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Siren of Mobility Entices BMW, Jaguar, Peugeot

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Burney Simpson

The Siren of Mobility has convinced European auto giant BMW to launch a car-sharing service in the U.S. this month, while Peugeot and Jaguar each announced vague plans for similar projects.

It’s too soon to tell whether mobility will be a beautiful siren’s call or an emergency siren.

BMW said it would begin operating its ReachNow car-sharing service in Seattle with about 400 of its 3 Series sedans, Mini Coopers and electric i3 model cars. Customers can book cars through the ReachNow app in either iOS or Android smartphones.

BMW is partnered in the project with San Francisco-based RideCell, a provider of software designed for car-sharing, ridesharing and transit services. RideCell has evolved into a manager of vehicle fleets after beginning as an Uber-style taxi service.

RideCell customers include the University of California-Berkeley, 3M and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, according to TechCrunch.

The Seattle launch is part of a bigger car-sharing program that BMW has planned. Its i Ventures investment arm led an $11.7 million Series A funding round in RideCell this month. BMW could expand ReachNow to 10 cities, according to reports.

BMW’s RideCell is the latest in a string of auto OEMs creating or expanding ‘mobility’ divisions that plan to offer car-sharing, ridesharing, and other non-ownership approaches for consumers. The vehicles may offer Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and mobility divisions have proposed the eventual shift to providing driverless models.

For definition’s sake – car-sharing means multiple users sharing a vehicle, while ridesharing is a word that has evolved to cover the Uber-style method of a one-time ride provided on-demand.

JAGUAR LEAPS, PEUGEOT PREPARES

Jaguar Land Rover launched this week InMotion, a developer of car-sharing, ridesharing and mobility-type services where customers access vehicles through smartphones and other connected devices, the company announced.

InMotion is a Jaguar subsidiary that could eventually offer services in North America, Europe, and Asia. For now it is a London-based research project looking into various trial programs.

Jaguar, a subsidiary of India-based automaker Tata Motors, said it will begin the testing of some of these services next month.

Next up – PSA Group, which owns Peugeot, Citroen and DS Automobiles. It plans to get back into the US market, possibly starting with a car-sharing service in 2017.

The theory is the car-share program would get the brand name back in front of U.S. consumers, and that could lead to selling Peugeots which haven’t been marketed in the U.S. since 1991, according to Edmunds.

Peugeot is partnered with French electric car manufacturer Bollore in producing the compact EV Citroen e-Mahari.

Bollore operates a car-sharing service in Paris with 10,000 subscribers, and another in Indianapolis with 1,000 members and 120 cars, according to the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Daimler operates the Car2Go service in New York, Austin, Texas, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon.

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Beverly Hills Plans Driverless Shuttle

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Burney Simpson

Beverly Hills is seeking to operate autonomous shuttle vehicles as part of its public transportation system. The City Council unanimously approved the project recently.

The autonomous shuttles would provide on-demand, point-to-point transportation within the city. Users would request a ride with a smartphone app.Mayor John Mirisch proposed the idea last June in a column for the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Mirisch said the shuttles could reduce congestion and the demand for parking, while increasing mobility and road safety within the city’s 5.7 square miles.

Mirisch believes the shuttle could solve the ‘first mile/last mile’ challenge for riders who will be taking the Purple Line of the Los Angeles Metro subway. Plans call for two Purple Line stops in Beverly Hills, though those may not open until 2026.

Mirisch tells Driverless Transportation that the Beverly Hills shuttle plan is now at the conceptual stage.

“We want to set out a vision, look at the technology, and determine how far away we are from that,” Mirisch said. “We will also look at the legal environment, and determine how we can get to our goal.”

Under phase one of the city’s plan, Beverly Hills will develop partnerships with autonomous vehicle manufacturers. It will also be working with regulators and policy makers to create an outline of the project.

Beverly Hill’s shuttle concept comes shortly after a proposed $121 billion, 40-year transportation plan from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The county is projected to grow by 2.4 million people by 2057.

But the Authority’s plan doesn’t include driverless vehicles, Mirisch said.

“Autonomous vehicles can transform and revolutionize transportation. When you are considering spending that much money, let’s look at this disruptive technology, and find if it can it grow mobility, convenience, safety, and so on,” said Mirisch.

“(The Authority) plans to use yesterday’s transportation – heavy rail, buses. If we want to build for the next 100 years, we should look at the technology of the next 100 years.”

The first driverless shuttle in the U.S. is scheduled to start operating this summer at the Bishop Ranch business park in San Ramon, Calif. (See “Driverless Shuttle Gives Momentum to GoMentum Station”). The shuttle will be operated by EasyMile, a French firm that has run a number of driverless projects in Europe.

Photo of Beverly Hills by Prayitno, 2011.

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Plan in the Works for Driverless Highway from Canada to Mexico

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Many experts have said one of the biggest concerns with introducing self-driving cars into society is mixing them on the same streets with human-driven cars.

That’s one of the main reasons why North Dakota native Marlo Anderson says he is working with the Central North American Trade Corridor Association (CNATCA) to develop his idea for an “autonomous highway” that would stretch from Canada to Mexico.

Anderson’s “Autonomous Friendly Corridor” would actually make use of an already-existing highway that he says is widely underused-U.S. Highway 83.

Highway 83 runs through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In the north, it crosses the border into Manitoba, and it ends at Mexico in the south.

Anderson told Transport Topics he hopes to test his idea in 2017 by riding in an autonomous vehicle from Bismarck, North Dakota to Pierre, South Dakota.

Anderson also said he and the CNATCA are working to create a coalition between the six states Highway 83 passes through and Canada to help make the Autonomous Friendly Corridor a reality.

“It’s pretty strong now between Canada and North Dakota,” Anderson told Transport Topics. “This will set a footprint for the rest of the country to follow.”

Anderson told KFYR-TV that he believes the corridor will not only help the move toward driverless technology to progress, but will also help alleviate general transportation issues in the U.S.

Anderson explained, the bulk of the American highway system is designed to help move people and goods between the east and west-but traveling north and south is much more of a challenge.

“Going North to South is very very difficult. We feel the autonomous corridor would alleviate some of that strain of moving North and South,” he said.

KFYR explained that with the Autonomous Friendly Corridor, unmanned cars would be able to deliver goods, and landport stations would be situated every 200 miles for re-fueling and unloading cargo.

In addition, “Drones could come in, pick up packages and move them to another location too. So this landport is kind of a new concept that we’ve been tossing around too, and there’s a lot of interest in that as well,” said CNATCA Treasurer Dave Blair.

The Autonomous Friendly Corridor is being dubbed a “visionary project” by planners.

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Zoox Recruits from Tesla with Live Tests Coming

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Burney Simpson

Driverless car creator Zoox is bringing in staff from Tesla as it celebrates being approved for live testing of its driverless car on California roads by the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Zoox is the 12th firm approved by the regulator.

Zoox seeks to revolutionize the transportation service industry, not invent a new type of automobile, according to an April 2014 interview with co-founder Tim Kentley-Klay by Driverless Transportation (See “Catching Up with Zoox”).

That fits with a current company description posted on a LinkedIn site of new board member Laurie Yoler. She has an extensive history with Tesla and joined the Zoox board in December.

According to Yoler’s write up, Zoox is:

“a robotics company pioneering autonomous mobility. We are developing our own fully autonomous electric vehicle and the supporting ecosystem required to bring the technology to market at scale. … Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. The company is venture backed and presently in stealth mode.”

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is growing in the autonomous vehicle space as car-sharing, ride-sharing firms like Uber, Lyft, and Car2Go expand. MaaS could become a combination of publicly- and privately-owned transportation services provided on a subscription basis. Some say MaaS could replace private vehicle ownership for many consumers.

According to press reports Zoox was founded by Kentley-Klay, an Australian film director and designer, and Jesse Levinson, a Stanford University engineer who worked with Sebastian Thrun, the first director of Google’s self-driving car program.

TESLA CONNECTION

Zoox offers a virtually empty website. Its street address is the same as that of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory that sits on the Stanford University campus. Stanford operates SLAC for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

zoox4Yoler is a venture capital investor and a founding board member of Tesla, serving in various roles with the electric vehicle OEM from 2003 to 2013.

Zoox appears to be recruiting others from Tesla which last year launched ‘Autopilot’, an over-the-air software update that gave many of its vehicles semi-autonomous capabilities.

Current Zoox staff with a Tesla background include its Head of Talent, the Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain, and a talent and marketing staffer, according to LinkedIn postings.

Zoox may also have connections with the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Yoler was with DFJ when it backed Tesla.

By some reports Zoox is backed by DFJ though the VC firm’s website doesn’t list it in its current portfolio of companies.

NO WINDSHIELD, WHEEL, PEDALS

Zoox’s first public model was a futuristic roadster-style vehicle that predated the driverless car that Mercedes rolled out to massive attention at CES 2015. That Zoox model had no front or back, no windshield, no steering wheel, no brake pedal.

In a 2013 video from Drive the Nation, Kentley-Klay discusses his design concept that offered four independent control systems centered on the wheels, and four seats that faced each other.

At one point, the vehicle was called the L4, a nod to the Level 4 fully autonomous vehicle as defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The goal was a 2020 launch.

Kentley-Klay’s thingsivemade.com website provides insight on his view towards autonomous vehicles, along with photos of his visiting the Google campus to meet Anthony Levandowski, at one time the leader of Google’s autonomous efforts.

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The Looming Mobility Brands Takeover

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Burney Simpson

Car brands are dead.

Long live Uber, Lyft, Car2Go, and similar ridesharing-style providers, writes Lukas Neckermann, a ‘transforming mobility’ expert and author of The Mobility Revolution: Zero Emissions, Zero Accidents, Zero Ownership.

Neckermann’s book times well with an April Fast Company profile of Lyft that declares the firm will become a major transportation player due to some smart partnerships and the rise of mobility.

Neckermann argues that young people are becoming loyal to brands like Uber and Lyft, but are indifferent to GM, Ford, Mercedes, and others.

That means the day is coming where the big auto OEMs will be white label manufacturers of vehicles that are bought and used by the rideshare firms.

For instance, nearly three-quarters of Americans and Germans said they would rather use a robot-taxi than purchase a new car, according to a 2015 Roland Berger survey that Neckermann cites.

“Giving up car ownership and driving is becoming a real option for more and more people,” he writes in a blog post “Branding for the Mobility Revolution.”

In response, GM made a $500 million investment in Lyft last year and Wall Street values Uber at $40 to $50 billion.

I was thinking about car ownership as I heard my Honda dealer’s repair shop give me a fix-it estimate of close to $2,000 for my 1999 Civic.

I’ve loved this wonderfully-built car since the day I bought it. Boy, does Honda know its stuff. But I’m convinced that the auto OEMs have turned to repair/maintenance revenue as more folks delay buying new cars.

I know it’s not a straight one-up, one-down connection. But that’s my perception. And it adds to my lean to dropping ownership.

LAST MILE/FIRST MILE SOLUTION

That trend is just part of why Lyft has a shot in the mobility business, according to Fast Company.

“We want to create an alternative to car ownership, which is a $2.15 trillion market in the U.S. alone,” Lyft co-founder John Zimmer tells the magazine.

The FC profile, ‘The Race is On,’ is a typically upbeat (let’s face it - rah-rah) breeze that the magazine churns out. But it makes some solid points.

Lyft may be about 1/10th the size of Uber but it has wisely avoided going into markets like China on its own. Instead it partnered with Didi Kuaidi, the Chinese rideshare firm that already has infrastructure there. In contrast Uber is losing $1 billion a year trying to chew Big Red.

Lyft also hooked up with Starbucks last year, though that’s only amounted to rewards program trade-offs.

The potential is big. Fast Company suggests that Lyft could designate as special pick up spots the 12,000 Starbucks cafes, including those in grocery chains.

If true, that becomes a solution to the last mile/first mile problem, at least here in the States.

Grab a coffee, buy some veggies, get a ride. Works for me.

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Google to DOT: We should be able to sell driverless cars if they can pass federal road test

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Jennifer van der Kleut

News outlets are reporting that Google executive Chris Urmson sent the U.S. federal government a proposal Friday suggesting that self-driving cars should be legal on public roads, and legal to sell to consumers, if they are able to pass a road test satisfying federal safety standards.

Furthermore, Google’s proposal said the rule, if approved, should apply to any company manufacturing self-driving cars, not just Google.

“Google would rather not wade through government bureaucracy and red tape, so it has penned a proposal that will hopefully allow autonomous vehicles to be federally approved for road use sooner,” Hot Hardware reported Saturday.

“It’s hard to argue with Google’s reasoning,” Hot Hardware writers said, appearing to agree with Google.

This past week, representatives from several top companies such as Google, General Motors, Lyft, Duke University and Delphi Automotive, which are all heavily invested in autonomous car research and development, appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before members of Congress on the merits of the rising technology.

While it appears some progress was made in the meeting, in the same week, a new report from the Department of Transportation made headlines.

In its efforts to create a consistent national policy regarding self-driving cars, the DOT proposed that any self-driving cars on public roads must include a driver’s seat, steering wheel and brake pedal.

This was met with disappointment from Google, whose cars are famously steering wheel-less.

Engadget reports that the proposal was sent in an informal letter to top DOT officials on Friday, but that an official draft proposal has not been submitted to legislators yet.

Nevertheless, Google representative Johnny Luu told the Associated Press that the tech company’s proposal was “the beginning of a process” to create “the right framework that will allow deployment in a safe and timely manner.”

If approved, analysts see the proposed road tests as a “fast-track” approach to getting self-driving cars to market, as opposed to the current, more lengthy process automakers usually have to abide by.

“The typical process for making new rules takes years,” Associated Press reporter Justin Pritchard reports.

There is no word yet on what legislators think of Google’s idea.

“The department will take input from lots of stakeholders as we develop [a] plan,” Gordon Trowbridge, spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is overseeing the regulation of self-driving technology within the broader Department of Transportation, told the Associated Press last week.

 

 

 

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Baidu Reportedly to Test Driverless Cars in U.S. Soon

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Chinese tech giant Baidu dropped a big announcement this week in the race toward autonomous driving.

The company’s chief scientist, Andrew Ng, said Tuesday that Baidu will soon start testing its driverless cars in the U.S., reports the International Business Times (IBT).

Baidu may be lesser-known than some other companies currently working on autonomous cars like Google, Tesla and Ford, but many experts say they are on the same level, or perhaps even slightly ahead, due to their size and valuation-Baidu is considered the Chinese version of Google, and is valued at around $55 billion.

Some say Baidu also has an advantage over other American and European countries because of China’s more relaxed regulations toward driverless cars, and the Chinese government’s eager, open attitude toward the innovative technology.

Interestingly, no companies other than Baidu have tested driverless cars in China.

Baidu also has several ties to the U.S. through Ng, who has conducted work at Stanford University and has a lab there, and who manages a tech lab in Sunnyvale, California, where he said around 160 workers are hard at work on their autonomous car project, Nasdaq reports.

Ng was reportedly among the many top company executives who testified before Congress Tuesday about the virtues of autonomous driving. Nasdaq and IBT report that Ng has suggested leveraging connected-car and mobile technology to help increase the safety of partially-autonomous and fully self-driving cars. For example, construction workers could use a mobile app to notify all computer-enabled cars in the area of available detours to circumvent construction zones.

Baidu originally said it would release a self-driving car by the end of 2015. More recently, Nasdaq reports that Baidu is aiming to launch a series of self-driving shuttles that operate on a consistent, managed route in China, and expanding routes gradually after some success.

Baidu currently uses modified BMW sedans for its tests, and reportedly has partnerships with three different Chinese auto manufacturers to produce autonomous cars in the future.

 

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U.S. Finalists for Smart City Challenge Announced, Will Now Compete for $40 Million in Funding

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Jennifer van der Kleut

At the SXSW Festival over the weekend, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the seven finalists for a unique challenge that could garner the winning city $40 million in funding to transform their town into a driverless “utopia.”

As Gizmodo explains, the country’s Smart City Challenge is a “fast-track initiative” to get cities thinking more about smart, high-tech solutions to urban transportation-with a particular focus on autonomous vehicles.

After receiving proposals, Foxx announced seven finalist cities that will compete for $40 million in funding from the Department of Transportation (DOT) for the implementation of their ideas.

The seven finalist cities are:

  • Austin, Texas
  • Columbus, Ohio
  • Denver, Colorado
  • Kansas City, Missouri
  • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • Portland, Oregon
  • San Francisco, California

Gizmodo reports that the challenge was initially announced across the country in connection with the DOT’s “Beyond Traffic” report, which warned cities that if they didn’t start preparing for autonomous transportation soon-a big push by the Obama administration, which recently pledged $4 billion to help make it happen-they could find themselves wasting millions on infrastructure improvements that become obsolete as the technology becomes the new norm.

The competition was specifically open to midsize cities with populations between 250,000 and 850,000. Finalists were selected based on “how well their proposals match the DOT’s goals — and how likely they look to succeed,” CNET said.

CNET reports that DOT representatives were “blown away” by the quality of the 78 submissions they received from cities all over the country. In fact, they had initially planned on five finalists, but added an extra two because they were so impressed.

The seven finalist cities will now receive $100,000 each and begin work with some of the world’s most powerful tech companies to fine-tune and streamline their project ideas.

The winning city, to be announced in June, will not only receive up to $40 million in funding from the DOT, but Gizmodo reports they “will receive tools and assistance from several partners, including data storage by Amazon Web Services, driver-assistance tech from Mobileye, a 3D modeling platform from Autodesk, and a V2V communication system from NXP.”

The winner will also get up to $10 million more from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s company Vulcan, “which is focused on vehicle emissions reduction and helping cities to stop climate change.”

“I want our country to lead the world in transportation again,” Foxx said. “Unfortunately we got into this practice of thinking small, and we can’t afford to do it anymore if we’re going to lead the world in economic growth and quality of life and pass along a country that is better than the one we inherited,” Foxx told Gizmodo.

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Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Growing in the EU

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Burney Simpson

The Mobility as a Service concept is gaining adherents in Europe.

The start-up MaaS Finland garnered 2.2 million Euros ($2.4 million) in an early funding round last month with hopes of going back to investors for more this fall, according to release from the firm.

French transportation giant Transdev and Turkey’s commercial auto manufacturer Karsan Otomotiv Sanayii and Ticaret AS, each own 20 percent of MaaS Finland.

MaaS Finland officially opened its doors in February. It plans to deliver its services in Finland and two other countries this year, then expand in 2017.

Proponents believe MaaS will bring greater efficiency to transportation services, lower public reliance on autos, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Mobility as a Service Alliance says that MaaS offers travelers “tailor made mobility solutions based on their individual needs. … for the first time, easy access to the most appropriate transport mode or service will be included in a bundle of flexible travel service options for end users.”

HOW IT WORKS

Consumers access their MaaS provider through a smartphone app. The provider creates and manages a trip for the user by finding the right solution with a combination of public transport, car-sharing, ride-sharing, taxi, and bicycle-sharing.

In one business model the gateway firm purchases the rides/transport on a volume basis from the individual providers. The gateway firm also conducts data analysis on the subscriber’s preferences, and uses the information to develop more efficient trips for the customer.

The consumer receives either a single bill for the trip, or becomes a monthly subscriber to the service.

The MaaS concept takes advantage of the move away from car ownership by millennial consumers, and the corresponding growth in transportation sharing services like Uber and BikeShare.

“(A)sk yourself: ‘What would happen if I gave up my car?’” MaaS Finland CEO Sampo Hietanen, who holds a 10 percent stake in the company, said in a release.

“For one hundred euros [per month], you could have unlimited access to public transport services plus limited access to taxi rides and a rented car for a given number of kilometers.”

Other MaaS Finland shareholders include InMob Holdings of Cyprus; Neocard; Korsisaari; GoSwift; MaaS Australia; Goodsign; IQ Payments; and Delta Capital Force, according to a company release.

The European Mobility as a Service Alliance was launched at the 2015 ITS World Congress in Bordeaux, France. The Alliance was founded by 20 organizations, including AustriaTech, Ericsson, Helsinki Business Hub, Connekt, MOBiNET, Xerox, and ITS Finland and ITS Sweden.

The early provider UbiGo tested its MaaS service in Gothenburg, Sweden. It reported 70 subscribers made 12,000 transactions in six months. No customers cancelled the service after the test. Volvo was one of the partners in the test.

UbiGo says consumers pay only for what they use, without the hassle of owning a car.

Last May UbiGo was awarded the Promising Innovation award by the International Transport Forum of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.

Photo: (Untitled) by Caitlin H, 2011.

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Zipcar Expanding Services, Looking Ahead to Driverless Car Fleets

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Jennifer van der Kleut

One might think the popularity of car-sharing service ZipCar might be waning in the face of ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, but actually, reports say ZipCar is continuing to grow, particularly in college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Obviously self-driving car technology is right up there alongside car-sharing and ride-hailing services as one of the next big game-changers in transportation - and ZipCar is not ignoring that fact.

The Boston Herald reports that while ZipCar may not be working on developing their own self-driving cars, they are already looking ahead and preparing to take advantage of the technology as soon as it becomes available.

“Don’t worry, we’re on it,” CEO Kaye Ceille said in an email to ZipCar members across the country recently.

Vice President of Product and Member Experience Nichole Mace said the company views adding autonomous cars to its fleets as just another extension of what they already offer customers.

“Today if you need a car, there’s a car two blocks away - it’s around the corner, you can pick up the car,” Mace said. “In the future, the autonomous car - you won’t be walking a couple blocks, the autonomous car will be right outside your door.”

The Herald reports that ZipCar is working closely with the University of Michigan’s Mobility Transformation Center and with major automakers like Ford, GM and Toyota, though the company did not give details.

In the meantime, as ZipCar waits for autonomous car technology to become widely available, it is reportedly adding other new services for its members. For example - in the past, car reservations were strictly for 24-hour periods and the cars had to be returned to the same location where they were picked up from. The Herald reports that ZipCar is planning to start offering shorter reservations, including one-way trips that will allow cars to be returned to different stations.

ZipCar is also facing new competition, though. As the Detroit Free Press reports, GM just launched its own car-sharing service, called Maven, in Michigan, in response to the popularity of such services among college students and professionals.

“Maven began with 11 locations on [the University of Michigan] campus, offering 17 vehicles,” the Free Press reports. “The plan…is to grow that to 20 locations with 35 vehicles throughout the city, according to Chevrolet spokeswoman Annalisa Bluhm.”

Other big announcements from GM recently include the fact that the company invested $500 million in ride-hailing app Lyft for autonomous car technology.