Category Archives: Transportation
Rapid adoption of self-driving cars considered harmful, a plea for caution
Uber, Lyft, reduce car ownership and car travel

Traffic congestion is one of the negative sides of the car-dominated transportation system. The road system wasn’t built to handle the amount of traffic currently on the roads. Building more roads is not the solution since traveling in that direction simply leads to more sprawl because of geometrical requirements placed…
Uber transparency report raises Big Brother concerns in future Robotaxi services
Obama Administration pushes to accelerate autonomous vehicle technology

Today the Obama Administration announced a plan to accelerate autonomous vehicle development, citing the need to reduce traffic congestion and to embrace the future of transportation. The press release referred to a report published last fall by the Department of Transportation highlighting transportation challenges we face due to increasing population,…
Tesla Model S autopilot crash in Netherlands begs buggy software question

Any autonomous driving system relies on the correct software functioning. As we all know, any software has bugs in it, even software that has seen “lots” of testing. In the rush to add autonomous driving to cars (zero fatalities zero emissions is the Nissan/Renault pledge) may produce an unexpected result.…
Tesla Motors 7.1 software update a baby step to… an autonomous robotaxi service?
Nissan-Renault promises 10 cars w/ autonomous robocar technology by 2020

Nissan-Renault is one of (er.. two of) the automobile companies working on autonomous drive. Nissan had previously announced the Zero Emissions Zero Fatalities pledge, and more recently showed off an autonomous vehicle prototype. The other day the Nissan-Renault Alliance laid out a roadmap for autonomous driving, and reminded us of…
Caltrans issues design guidance for awesome protected bikeways to redesign our cities

Last week California’s Transportation Agency, Caltrans, issued a Design Guidance document describing implementation of protected bikeways in California. The document should make it easier for California cities to design/redesign their cities to provide a better balance between all street system users. The picture shown above is one of the…
CalTrans Class IV Bikeway Design Guidance – December 2015
GM, Lyft in joint venture, putting ride sharing drivers on notice — your days are numbered

GM has taken a big step towards offering autonomously driven robotaxi services, hinted in a press release in October 2015, by making a $500 million investment into Lyft. The companies pledged “a long-term strategic alliance to create an integrated network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the U.S.” That investing $500M into…
WARNING: Tesla Autopilot mode is not full autonomous driving, pay attention while “driving”
Nissan’s IDS self driving concept car promises perfect future that may never happen

Yesterday, Nissan unveiled a bold new concept car fulfilling the “zero emissions zero fatalities” promise made a couple years ago. It’s an all-electric car with self driving autonomous features galore. Its story is told with an enticing image gallery and a series of video’s demonstrating usage scenarios that aren’t quite the challenges…
Tesla Motors and the future autonomous robocar self-driving car sharing service

Tesla Motors is delivering the promised Autopilot mode with an Over-The-Air update scheduled for tomorrow, Oct 15, 2015. Maybe we will look back on October 15 as the first day of the robot dominance of humanity. Maybe this will simply make Tesla’s automobiles that much more attractive, and cement Tesla’s…
GM Unveils ‘Let’s Drive NYC’ Car-Sharing Program

Retrieved from: http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2015/oct/1001-nyc-car-sharing.html NEW YORK – Running an errand to a big box store or planning a weekend excursion are about to get easier for some Manhattan residents because of a car-sharing program revealed today by General Motors. It’s the company’s latest move to deliver urban mobility options to customers around…