Google, Apple, Uber, Tesla and the future of cars

A comrade from abroad visited the People's Cycling Front HQ over christmas. As he works for a european motor manufacturer, his debriefing was very informative.

What scares them? Tesla and Google; to a lesser extent Apple and Uber

Apple: for providing expensive status toys that don't have wheels on them. Phones are the new coming-of-age accessory, the thing you need to stay in touch with your friends. Ask people which they would do without, car or phone, and the under 30s say: phone. It's the 50+ who say "car". And, like tobacco company customers, their over-use of the product is causing them to die out.

Apple have done more though: set the expectation on how easy devices are to use, and how fast devices evolve. A 3 year old phone? How ancient! Yet car manufacturer "in car experiences" are designed to stay in a car for its entire life, and take years of effort beforehand. The car companies just aren't nimble enough here. Their user experience sucks: go to a car shop and either stare in horror at the number of buttons, or in a different kind of horror at a touch screen that requires attention.

Google: for leading the self-driving car work. Mercedes may have been showing off their self-driving car, but it still likes to offer the "driving experience", while allowing you to rotate the seat 180 degrees for a meeting with your colleagues or family. Google don't care about driving experience, and don't see their users caring either. They want the Apple market -and if you go online via the phone on a train, bus or car: they're happy. They don't have the myth of the open road or their motoring heritage brand to sell. They have something useful: extra online time with your friends. If there's one thing the car companies like about Google is that it may be possible to work with them. Though there the android experience scares them. Google own Android; phone companies come and go.

Uber: not a direct threat to the car companies, yet. What they represent though is is the driving accessory to the iPhone. Uber relies on all their customers having a smartphone. Which means it is OK to spend the money you'd spend on a car on a phone, a bike, public transport and Uber. Throw in car-club and boris bike and provided you live in a city: no car is needed. That is only going to get worse. Every time someone takes a ride with Uber, they know the pickup and dropoff points, and can start planning ahead. Taxi drivers may know that London Paddington is busy when the trains from Bristol arrive, but Uber can know more: that there are 12 customers heading in from Reading, with regular routes for 6 of them.., so start pre-emptively shifting vehicles.

Where Uber really have power is the money behind them. That lets them go beyond evolving the application to be better than anything competition can do, and get into a world that until now only the taxi and car organisations have done: get involved with government. They need to do that to overcome the barriers that some cities are putting up. The LTDA have got power in london by regulatory capture of the TfL taxi licensing authority, and access to press and politicians when in their cars. They can be individual lobbyists for their causes. Except who wants a conversation with a taxi driver when you can be on your phone doing interesting things? Meanwhile Uber has the strength to go to state and federal governments in the US to overcome city restrictions, restrictions which start to come over as anti-consumer.

But Uber can do more, because of their near neighbours in Silicon Valley. The LTDA represents Taxi Drivers. Uber represents Uber. If Uber could roll out a service with a fleet of self-driving electric cars, they would. Their customers aren't paying for 20th century driving experience, they are paying for a ride to wherever —and the chance to catch up with things on their phone while it happens.

With international scale, Uber have the opportunity to work with google for self-driving cars that meet the needs of today's customers.  They are also building up the skills needed to lobby in cities and countries, initially to make Uber legal...but those skills and contacts will help with any transition to self-driving vehicles.

Which brings us round to the one that impresses yet terrifies the car manufacturers: Tesla.

Mikhael and the copenhagenize crew may emphasise the "auto industry" as sellers of an obsolete brand, fighting back against demographic and social change, but Tesla threatens to render the existing car companies obsolete, even while driving itself remains a valued tool.

It comes down to this: what is a car company?

More precisely: what are the core skills of a car company, the barriers to entry which keep competition out?

The answer: engines

Car companies may have brands and marketing, different sub-brands (VW Audi group being the big EU example with Audi, VW, Seat and Skoda), but what takes up most of their R&D budget today, and most of their capital costs is engine plant.  Which is why all vehicles in VAG share motors from the same common pool of engines: shared NRE costs and CAPEX for plants that can cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

What Tesla say is: so what?

New mechanical engines are incredibly expensive to develop. It's not just a matter of designing something powerful, efficient, quiet, not-very polluting, reliable and easy to maintain, it's about designing engines that are cost effective to manufacture. Its those factories that take the capital.

The existing car companies may have some of the best mechanical engineers in the world, capable of designing the engines and the factories, but Tesla have come along and said: its no longer about petrol and diesel engines —it's about batteries, electric motors and the software around them.

The existing car companies may have manufacturing and supply chains optimised to keep stock down to a minimum, partner with their suppliers to get exactly the right number of spark plugs to the factory floor when needed —but that's a supply chain for mechanical parts.  Tesla have come along and said: those moving parts? You'll be needing less of those. Stop worrying about engine cooling, focus on keeping batteries at optimum temperature —and how to recharge them fast.

The existing car companies may have the dealers that nobody else can use to break into a market, but again Tesla have looked at apple retail outlets and said "we like that". Tesla don't have dealers, they are a vertical business, from battery to customer.

That vertical business model transforms servicing. If Toyota have to do a recall, it's expensive, some cars will be missed and its a massive hit to the company. Whereas Tesla have all their cars online, with telemetry and the ability to take software updates. Tesla didn't have to do a recall to (temporarily) disable a suspension-lowering facility while questions existed about its safety. Tesla pushed out the change, later on reversing it. No other player can do that.

In ten years, Tesla have gone from being a company with nothing to being a car company whose battery, charging and vehicle monitoring and management skills make those incumbents look like dinosaurs. And they back up those skills with factories that are far more modern than what the incumbents have. Yes, Tesla cars are expensive today: but they are the new status toys. And those costs can only come down, as Tesla scales.

And guess who are within range of each other: Google, Tesla, Apple and Uber.

The centre of the motoring universe has moved, from Germany and Detroit to California, where it has the potential to do for the incumbents what Apple did for Nokia: destroy them, not out of maliciousness, but because they weren't agile enough, because they stayed in the old world —rather than see the future.

Think about that when the LTDA protest about the cycle superhighway, when a taxi driver cuts you up: Google, Apple, Uber, Tesla

Autonomous cars #2: Speed Limits and other ignored-laws

Previous post #1: If an autonomous car break the speed limit -who takes the blame?

Cycling journalist Carlton Reid, followed up by referencing an article by "Robocar" engineer and evangelist, Brad Templeton, who argues that fears of robocar-related crashes are overrated. He may well have a point given the willingness of todays drivers to make decisions that endanger "overtake cyclists before a corner" with followon decisions that compound the first mistake "I continued ever after seeing the oncoming cyclists".

Robocars are unlikely to suffer from it is the unwillingness to reverse a decision once the situation made it clear it was not the right one. Yet we see that on the road every day: the overtaker who keeps going, the left-hook van driver who, even though they have underestimated the cyclists' speeds, continues to pass and turn. Removing egotism from the decision making process may be progress.

However, the article wasn't actually on the reliability of robocars, but on the moral issue: should robocars break speed limits -and if so, who is at at fault.

Brad actually picks this issue up at one point:

More complex are the situations where breaking the vehicle code is both normal and even necessary, particularly for unmanned vehicles. One must be assertive on some roads in order to get through at all, and everybody does it and nobody is ticketed except in an accident or during zero-tolerance enforcement days.

He has acknowledged that breaking traffic laws is a social norm in many cities, and  rather than saying "it will be impossible for robocars to break the laws", he says "it's complex".  Yet he hints at why the laws get disregarded: because you can. If you only get tickets on "zero-tolerance" days then you can discount the law.

Which is of course precisely why the Daily Mail Fuckwits are so strongly against speed cameras, RLJ cameras and CCTV enforcement of school keep clear zones and bus-lanes. We can automate enforcement of traffic laws today -yet to do so generates a backlash from those who consider being able to break them a human right.

Brad gets into detail on the speed limit issue in another article, where he argues that it should be the right of a robocar to decide for itself what a safe speed is, looking at the two options of speed limits

1. As with its ancestor, the cruise control, the operator of a robocar can set the car to operate at any speed within its general limits, regardless of the road speed limit. The moral and safety decisions rest with this person.
2. The vehicle must be programmed to not break the speed limit, nor allow its operator to do so. It must be aware of all limits and obey them. 

I believe the first choice is both better and more likely. It's more likely because the public has a strong love for having control of their car, even if it is automated. Attempts to put in speed limiters by law have all been rejected, and cars are routinely sold able to go much faster than any allowed speed limit. 

That is, he believes that the driver has the right to make the decisions, even though they endanger others more than the driver -and society has  a set of laws because we recognise that the drivers aren't the best people to make those decisions.

Key claims here:

A vehicle limited to the speed limit will be going much more slowly than traffic on most US freeways, and be forced to drive in the right lane. (& arguments against this)

--- Only if the speed limits were not being enforced. If they were, the robocar would be integrated with the normal traffic flow.

"On many roads all lanes are moving faster than the limit. The limited car would become an obstruction to traffic."

-- Only because all lanes are full of drivers breaking the law. I they were all driving legally this would not be an issue

"This less comfortable ride, plus the longer travel time, will create a great temptation to manually take the wheel on many highways." (& increased risk follows)

Again, this only holds if the driver could break the speed limit with impunity. If speed limits were enforced there would be no benefit of manual driving, hence no increased risk. Anyway, surely robocars are about the ability to work while you drive, to not get tired on long journeys (where the speed difference between 70 and 80 mph may actually alter journey times)

Eventually he comes out and  makes his stance clear -and this is a stance of someone who works on robocars at at google-

I believe the math and other arguments clearly show that robocars should be allowed to move faster than the speed limit so long as they are rated suitably safe in the particular conditions, and the bulk of other traffic is also doing this.

This is just the safe speed and 85% percentile bollocks restated. Yet it ignores how the defacto speed limits of a road and a country have evolved: through a failure to enforce the limits and the gradual acquisition of a motor vehicle fleet designed to break those limits with impunity. Now that a majority of British cars are stable and quiet above 80 mph, the drivers and passengers believe that it is not only safe to do so -but their right- and that any attempt to rigorously enforce the speed limits becomes a political minefield.

Finally, Brad comes out and admits the situation we have in cities today: breaking the law is sometimes necessary because everyone else does: Speeding is just one of code violations almost everybody does.
 

In cities today, "aggressive driving" is often viewed as necessary. Examples: squeezing past bicycles, pulling out half-way across a road to complete a right turn, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic at a roundabout, turning right across the front of an oncoming car.

These are actions that are commonplace in a city, viewed as acceptable to drivers -yet which are some of the actions which are utterly terrifying to anyone trying to cycle in the area.

The "rules of the road" which have evolved in our cities are rules built around  800 Kg vehicles with ABS brakes and fast acceleration -and an assumption that they have right of way over all others. 

In the UK, the law that gets broken the most must be the "give way to pedestrians when turning" law. Anyone walking would die if they believed this would hold: so what will the robocar story be here? To actually give way to pedestrians? Or to follow the actions of the rest of the motor fleet?

The choice of which driving policies to implement in a robocar is something we cyclists cannot naively hope will be made so as to suit us. It will be made to suit the paying customers, within the constraints of the legal system. If robocar sales are suppressed because they don't drive aggressively enough, because they don't speed on the motorways, then the manufacturers will keep pushing this "we need to keep up with traffic" bollocks, this "everyone does it" rule.

But what will happen over time? Even if the first generation of robocars broke the speed limit, cut up pedestrians and squeezed past cyclists "because everyone did it", will there be some threshold -say when 51% of the motor fleet is automated, when suddenly the "everyone does it" argument becomes obsolete? As at that point vehicles will be driven dangerously not because people choose to drive that way, not because robocars do that way to blend in, but because it is what robocars have been programmed to do -and even when they are in the majority, it is how they will behave.

This is why it is critical that autonomous cars are not allowed to break speed limits in autonomous modes from day 1. If not, a precedent will be set that will remain unchallenged even if the cars form the vast majority of the fleet. There won't be a sudden "75% day" when there are deemed to be enough of them that they have to stop speeding, to stop blocking junctions to make progress, or to start giving way to pedestrians. These have to be done from the outset, so that the robots can set an example for the humans.

If an autonomous car break the speed limit -who takes the blame?

Autonomous Cars are the great hope of the car industry, ironically, to solve all problems that cars have created: congestion, safety, parking, etc. It's also an obsession with google -maybe in a misguided belief that it will solve problems, more likely that they want to get all those extra hours people spend in traffic -browsing time.

Ignoring the technical issues -will they work- there are legal issues -and that's something cycling and road safety campaigners need to sort out -before the decisions are made for them.

Start with a simple question: If an autonomous car break the speed limit -who takes the blame?

This is a simple question but gets complex fast.  Today, if a car breaks the speed limit, the driver takes the blame. The driver is expected to be aware of what type of road it is, and what extra road signs show restrictions on the mandated maximums: 50 mph, 40, 30, 20. There are even temporary speed limits -those on motorways are still enforced.

It doesn't matter whether speed limits are long-standing, temporary or recent -if you break them, you take the blame.

Yet lots of people do break the limits, to the extent that if you drive round Bristol at 30 mph drivers behind you start to get impatient and then frantic. Drive down the end of the M32, where it's become 30 mph -you'd have a bus go into the back of you.  And as for the M5 to Birmingham: 85 is the minimum speed in the fast lane.

The defacto speed limits of much of S Gloucs and Bristol are higher than what's legal -the reason people drive at those speeds is because they get away with it. Which is why there's so much hate of speed cameras. Everyone views it as their right to drive at 85 mph down a motorway,  35 in town. Speed cameras don't catch one or two speeders -they force the speed limit down by 15 mph.

But speed camera or police camera: driver is always guilty.

Now, what about Autonomous Cars?

If they can be configured to break the speed limit, if there is some "break the law" button, what would that mean? That drivers have the option of telling the car to break the law -and if so, they are liable? But even building such a feature in means the car manufacturer wink-wink providing an overtake option "to use in emergency" -exactly the same way they hint about how cars can drive at 130 mph "in Germany".

The alternative: you can't speed in autonomous mode, you have to go manual -how is that handled? Does the a-car log this fact and speed? They'd have to: because if the car got caught speeding in manual mode, then the fact it wasn't in autonomous mode is something that'd be used by the car manufacturer as a defence.

But what if the car broke the speed limit in autonomous mode? If you are driving there is no excuse for doing so -and you take the hit: points and penalties. What happens in automatic mode? Does Ford or Google take a hit? Does the driver who was reading email get blamed for the actions of their car?

And how does the car know the speed limits?

Drivers have the road and its signed, but a-cars are going to have to rely on digital maps with speed-limit data on it. How often are those maps going to be refreshed? When a new 20 mph zone is rolled out, can a-cars break the limit until they get an update? And who is at fault then? Is it an "oh well never mind" problem? Is the fault of the driver? The map updaters? Or even the council? After all, today's GPS units have a big disclaimer "don't rely on this" -which is precisely what autonomous cars plan to do.

It gets better thought: in france the speed limits on autoroutes changes depending on weather -that's officially, not just "Slow down in the rain" hints.

Nominally then, an automatic car could break the speed limit in france even if the map was up to date -because it wasn't aware of the weather.

These all sound theoretical questions -but if they don't get answered the likely outcome will be "if an autonomous car breaks the speed limit -never mind". That will be especially in the case in changed limits, permanent or temporary. While drivers could get penalised, the fact that autonomous cars break the limits until the maps are updated is something that could become accepted as inevitable.

No doubt car manufacturers will also be pushing for higher limits for a-cars on motorways, say, 85 mph in dedicate lanes. Which is what they will know they have to in order to preserve the defacto 85 mph limit, to sell autonomous driving on motorways.

Yet from a road safety perspective, this question, who takes the blame when an autonomous car breaks the speed limit, is critical.

Because the answer to that will shape the answer to the next question: if an autonomous car kills someone: who takes the blame?