Speaker 1: When you hear the words driverless vehicle, you might picture
Speaker 1: one of those proto types in YouTube videos. You know,
Speaker 1: a small hatchback with a big gizmo on the roof
Speaker 1: and sensors sticking out all over the place and nobody
Speaker 1: in the driver's seat. Or maybe you think of Tesla's
Speaker 1: getting closer but not quite there yet autopilot feature.
Speaker 2: According to the Tesla website, autopilot, enhanced autopilot, and full
Speaker 2: self driving features do not make their vehicles autonomous. Drivers
Speaker 2: must be fully attentive with their hands on the wheel.
Speaker 1: The promise of truly autonomous vehicles has attracted a lot
Speaker 1: of attention over the years and a lot of investor money.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Fiat has announced that it has joined a bmwled
Speaker 3: consortium to develop self driving car technology.
Speaker 4: Madrapan SoftBank has announced they will invest two and a
Speaker 4: quarter billion dollars in General Motors.
Speaker 1: Self driving car unit called the Crews, and self driving
Speaker 1: cars are starting to show up on the roads in
Speaker 1: states like California and Arizona.
Speaker 5: Wayima, formerly known as Google's self driving car project, will
Speaker 5: soon start offering rides to the public in self driving vans.
Speaker 1: There's also still plenty of skepticism though, especially whenever there's
Speaker 1: an accident involving one of these test vehicles.
Speaker 4: Well, this morning, a woman is in the hospital after
Speaker 4: sufferank critical injuries after she was hit by a driverless
Speaker 4: car in downtown San Francisco last night.
Speaker 1: Of course, but with so much attention on cars, you
Speaker 1: might not know that one of the fastest growing areas
Speaker 1: in the push toward driverless vehicles is actually trucks, and
Speaker 1: not pickups, but box trucks and the massive eighteen wheelers
Speaker 1: on the highway that deliver goods all over the US.
Speaker 1: Several US companies, including Kodiak, Gaddick and Aurora, are now
Speaker 1: testing autonomous trucks on the open road in Texas. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Transportation reporter Thomas Black has taking a ride in these trucks,
Speaker 1: and he's here to talk about what these companies are
Speaker 1: trying to do and the high bar they have to
Speaker 1: meet to succeed.
Speaker 3: All these companies know that they have to be almost flawless,
Speaker 3: if not perfect, on the technology as far as safety goes.
Speaker 1: And later we hear from Chris Ermson, the CEO of Aurora,
Speaker 1: about why he believes his eighteen wheelers will be on
Speaker 1: the road without a driver as early as next year.
Speaker 1: I'm Westksova today on the Big Take. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to share the road with driverless trucks? Tom? I think
Speaker 1: we're all aware that driverless cars have been in production
Speaker 1: in various ways for a long time. But what I
Speaker 1: did not know is that there's not one, but three
Speaker 1: driverless truck companies right now.
Speaker 5: Access there are, and there's going to be more.
Speaker 3: It's a technology that probably has been proven out and
Speaker 3: now it's proving its safety case, and then they're going
Speaker 3: to roll out that safety case to people, and then
Speaker 3: they're going to take drivers out and we're going to
Speaker 3: see these on the roads if their pathway turns out
Speaker 3: the way they think it's going to turn out.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the companies that are making these trucks
Speaker 1: and putting them on the road and exactly how they
Speaker 1: were what they're doing.
Speaker 3: So you have to think about these companies as software companies,
Speaker 3: because they're not going to make the trucks. The trucks
Speaker 3: are going to be made by the manufacturers that have
Speaker 3: made trucks for decades and more. All these other truck
Speaker 3: makers are going to provide the vehicles. And these guys
Speaker 3: really are going to add obviously the software, and these
Speaker 3: are big on board computers.
Speaker 5: That's very important because you want.
Speaker 3: To be able to have the vehicles self sustain it
Speaker 3: doesn't need the Internet to be able to operate. And
Speaker 3: then the mechanical side is really about redundancy. You want
Speaker 3: to make sure if something failed, like the steering wheel,
Speaker 3: that the thing doesn't careen off and hurt some people.
Speaker 5: So they're going to have redundant.
Speaker 3: Actuators and motors on the three things that we use
Speaker 3: to drive a vehicle, the steering wheel, the brakes, and
Speaker 3: the gas.
Speaker 1: So tom of these are three different companies that are
Speaker 1: doing it, and I imagine they each have a slightly
Speaker 1: different approach to figuring out how you put a truck
Speaker 1: on the highway without anyone driving it.
Speaker 3: The approach behind how this is going to work with
Speaker 3: the software and the mechanics is somewhat similar. It's about
Speaker 3: having three basic types of sensors. You have cameras of course,
Speaker 3: and then light r and then you have radar. So
Speaker 3: you have the sensor package, and then the sensor package
Speaker 3: connects to the computer and the computer has to analyze
Speaker 3: all this data coming in and make the decisions and
Speaker 3: then those decisions are translated into the actuators, which are
Speaker 3: little things that can either turn or twist or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then it'll be attached to again those three of driving,
Speaker 3: the steering wheel, the gas, and the brake. That all
Speaker 3: is pretty much the same. Really, where they might differ
Speaker 3: is what part of the market.
Speaker 5: They want to go after.
Speaker 3: Got Tea, for example, wants to go after what they
Speaker 3: would call the middle market, connecting the warehouse to the store.
Speaker 3: And then you have Kodiak and Aurora, which all they
Speaker 3: want to do is take it from warehouse to warehouse,
Speaker 3: and those warehouses would be usually outside of the city,
Speaker 3: right along a major highway, so they don't have to
Speaker 3: go into city traffic.
Speaker 1: Tom, give us a little tutorial here. I think we're
Speaker 1: all familiar with cameras would be but what's the difference
Speaker 1: between the two other technologies radar and light ar.
Speaker 3: So radar they bounce off radio waves and if it
Speaker 3: hits something, it will echo back and that way they
Speaker 3: can see, Okay, there's something in that radio wave spectrum
Speaker 3: out there. Light Ar is essentially the same type of concept,
Speaker 3: except it's with light.
Speaker 5: Some of them work better when it's raining, others need
Speaker 5: more light. So they complement each other.
Speaker 3: And then of course you have the cameras, which gives
Speaker 3: you a visual. They talk about being able to have
Speaker 3: sensors out to about one thousand meters, so you have
Speaker 3: these three main modes constantly sweeping and picking up information
Speaker 3: about every tenth of a second. They're going through a
Speaker 3: cycle and feeding the computer information, so they have a
Speaker 3: pretty good picture of what's going on around them.
Speaker 1: If you're riding down the road and you see a
Speaker 1: driverlest truck, does it look the same as a regular
Speaker 1: eighteen wheel erd? Does it have all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: stuck on the outside.
Speaker 3: Aurora has a sensor bar that goes on top of
Speaker 3: the cab. Then it had these almost like cone shape things,
Speaker 3: what would it be like a paint can size maybe
Speaker 3: a little smaller sticking out on the top. And then
Speaker 3: Kodiak has taken a different tact. They're putting their center
Speaker 3: package in.
Speaker 5: The area where the rear view mirror is.
Speaker 3: So it looks like a small toolbox you might have
Speaker 3: in your garage that's tipped up on its end, so
Speaker 3: it's bigger than the normal rear mirror, and it does
Speaker 3: have the mirror in there, but along with that has
Speaker 3: a bunch of sensors and right now the Kodiak. All
Speaker 3: of them have their names on them and some have
Speaker 3: autonomous truck written across them, so if you know what
Speaker 3: you're looking for, you can see them.
Speaker 1: Time when you were reporting this story, you actually got
Speaker 1: to get inside the cab of these trucks and ride
Speaker 1: inside them. What was that like?
Speaker 5: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: I'd love to do these type of things where you
Speaker 3: get to go see something.
Speaker 5: You have a safety driver.
Speaker 3: It's usually a driver that's had a ton of experience,
Speaker 3: and they picked the most safe drivers possible to recruit.
Speaker 3: And then on the passenger seat of the truck there
Speaker 3: will be another person who's taking all kinds of diagnostics
Speaker 3: of how the system's working and if it had to
Speaker 3: be engaged, and all these kinds of things that they
Speaker 3: do to build their safety case. Essentially, as you take off,
Speaker 3: the truck starts and the safety driver has his hands
Speaker 3: covered over the wheel, but you can tell he's about
Speaker 3: an inch or so away from it.
Speaker 5: I was watching hands quite a lot.
Speaker 3: I wanted to see, Okay, when we do a turn
Speaker 3: or we do something, is he going to touch this
Speaker 3: or grab this? But during the trip I did not
Speaker 3: see that happen. I was impressed with that. And in
Speaker 3: our particular case, we pulled out of the terminal, drove up.
Speaker 5: A service road.
Speaker 3: We're going up this service road and we come to
Speaker 3: a stop sign.
Speaker 5: The truck turns left.
Speaker 3: And one of the impressive things is that we were
Speaker 3: going over and overpass over the highway and it navigated
Speaker 3: a stop light that didn't have a protected left turn
Speaker 3: where you actually get the green arrow to turn and
Speaker 3: you don't have to worry about oncoming traffic because they
Speaker 3: have to stop. If you don't have that protected left
Speaker 3: you have to wait for all those cars to clear
Speaker 3: and then you have to go. And sometimes you might
Speaker 3: have to make a pretty quick decision if there's traffic
Speaker 3: and there's only a small space.
Speaker 5: So this truck was able to navigate that.
Speaker 3: It had the green light, and it waited and a
Speaker 3: couple of cars came by, and it pulled out, got
Speaker 3: on the highway.
Speaker 5: We drove on the highway a bit.
Speaker 3: These things are going to drive a couple of miles
Speaker 3: per hour below the speed limit. They're going to stay
Speaker 3: in the right lanes, they're going to prod along, and
Speaker 3: they're probably not going to interact as much with vehicles
Speaker 3: as some other trucks do. When they're trying to gain
Speaker 3: a little bit on the traffic and so forth, they
Speaker 3: might be changing lanes more often. The machine doesn't care
Speaker 3: how long it takes to get to their destination. They're
Speaker 3: just going to pulog along. There was an instance where
Speaker 3: a vehicle was coming on the on ramp and the
Speaker 3: truck had a decision.
Speaker 5: It could pull over and give it space, or it
Speaker 5: could slow down.
Speaker 3: The truck decided to slow down because there were cars
Speaker 3: that were coming up on its left faster. One of
Speaker 3: the coolest experiences was at the four way stop to
Speaker 3: turn back on the service road and get back to
Speaker 3: the warehouse.
Speaker 5: There was quite a few cars.
Speaker 3: In fact, every one of the stop signs had a
Speaker 3: line of cars, so people had to navigate this correctly.
Speaker 5: And take their turn.
Speaker 3: So the truck comes up, it stops, and they were
Speaker 3: kind of explaining to me what it's doing, what's checking
Speaker 3: everybody where its turn is. And the three cars went,
Speaker 3: and then the truck lunged forward, and after it lunched forward,
Speaker 3: it stopped, and then it did the turn, and they
Speaker 3: explained to me that the truck was gaining its space.
Speaker 3: In other words, it was saying, okay, it's my turn
Speaker 3: with that lunge, and then when no other car moved,
Speaker 3: the truck then proceeded. So these are the kind of
Speaker 3: things that they have to program into this to mimic
Speaker 3: how humans drive so that they can interact with vehicles
Speaker 3: that have humans behind the wheel.
Speaker 1: Did it feel kind of eerie to be in a
Speaker 1: truck that was driving itself?
Speaker 3: I would say it was actually mundane in a way
Speaker 3: because you do have the safety driver there. You know,
Speaker 3: he can grab the wheel at any time. It doesn't
Speaker 3: spook you in that sense. It is cool to watch
Speaker 3: when the truck makes a turn, and then after it
Speaker 3: completes the turn, the wheel has to wind back as
Speaker 3: the wheels straighten up, so that's when you can really
Speaker 3: see that, oh hey, he's not grabbing this wheel at all.
Speaker 3: I'll take a lot of video that because to me,
Speaker 3: that's where the action is right watching this truck steer itself.
Speaker 1: After the break. What these trucks have to do to
Speaker 1: persuade the public that they're safe. Tom, you've mentioned the
Speaker 1: names of these three companies. Tell us about them. These
Speaker 1: are American companies.
Speaker 5: They're American companies.
Speaker 3: In fact, Gatique and Kodiak are based in Silicon Valley
Speaker 3: and Aurora is officially based in Pittsburgh, but their founder,
Speaker 3: Chris Ermson, is based in Silicon Valley, so they're tech companies.
Speaker 3: The interesting thing is most of these guys know each other.
Speaker 3: Google was an early mover in autonomous vehicle technology, and
Speaker 3: Chris Ermson and Don Burnett, who's the CEO of Kodiak,
Speaker 3: they both work there.
Speaker 5: It's about software that's.
Speaker 3: What makes the barrier to entry to this is somewhat low.
Speaker 3: In that sense, you don't have to set up a
Speaker 3: truck manufacturing facility to be able to get into the business.
Speaker 5: It really is about the software.
Speaker 1: All three of them are testing these trucks in Texas.
Speaker 3: Why Texas, Texas was an early mover and setting up
Speaker 3: the regulations for this to happen. They passed legislation that
Speaker 3: set the groundwork to test and eventually operate autonomous.
Speaker 5: Vehicles on the roads.
Speaker 3: That gives a lot of certainty, So I think that's
Speaker 3: one of the things that was attractive. The other is
Speaker 3: that Texas is a very big freight market. In fact,
Speaker 3: it's the second biggest freight market behind California and it
Speaker 3: has a vast area. It has a big port in Houston,
Speaker 3: has several ports. Also, it has Dallas, which is a
Speaker 3: transportation hub because it's basically in the middle of the
Speaker 3: country and it has lots of wide open flat spaces.
Speaker 1: In time, you write that all of these ports and
Speaker 1: transport hubbs make a really good testing ground because these
Speaker 1: trucks can practice in real life conditions.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 3: They start out with lots of simulation and doing things
Speaker 3: in a test area. This is how they got their start.
Speaker 3: They would be in confined area where they could test
Speaker 3: the vehicles and make sure the software was doing what
Speaker 3: it was supposed to and reading all the sensors correctly.
Speaker 3: Once they got to a certain skill level, then they
Speaker 3: had to take it to the road.
Speaker 5: They've been doing.
Speaker 3: This for several years now and they're getting close to saying, hey,
Speaker 3: we're ready. In the case of Aurora, they've came out
Speaker 3: and made a pretty bold statement that said that our
Speaker 3: software is ready. It can handle any of the events
Speaker 3: that come up on the road. The truck can handle
Speaker 3: all the circumstances that it's going to phase. They've said
Speaker 3: that case is closed. Now we're going to present our
Speaker 3: safety case. Kodiak hasn't made that statement. They say that
Speaker 3: they're there, but they're doing things a little bit differently.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the progression I think we're going to see.
Speaker 3: They're testing them on the road right now, they still
Speaker 3: have the safety drivers. At some point they're going to
Speaker 3: have to take the safety drivers out. I think the
Speaker 3: people are going to want to see more information about
Speaker 3: how many times.
Speaker 5: These safety drivers actually grab the wheel.
Speaker 3: They don't publish those, they say they give that information
Speaker 3: to authorities, but I think at some point they're going
Speaker 3: to have to bring a lot of information to the
Speaker 3: public to say this is why we know these things
Speaker 3: are safe.
Speaker 1: This question of safety you report is really the big
Speaker 1: one that trying to persuade both regulators and normal people
Speaker 1: driving on the road that these things are safe.
Speaker 3: I think I can make as bold a statement to
Speaker 3: say that if they don't make the roadways safer, the
Speaker 3: industry will fail.
Speaker 1: And why is that?
Speaker 3: It's almost a taboo thing. We do not want machines
Speaker 3: that can hurt people. I think most people would agree
Speaker 3: with me on that, But that's a pretty low bar
Speaker 3: because on our roadways, forty thousand people die every year.
Speaker 3: That includes everything passenger vehicles. That is an alarmingly high number.
Speaker 3: And people have absorbed that information. They've decided they can
Speaker 3: take the risk, and they get in their vehicles every
Speaker 3: day and they drive. And as far as large trucks,
Speaker 3: five thousand people die in accidents that involve large trucks,
Speaker 3: and most of those people are the passenger car drivers
Speaker 3: just because the truck is much bigger, and the vast
Speaker 3: majority of the time the truck driver is not at fault.
Speaker 3: It's usually a motorist that has done something silly or
Speaker 3: something stupid and causes accidents. These autonomous vehicles are going
Speaker 3: to have to be safer. I think that's clear, or
Speaker 3: it's just not going to be accepted.
Speaker 5: By the public.
Speaker 3: Aurora, Kodiak, Gatique, all these companies know that they have
Speaker 3: to be almost flawless, if not perfect, on the technology.
Speaker 3: As far as safety goes. There are going to be accidents.
Speaker 3: It's inevitable that there will be accidents, but the truck,
Speaker 3: the system has to be able to show that it
Speaker 3: either wasn't our fault or it was some kind of
Speaker 3: mechanical failure that does happen, but it wasn't because of
Speaker 3: the autonomous driving technology. That is important for these companies
Speaker 3: maintain almost a spotless record where they can say, you
Speaker 3: know what, our autonomous technology has never caused an accident.
Speaker 1: So how has the safety record of these test trucks been.
Speaker 1: So far?
Speaker 5: So far, so good.
Speaker 3: They haven't caused it an accident, that's for sure. They
Speaker 3: have been in accidents. There is a reporting system, a
Speaker 3: federal reporting system where they report any incident that has happened,
Speaker 3: no matter how minor. The cool thing is that they
Speaker 3: attached part of the police report to it in a
Speaker 3: section so you can see what happened.
Speaker 5: There was one.
Speaker 3: Case where a vehicle crossed over two lanes and hit
Speaker 3: the truck in the back, and it turned out that
Speaker 3: the driver admitted that he fell asleep in his car,
Speaker 3: lost over two lanes, but he wasn't hurt. It crumpled
Speaker 3: up his hood, he had to be towed, but the
Speaker 3: truck was able to carry on. I didn't see any
Speaker 3: of the accident reports where you would say, oh, the
Speaker 3: truck was that fault. Here it was the human essentially
Speaker 3: that made the mistake.
Speaker 1: Right now, these trucks are being tested in Texas, but
Speaker 1: can they leave Texas and go into other states?
Speaker 3: They can right now, the regulations have really been left
Speaker 3: up to the states for autonomous trucking. The federal government
Speaker 3: is likely to weigh in on this, but for right now,
Speaker 3: it's really up to the states to allow this.
Speaker 5: And there's a wide swath along the sun Belt, if
Speaker 5: you will, of states.
Speaker 3: That are allowing this, from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas on
Speaker 3: out and even up into Oklahoma.
Speaker 5: So, yes, it is happening.
Speaker 1: Time you said that safety concerns have to be satisfied
Speaker 1: before they can get final approval. How long until that happens.
Speaker 1: How long do you think before we start seeing autonomous
Speaker 1: eighteen wheelers all over the place in Texas and other states.
Speaker 3: It's very interesting because in a state like Texas, there's
Speaker 3: probably no other hurdles for Aurora, Kodiak and some of
Speaker 3: these others to go driver out. It really kind of
Speaker 3: is up to them to say, Okay, we've proved our
Speaker 3: safety case.
Speaker 5: They have more or less a green light to go.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they're going to have to get some sign
Speaker 3: off from state authorities when they want to go driver out,
Speaker 3: because it's a big step. What's holding them back is
Speaker 3: they know that they have to be really cautious about
Speaker 3: this because we talked about that if they had an
Speaker 3: accident in which the autonomous truck caused an accident, it
Speaker 3: would be a terrible blow for the whole industry.
Speaker 1: So when you look down the road, sorry for the pun,
Speaker 1: five years, ten years, do you think that the highways
Speaker 1: will be filled with more driverless trucks than trucks with
Speaker 1: people behind the wheel.
Speaker 3: I would probably say no, just because I think this
Speaker 3: will be a slow rollout, slow and deliberate.
Speaker 5: I could be wrong.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have any any kind of production limitations. Again,
Speaker 3: it's really about software. So if it does take off
Speaker 3: and people embrace it and it really shows that it's safe,
Speaker 3: I could see it ramping up quite quickly. But I
Speaker 3: tend to think that it's going to be a slow rollout.
Speaker 1: Tom, thanks for the ride along.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been fun.
Speaker 1: When we come back, the CEO of a driverlest trucking
Speaker 1: company talks about what it takes to put one of
Speaker 1: these vehicles on the road. Now, let's hear from someone
Speaker 1: who's working to put these trucks down the road. Chris
Speaker 1: Ermson is CEO of Aurora, one of the companies. Tom
Speaker 1: was talking about. Chris, what made you want to get
Speaker 1: into this business.
Speaker 4: Honestly, back in the day, I thought it was cool.
Speaker 4: You know, I was a graduate student of the time
Speaker 4: in Carnegie Mellen and we'd been working on some very
Speaker 4: slow moving robots.
Speaker 5: We're out in the desert in.
Speaker 4: The auto Comma and the robot drove about thirty You
Speaker 4: send me to a second which is how fast you
Speaker 4: move if you have a walker? And my PhD advisor said, Hey,
Speaker 4: this is this competition to go drive robots across the desert
Speaker 4: at fifty miles an hour. And I thought that sounds amazing.
Speaker 4: And then over the last twenty years of working on it,
Speaker 4: you know, I've had the chance to work with amazing people.
Speaker 4: We work on a really challenging technical problem and a
Speaker 4: problem that has profound impact on society, and so that's
Speaker 4: kind of kept me with it over a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: So those challenging technical problems, let me just talk about
Speaker 1: some of those. What is the biggest hurdle that you've
Speaker 1: had to try to puzzle through and overcome.
Speaker 4: The joy of this problem is there's no one right that.
Speaker 4: There's a collection of problems, you know, around how do
Speaker 4: you see far enough down the road how do you
Speaker 4: model the way other people are going to behave on
Speaker 4: the road given what you do and how that interaction
Speaker 4: works and the complexities of that, And then how do
Speaker 4: you convince yourself that you know it works well enough
Speaker 4: that you could trust it out in the world and
Speaker 4: that when something breaks that it's going to respond in
Speaker 4: a way that's safe. And so it's that collection of
Speaker 4: all of those things, and then you layer on top
Speaker 4: of the technology, the business challenges, and the engaging with
Speaker 4: the public and policy makers, and you know, it's a
Speaker 4: fascinating space.
Speaker 1: Where are you right now? How many trucks are out
Speaker 1: on the road, Where are they going?
Speaker 4: So we're on the road today in Texas. We drive
Speaker 4: between Fort Worth and Opasso and between Dallas and Houston.
Speaker 4: Every day. We're hauling loads for customers. We work with
Speaker 4: partners like FedEx, Wernerschneider, Hirschbach, Uber Freight, and a couple
Speaker 4: of others we can't talk about yet, and we have
Speaker 4: on order about thirty trucks that are out there.
Speaker 1: Now. Are these trucks that are actually out there delivering
Speaker 1: goods completely driverless or is there someone in the cab
Speaker 1: with their hands kind of hovering over the steering wheel.
Speaker 4: So today we have a team in the vehicles monitoring
Speaker 4: the system, but the vast majority of the time it's
Speaker 4: driving itself. By the end of next year, we expect
Speaker 4: to be at the point where we have vehicles operating
Speaker 4: on the road without people on board, so truly without
Speaker 4: human operators there.
Speaker 1: And what has to happen between now and then for
Speaker 1: you to feel comfortable or anyone else who might want
Speaker 1: to sign off on this, to say, yeah, we're totally
Speaker 1: fine with these things just going off and doing their thing.
Speaker 4: We've laid out a sequence of milestones. There were, you know,
Speaker 4: a bunch of things, but the three big ones were
Speaker 4: to get to feature complete, to get to what we're
Speaker 4: called the roor driver ready, and then to launch commercially.
Speaker 4: And so feature complete we achieved at the beginning of
Speaker 4: this year, and that really meant that all the parts
Speaker 4: are there, they work, but we haven't yet convinced ourselves
Speaker 4: that they're all the way correct and that we validated
Speaker 4: that we're safe to go. By the end of this year,
Speaker 4: when we hit this goal of e Royer Driver Ready,
Speaker 4: our expectation is at that point the parts that we control,
Speaker 4: the software, the way the sensors work each other, what's
Speaker 4: on the computer. All of that that we have done,
Speaker 4: all of the testing and all of the analysis to
Speaker 4: convince ourselves that if we had a truck that was
Speaker 4: ready to go, we'd be happy to put it's on
Speaker 4: the road and be safe. And then finally commercial launch
Speaker 4: will happen next year. And that's where we've done the
Speaker 4: work with our great automotive and truck partners to do
Speaker 4: the final testing and integration to make sure our stuff
Speaker 4: talks to their stuff the way it's supposed to. Everything
Speaker 4: is copasetic.
Speaker 1: Earlier, I was talking to my colleague Thomas Black, who
Speaker 1: is saying that one of the challenges is that people
Speaker 1: know that there will be accidents on the road people
Speaker 1: are driving cars, but that the safety record, if it's
Speaker 1: driven autonomously almost needs to be perfect or else people
Speaker 1: will not have confidence. Is that like a bar that
Speaker 1: you can meet.
Speaker 4: It's easy to overlook the status quota today right that
Speaker 4: forty two thousand Americans diner roads every year and want
Speaker 4: to quarter million people by globally, and this is a
Speaker 4: technology that really can drive that towards zero. And that's
Speaker 4: what we're focused on, and that work we do to
Speaker 4: demonstrate to ourselves that the vehicle is proficient, are profound.
Speaker 4: There's a few different ways we've explored this. So one
Speaker 4: is that the Department of Transportation has a taxonomy for
Speaker 4: how vehicles get into collisions, and so we've taken that taxonomy.
Speaker 4: They said, Okay, let's expose the euror driver to each
Speaker 4: of these kind of scenarios, and then let's create variations
Speaker 4: of them, tens of thousands of kind of near miss
Speaker 4: events or near collision events, and let's make sure all
Speaker 4: of them the eroor driver is behaving the way we'd
Speaker 4: want to. That's events that you or I we'd see
Speaker 4: if any one or two of these events in our lifetimes,
Speaker 4: and we're pushing the system through tens of thousands of them.
Speaker 4: And then we've actually looked at the real world implication
Speaker 4: of this. So the road that we're driving between Dawnson
Speaker 4: and Houston is I forty five. We've looked at all
Speaker 4: of the fatal accidents that involved trucks that happened between
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two, and we pulled the
Speaker 4: incident reports on those, and then we created simulations where
Speaker 4: we had the our driver operating the vehicle, and it
Speaker 4: was twenty nine of these that the ero driver could
Speaker 4: have been operating, and across all twenty nine of them,
Speaker 4: if the row driver had been operating, the collision just
Speaker 4: would not have occurred. And if you think about the
Speaker 4: impact for those families of what this would mean, right
Speaker 4: the not losing those loved ones, it's really the message
Speaker 4: home for me.
Speaker 1: I imagine you spend a certain amount of your time just
Speaker 1: trying to explain this stuff to people, to build a
Speaker 1: kind of comfort level with the idea of this happening.
Speaker 1: What's the biggest missingconception you've come across when you start
Speaker 1: talking to people about a driverless truck.
Speaker 4: People have rational concern about the new and the uncertain.
Speaker 4: It's a perfectly normal behavior and expected and warranted. We're
Speaker 4: driving seventy thousand pound trucks down the road. You should
Speaker 4: have questions. And what we find is that people very
Speaker 4: quickly accept. So I've been working this space for twenty
Speaker 4: years and we've given folks rights in automated vehicles for
Speaker 4: a better part of that time. You know, you'll have
Speaker 4: the folks who are really excited about this, and so
Speaker 4: let's not talk about that they get in this is
Speaker 4: wonderful and amazing wow. Right, But you have the skeptics
Speaker 4: and they're like, I don't know, this must be smoking mirrors.
Speaker 4: I don't know that I'd ever trust it. And they
Speaker 4: get in the back of the vehicle, and you know,
Speaker 4: for the first five minutes they're kind of tense and
Speaker 4: they're like, you know, what's happening here, right, And then
Speaker 4: then they start to relax, and you know, invariably you
Speaker 4: get some kind of common or question of it. Just
Speaker 4: you know, it just drives, that's it. And then somewhere
Speaker 4: between ten and fifteen minutes they're checking their phones and
Speaker 4: so exposing people to this I think is one of
Speaker 4: the ways that you can help them understand. And part
Speaker 4: of my you know, amateur psychology here is that we're
Speaker 4: all used to driving in vehicles that other people drive.
Speaker 4: It's just a very common experience, and very quickly we
Speaker 4: kind of pattern match to that and relax around it.
Speaker 1: Chris, you've been at this for twenty years. I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you a crystal ball question. When you look
Speaker 1: ahead ten years, what percentage of long haul trucks across
Speaker 1: the US are autonomous.
Speaker 4: It's still going to be a small percentage because the
Speaker 4: market is just so big, right, It's an eight hundred
Speaker 4: billion dollar market today, and so this technology is going
Speaker 4: to roll out and grow and it's going to have
Speaker 4: an impact, And initially it's going to be about filling
Speaker 4: the shortage of drivers that are out there today. So
Speaker 4: in the US we're short about eighty thousand drivers. We
Speaker 4: expect by the end of the decade to be short
Speaker 4: about twice that one hundred and sixty thousand, and so
Speaker 4: automated driving is one way to compliment the human drivers
Speaker 4: that are out there today doing a really important and
Speaker 4: noble job.
Speaker 1: Chris really enjoyed talking with you. Thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 4: My pleasure. Really appreciate it.
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