language and agreement in the industry about what it means to have a “safe” vehicle, the easier it will be to establish when a vehicle is technically and sociologically ready for deployment.

Though the safety of autonomous vehicles is critical, the value extends way beyond just the safety of people. SAFE recently performed a study on autonomous vehicles for people with disability. They found that there are about 4 million people who are unemployed or underemployed due to the barrier of accessible transportation. Self-driving cars can’t fix everything, but they are a great tool to bring accessible transportation to a broad range of the population that doesn’t have it today.

Within the autonomous vehicle world, companies are shifting their testing to areas that do not require reporting. This creates an adversary relationship between the technical talent and cities. Cities and technical talent should work together to formulate policies and regulations that prioritize making transportation better for everyone, rath

Resources:

Amitai Bin-Nun (SAFE)

LinkedIn

Twitter

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Amitai Bin-Nun is the Vice President at Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE). There, it’s his job to assist with developing and establishing regulations on autonomous vehicles. His goal is to find a balance between ensuring the safety of people, promoting innovation, and maximizing the potential of the technology. These types of vehicles are transforming the way all of us travel; Amitai discusses how impactful the development of this technology will be for those living with disabilities.

An ex-black-hole-studying PHD physicist who has also worked at Harvard's Kennedy School, the Department of Energy and for U.S. Senator Chris Coons, now Amitai spends time at SAFE helping governments regulate self-driving cars in a way that still promotes innovation and maximizes the potential of this technology. Another significant part of his job is to articulate (including on podcasts!) why society should care and want self-driving vehicles.

Resources:

Amitai Bin-Nun (SAFE)

LinkedIn

Twitter

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Nvidia and Qualcomm alum, David Fritz, now at Siemens, breaks down the lesson of Apple. Over time, the gang from Cupertino has done more of their own silicon stuff (design and so on) and thus has captured more of the world's smartphone profits. David says this fact isn't lost on carmakers and suppliers, which are edging into the world of transistors and gates. And he talks about how a chip designer might breakdown all these YouTube videos of people (mis)behaving with various driver-assist and self-driving systems in today's vehicles. (Summary: the systems aren't ready for prime time and anyone who really knows chips and ICs would never do what many of these drivers are doing.)

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