Beverly Hills’ autonomous shuttles to self-dodge paparazzi

The Beverly Hills City Council unanimously agreed last week to work on a plan to develop autonomous shuttles which will provide transportation for the citizens of Beverly Hills.

The idea is to create a fleet of city-owned driverless shuttles which will act as part of a municipal on-demand transportation service picking up and dropping off individuals at virtually any spot in the city.

So, instead of hiring an Uber driver or calling for a taxi, the people of Beverly Hills will be able to call for and hop in driverless shuttles that will take them anywhere in the city they want to go.

The Beverly Hills City Council wants to pave the way for autonomous vehicles to occupy roads in the United States – without breaking the budget of their riders.

Until recently, purchasing a vehicle with self-driving capabilities has been a recent experience reserved for the wealthy.

Tesla recently received over 325,000 reservations of its upcoming Model 3 vehicle, which has a moderately high price tag of $35,000 – roughly half the price of any Tesla vehicle prior. One of the key features of a Tesla vehicle that has so many people eagerly standing in line for it: autonomous driving.

From a safety standpoint, autonomous vehicles are proven to be as safe – if not safer – than ones driven by a human.

According to several studies, over 90% of all vehicle accidents are caused by human error. This includes driving while distracted, intoxicated, or simple lapse in judgement.

Beverly Hills hasn’t yet decided which technology to use

Google’s Self-Driving Car Project has already exceeded 1.7 million miles of autonomous driving on US roadways in cities including: Mountain View, CA, Austin, TX, Kirkland, TA, and Metro Phoenix, AZ.

During all that time, not one accident out of the 11 that Google was involved in was attributed to the autonomous vehicle.

Even a city with as small of a footprint as Beverly Hills’ 5.7 square miles could benefit greatlyfrom this initiative. Traffic congestion, driver costs, the need for parking spaces, and the amount of accidents taking place in its roadways stand to be reduced by an accessible fleet of autonomous vehicles.

This autonomous vehicle program will be discussed in greater detail during a public summit set to be held this fall. Attendees will receive demonstration rides and witness expert-lead panel discussions on the new program.

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Will elderly and disabled gain most from autonomous cars?

The future of autonomous vehicles might give millions of elderly and disabled citizens a chance at driving, but new draft regulations released in December by the state of California point to a long battle for fully driverless cars on the road.

Google’s director of the self-driving project, Chris Urmson, said he was disappointed in the draft regulations, which state that the driver must be able to control the car at all times. This is similar to the current laws on autonomous vehicles, which Tesla have already implemented.

See Also: For self-driving future, fire the crash test dummies

Google will still be able to test its vehicles on driverless mode, but a driver is still required to sit in the vehicle. That is a low blow for the company, which might have been hoping for a bit of leeway this year as it prepares to commercialize its self-driving project.

Several organized groups called for a relaxation in the laws and a way for disabled people to control autonomous cars. “If there’s an autonomous car, there needs to be a means by which a blind person can operate that car as well,” said Parnell Diggs, board member of the National Federation of the Blind to Medill.

“It would behoove the auto industry to certainly keep the elderly and the disabled in mind, as a growing proportion of the American population are aging baby boomers,” said Kenneth Jon, researcher at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Autonomous cars can take down obstacles

Autonomous cars remove a lot of the issues some elderly people have in cars, like short sight and slow reactions. All of these improvements are for nought however, if regulations maintain that a driver needs to be inside the car and able to take command at all times.

Full autonomy might not come until 2020, according to Baidu, the Chinese company that is currently working on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley. Others, like Tesla, General Motors, and the PSA Group have similar predictions on when the market will be ready for driverless cars.

Until then, it looks like we’re stuck with highway self-driving and self-parking features coming to more cars.

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Detroit Auto Show to launch an all-autonomous spin-off in 2017

After swamping the Detroit Auto Show for the past two years, event directors have decided to debut an autonomous spin-off show in 2017, called
AutoMobiliD.

The event will be held in Cobo Center Atrium in Detroit, Michigan on Jan 8, according toBoston Free Press. The atrium offers a 120,000 square-foot space and indoor test track for manufacturers to preview self-driving capabilities to industry experts and fans of the motor companies in a controlled environment.

See Also: Volvo tests self-driving cars in China and Sweden

“AutoMobili-D will provide an international look at the ever-changing world of consumer mobility and the ecosystem of companies and innovations that are driving this exciting transformation,” said Sam Slaughter, 2017 NAIAS chairman. “AutoMobili-D will provide the ideal platform for B2B networking and thought-provoking demonstrations.”

The spin-off event comes at a time where auto shows are struggling to maintain a powerful spot in the industry. Regular manufacturers are starting to prefer livestreaming or virtual reality announcements to spending loads on a spot at an auto show. Autonomous cars are in a different zone however, as manufacturers preview one or two features instead of an entire car at auto events. Previews require test drivers and a lot of space, two things auto shows have in.

Detroit has always been the go-to auto show

“Just as NAIAS has served as the leading global venue for automakers to debut brand-defining vehicles, AutoMobili-D will be the go-to setting for automakers, suppliers and startups alike to unveil advanced technologies and initiatives that will move the transportation industry into the next century,” said Slaughter.

Next year, we might see the first iterations of “mind-off” autonomous cars, which require minimal human interaction to drive. We are already seeing NuTonomy potentially launch a taxi service in Singapore, Baidu preparing to launch a similar service in China, and Google setting their sights on driverless software on the roads by 2018.

Add to that General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and Citroën all working on autonomous vehicles, and the Detroit autonomous show looks to be a packed event full of startups and big name brands.

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