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News Roundup: U.S. Senate Approves Driverless Car Bill, Federal Government Gives State Millions For Automated Taxi Service, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Driverless car bill passes in the U.S. Senate

Members of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a bill similar to one already passed in the House of Representatives that will presumably help clear the way for driverless car technology to move forward. The bill keeps approval of driver’s licenses, regulation of insurance and enforcement of traffic laws within the states’ purview, but places oversight of the design and manufacture of driverless vehicles in the hands of the federal government-specifically the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Like the House bill, the Senate bill also permits Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to hand individual auto manufacturers exemptions from federal safety standards for up to 100,000 vehicles per year while they are fine-tuning their technology; and it also places responsibility with tech designers to protect their vehicles from cyber attacks. Read more from the Washington Post. 

 

Federal government giving South Carolina county millions for driverless taxis?

According to a news report from a USA Today-affiliated regional newspaper, the federal government has pledged millions of dollars toward the development of a driverless taxi service in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville Online says $4 million has been pledged to help develop the nation’s first automated taxi service in Greenville County. In a news conference Thursday, county officials announced the first test vehicle will be deployed on the Clemson University campus, in connection with the college’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR). While the test vehicle is only the size of a golf cart, officials said the program’s expansion will feature typical-size vehicles, as well as possible non-emergency medical vehicles for senior and disabled residents. A group called the Global Autonomous Vehicle Partnership is matching funds to help the development of the autonomous vehicles. Read more from Greenville Online.

 

Driverless startup hires execs away from Google’s Waymo, Microsoft

Driverless vehicle startup Nauto is fresh off a monster round of funding, and is already looking to expand its business both locally and globally. In a first step toward that goal, the startup announced this week that it has hired executives from Microsoft, and Google Alphabet’s self-driving car spinoff, Waymo. Waymo’s former head of business, Jennifer Haroon, has joined Nauto as its new vice-president of corporate development and business operations. Microsoft’s former vice-president of global enterprise sales, Sanket Akerkar, joins Nauto as its new senior vice-president of global fleets and insurance. Nauto most recently raised $159 million in funding from a number of major firms, and already has several lucrative partnerships in place with auto manufacturers such as General Motors, BMW and Toyota. The company currently outfits commercial fleets with accident detection devices (shown in image), and is looking to scale out its geographic operations and commercial business. Read more from Recode.

Image: Nauto accident detection device / Credit: Nauto Inc.

NVIDIA Crushes Earnings, Jumpstarts D20 Stock Index

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A fair balance of 11 price gainers and nine losers could not hold the D20 Stock Index (D20) in check this past week.

NVIDIA (NVDA) shocked the markets in a good way and announced a 53.6-percent growth in year-over-year third-quarter earnings and beat analysts’ revenue estimates by more than $300 million. Its stock price shot up 30 percent, blasting off from $67.57 and hitting an all-time high before ending the week at $87.92.

NVIDIA’s outsized gains drove the D20 up 5.1 percent to a near all-time high of 162.41.

Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 had good weeks as well.  The Dow gained 5.4 percent while the S&P 500 closed at 2164.45, up 3.8 percent.

Other notable gainers were Ford (F), up 8.3 percent; General Motors (GM), up 9.2 percent; and TomTom (TOM2), up 14.3 percent.  Nissan (NSANY) was the D20’s largest price-percentage loser, dropping 7.5 percent to end the week at $18.18.

Visit the Driverless Transportation D20 Stock Index page to learn more about it and its component stocks.

 

Up-and-Comers:

Oryx, an Israeli start-up named after a species of antelope found in Africa and the Middle East, has secured funding to commercialize a “coherent optical radar system” for autonomous vehicles. The system will compete with more traditional lidar systems and is targeted to be less expensive. Oryx employees hope to overcome one of lidar’s primary shortcomings, of being able to be blinded by bright sunlight.

Columbus, Ohio Wins $50 Million Prize in U.S. DOT’s Smart City Challenge

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Jennifer van der Kleut

News broke this week that the city of Columbus, Ohio has beaten six other cities to win the $50-million prize in the Smart City Challenge.

Cities from across the country were invited earlier this year to pitch their intelligent-transportation project ideas to compete for $50 million in funding. Recently, the seven cities of Columbus, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon were named the seven finalists, and were invited to Washington, D.C. to formally pitch their project ideas to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx on June 3.

For the prize, $40 million in funding is coming from the USDOT, as well as $10 million from a private grant from the company Vulcan, explained the website ColumbusCEO.com.

In addition, the public-private partnerships Columbus formed to help them win the bid will be investing another $90 million in grants for the project, bringing the total funding to $140 million.

Partnership members including Battelle, AEP, Ohio State University, Nationwide, Honda, L Brands, Cardinal Health and others, according to ColumbusCEO, many of which were brought to the table by Columbus’ new mayor, Andrew Ginther.

Columbus’ winning idea consisted of a plan to “link neighborhoods and improve mobility for residents while encouraging additional growth, and to provide an environment for new and existing technology companies to locate in the city,” reported the website Transport Topics.

To be more specific, ColumbusCEO.com described the project as a plan to “use the opportunity to connect workers in high poverty neighborhoods with jobs, improve access to education and prenatal care, and reduce traffic congestion.”

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio confirmed Columbus’ win this week, and said he and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx were impressed by how many companies and CEOs the city was able to bring to the table to collaborate for their innovative project.

“Mayor Ginther and the city’s partners demonstrated a commitment to smart growth that makes the city better for all residents. And that’s why I worked so hard to support Columbus’s efforts,” Brown said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing to work with local leaders and community members to realize the vision of a first-of-its-kind transportation system that increases access to jobs, links neighborhoods, and improves real-time information in a sustainable, safe way.”

An additional prize coming to Columbus is $1.5 million worth of electric vehicle chargers and mobile solar generators donated by DC Solar Solutions, the largest manufacturer of mobile solar technology in the country, Transport Topics indicated.

A press conference is expected to take place sometime on Thursday, June 23 in Linden, one of the Columbus neighborhoods that will benefit from the project.

NuTonomy Raises $16 Million in Funding for Self-Driving Taxi Pilot

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Jennifer van der Kleut

NuTonomy, a self-driving car startup that is backed by Ford Motor Co., announced today it has raised $16 million in funding, which it says will help them achieve their goal of having autonomous taxis on the streets of Singapore by this fall.

Naturally, the Singapore government is one of the big investors, along with major investment firm Highland Capital.

NuTonomy spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013, founded by PhD graduates Karl Iagnemma (CEO) and Emilio Frazzoli (CTO). Since then, NuTonomy has garnered a reputation as being one of the leading companies in the race toward driverless cars.

Now, CEO Karl Iagnemma says this latest round of funding will help them dramatically “accelerate [their] progress—more people and more cars,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

NuTonomy is just one on a list of eight companies working on self-driving technology that want to bring it to the streets of Singapore. The government asked for proposals last year, and eight companies submitted proposals-among which were NuTonomy, Uber and BMW.

“We are inviting companies and research institutions to test-bed their technology and concepts here, in real-life, mixed-use traffic conditions,” Singapore’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport Kin Keong Pang said in a statement.

Perhaps in a jab at the regulatory back-and-forth happening in the U.S. right now, Pang added, “We are contributing financial resources in these partnerships and we are able to fast-track regulatory and other administrative approvals, and get the trials and test-beds up and running quickly and with minimum fuss.”

TechCrunch explains, NuTonomy manufactures equipment that is used to retrofit existing vehicles and turn them into driverless ones. They are currently using retrofitted Mitsubishi iMiev electric cars, and are expecting to also use Renault Zoe EVs in its autonomous cab service later this year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

TechCrunch reports, NuTonomy is also currently testing cars in Michigan and in the U.K., where they are partnering with Jaguar Land Rover, among others.

Most recently, NuTonomy gained a lot of attention when it ran a test program for an autonomous shuttle operating in an office park that could be summoned by an app. Representatives said the amount of data gathered by the program was incredibly valuable.

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.

GM Invests Half a Billion in Lyft for Autonomous Car Network

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Tesla, Uber, Google and (maybe) Apple have some competition hovering.

News outlets pounced on the story Monday, Jan. 4 — the first official business day of 2016 — when the announcement was made that General Motors was investing $500 million in ride-hailing app Lyft, with a view toward forming a future autonomous car network.

Lyft is Uber’s lesser-known twin, and after its latest round of $1 billion in new funding, San Francisco-based Lyft is valued at around $4- to $5-billion. Lyft says it currently completes around 700 million rides per month across 190 cities worldwide. Uber, on the other hand, is worth about 14 times more, or $62.5 billion, and operates in hundreds of cities across 68 countries.

As Forbes points out, in the short-term, the Lyft-GM partnership will function similarly to the partnership Lyft already has with rental car company Hertz, which allows Lyft drivers to temporarily rent Hertz cars in certain markets to drive Lyft customers and make money.

In the long-term, Lyft president John Zimmer told Forbes that they envision a partnership combining GM’s cars with software that allows the car to drive itself, and connects Lyft customers with cars and transportation, among other elements.

The New York Times reports that the new partnership also means GM president Daniel Ammann will join Lyft’s board of directors.

Whereas some might say they see companies like Lyft as an automaker’s biggest threat-since GM’s model is built upon selling individual cars to individual riders, and autonomous transportation seriously threatens the entire idea of car ownership-GM’s Ammann says the automaker is thinking proactively, and wants to be part of the new transportation model of the future.

“We think there’s going to be more change in the world of mobility in the next five years than there has been in the last 50,” Ammann told the New York Times. “From a GM perspective, we view this as much more of an opportunity than a threat.”