Transportation: EVs and Autonomous Leading the Discussions—Insights from 2GreenEnergy Contributor Fritz Maffry
A few more observations on the exploding advancements of technology in transportation from our colleague Fritz Maffry. – ed
This year, the CES (formerly “Consumer Electronics Show”) in Vegas might as well have been called the Electric and Autonomous Vehicle showcase. All the energy and announcements are about plans in this space, with each purveyor trying to upstage the others. Faraday announced they have 64K orders, and their product is a better looking SUV than Tesla currently offers, to be sure. Nissan is showing their next Leaf, but they are still caught in an off-cycle on product. Nissan announced more about their Microsoft partnership and autonomous intentions.
The only problem: Tech is behaving very differently and has very different goals than Automotive. Automotive has to worry about their existing lines of business, which makes the leap of faith to full emphasis on Autonomous pools awkward, slow, conflicted, and not central purpose. That is not a winning hand, despite the embrace of Microsoft.
The pools of autonomous pods are in action in Vegas; people can experience them, but this is not the optimized pool phenom you will see later this year. Toyota confirmed that Level 4 is very close to viable. They also confirmed that level 5 is not, and that is based on their comprehensive evaluation of all the information they can get.
(Level 4 is driverless but for regular routes; the vehicle has relatively limited enviornmental context with which to deal, and “learns” the route and map very well. Can be very well used in regular transit purposes. Level 5 means it is fully autonomous, to go anywhere, deal with all different environmental types, irregular situations. This is much more complicated than Level 4, and may be 3-5 years off. But even then there may be wildcard scenarios that confound the system: fog, purposeful spoofing, unpredictable human behavior, etc.–the wild cards of life.)
We accept that analysis, but we would further add that Level 4 for what Tesla is aiming at is certainly a different approach and of a different criticality than the same for the regular automakers.
Interestingly, GM is campaigning to stop Tesla selling cars in Missouri, while they are routing all their Bolt models to California. Consumers should remember this, and the anti-competitive strategies should be laid bare.
For some time we have been talking about smart assistants getting involved in automotive. The announcements and integration examples were widespread at CES, with cars and with care robots, as we have suggested.
We have talked before about the integrated offerings of Tesla that are coming. Now the competitive responses are being shown: Nissan highlighting with Microsoft, Mercedes showing energy storage, but expect them all to have strategies here. Note that Google is working with Mercedes, Fiat, and Hyundai. Note also that Ford and Toyota are making statements with tech moves of their own to inoculate themselves from the creeping incursion of tech into automotive, with potential commoditization of lower value dimensions of product.
Electrics and Autonomous have arrived, and futures expected to be overwhelming; also note that utilities had nothing to do with the innovation at hand. They were too busy working over state legislatures to get rate hikes before the tsunami of a brave new world sweeps over their local fiefdoms.
We know a few things we can’t talk about, but the public should know that better options are at hand, much better and much cheaper. The autonomous pods are running all over Vegas. Tech and Vegas will show us the way forward, and it won’t stay in Vegas. It is our considered opinion that Tesla is going to a $40 billion market cap, and will shock the market in 2017.
Stay tuned.
Context Reading:
3) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38526807?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
5) Toyota says no IT or automotive company is even close to SAE Level 5 autonomy. Not even close…. Level 4 autonomy is near though
Tesla can do very well with level 4, Toyota, not so much
6) https://www.wired.com/2017/01/ces-gallery-day-one/?mbid=social_twitter
Craig,
1) I doubt whether Faraday will survive 2017, let alone produce any vehicles
2) Tesla Motors can sell vehicles in Missouri,all they have to do is like every other company (including GM and BMW), comply with Missouri State law and regulations.
Autonomous vehicle technology is very interesting, but it’s future and application are far from certain. You’re quite right when you raise the problem of level 5, where the incompatibility of mixed traffic will create problems.
Autonomous vehicle technology would be a tremendous boon for EV’s since the technology is so much simpler and more predictable.
It will be interesting to witness the rate of adoption, I think 3-5 years is very optimistic.