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The Next Billion Cars – The $100,000,000,000 Lie

In 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk instructed his team of engineers to ‘hard code’ the first demo of what would become ‘Full Self Driving’. A faked video drove panic across the entire automotive sector, leading to massive (and mostly failed) investments in technologies for autonomy.

Author mpescePosted on No comment The Next Billion Cars – Autonomous Vehicles: Learning to Crawl

The Next Billion Cars – Autonomous Vehicles: Learning to Crawl

In 2016, Telsa made a video touting their ‘self-driving’ software – faked. Every major manufacturer promised self-driving cars by 2021 – none are even close. Will the nirvana of driverless cars ever come – or will it remain a temping mirage, forever just over the horizon? Mark is joined by co-host Sally Dominguez and Special Correspondent Drew Smith as we speak to GIO boffin Steve Cratchley, and reconnect with Ken Goldberg – does Ken still believe autonomous vehicles are a decade or more away? Are we advancing toward autonomy – or stalled in the high-speed lane?

Here’s the deeply disturbing footage of the 8-car pileup on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge on Thanksgiving Day – possibly due to a failure in a Tesla’s self-driving feature.

A Tesla engineer testifies that the firm’s 2016 video touting its self-driving software was faked. That led to Tesla warning its investors that it’s being investigated by the US Justice Department.

Mercedes is the first car maker in the US cleared for ‘Level 3’ autonomy – in Nevada.

And back in 2022, Mercedes told the press it would be taking full legal responsibility for its driver assistance features…

And of course y’all should be listening to Drew’s other podcast, “Looking Out“…

Thanks to series sponsors GIO and BMW Electromobility.

Author mpescePosted on

THE NEXT BILLION CARS Episode 4: The Next Billion Kilometers

Transformations in autonomy & electrification give automobile designers a new palette of possibilities – does our experience of driving change?

Drew Smith talks to BMW design legend Chris Bangle about what it took to design the REDSPACE urban car for the Chinese market. And here’s a video where he’s talking at the Art Center College for Design in Pasadena (Chris’s alma mater, and the school that graduates most of the world’s top car designers):

Mark and Sally sat down at the North American International Auto Show for a long interview with recently-retired Ford design legend Elizabeth Baron, about what it took to combine the real and virtual design processes into a seamless whole.

Elizabeth Baron, in the podcast suite at the Detroit Foundation Hotel, January 2019

Finally, Sally learns about the design possibilities created by autonomous vehicles from Luciano Nakamura, one of the founders of Australian startup AEV Robotics.

AEV Robotics rethinks design around urban use cases…
Author mpescePosted on 1 Comment on THE NEXT BILLION CARS Episode 2: The Next Billion Robots

THE NEXT BILLION CARS Episode 2: The Next Billion Robots

How long until we have self-driving cars? That’s the biggest question confronting the entire transportation sector. Autonomy unlocks a lot of amazing possibilities – but what is it, really, and how far away?

In this second episode of THE NEXT BILLION CARS, Special Correspondent Drew Smith details the five levels of autonomy, Mark goes for a LIDAR ride with Nick Langdale-Smith of Sydney startup Baraja, and Sally learns about a software back-seat driver from Intel’s Jack Weast – one that may help us be better human drivers, as well.

Mark got taken for a ride in Baraja’s demo vehicle –
note the LIDAR scanners mounted in the four cardinal directions atop the van.

Here’s a great backgrounder on Toyota’s ‘Guardian’ system – software that helps both humans and autonomous vehicles be better drivers.