Category Archives: Transportation
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…
New car tech has security vulnerabilities – are we safe from hackers or governments?
Ahead of tomorrows DEFCON conference is tomorrow there’s been several announcements of car security vulnerabilities. I’ve long suspected these vulnerabilities would exist as more infotainment and communications capabilities are built into new cars. Projecting into the future we should expect more of these vulnerabilities, and that the Government (NSA, etc) will…
Gas taxes for highway system funding is broken, taxing EV’s won’t fix it
How is the highway system paid for? Car drivers need roads to drive on, or else those cars will be pretty looking pieces of art stuck in the driveway. While modern western countries today have extensive road and highway networks, unless the government highway administrations are funded those roads will eventually…
Avoidable train wrecks that kill passengers or destroy towns
A couple days ago, an Amtrak train crashed in Philadelphia killing 8 people and injuring dozens more. While the NHTSA hasn’t finished its investigation, thus learning the root cause, it’s known the train was traveling at 106 miles/hr on a track segment with a 50 mile/hr speed limit. Therefore the immediate…