Speaker 1: Technology. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I am
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and dig today together again at last, Scott Benjamin. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm back joining the show and and I actually have
Speaker 1: you here talking about cars as usual, but thank you.
Speaker 1: You know what, I always appreciate the invite. And uh
Speaker 1: and this one is again right in my wheelhouse here,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm excited about It's where I keep my
Speaker 1: wheels in the house. Yeah. So we we're talking today
Speaker 1: about a peculiar event, something that happened in February, and
Speaker 1: it's just taken me this long to finally get around
Speaker 1: and addressing it. You might have heard in previous episodes
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff about how I would champion the fact
Speaker 1: that Google with their self driving cars had had enormous
Speaker 1: success flawless. You might argue success something like one point
Speaker 1: four five million miles driven without a single accident caused
Speaker 1: by the autonomous system. That there had been about fourteen
Speaker 1: or so accidents, but all of those were either the
Speaker 1: fault of a person manually driving the car in manual
Speaker 1: mode or another driver colliding with the autonomous car, but
Speaker 1: never the fall of the autonomous car itself. It was
Speaker 1: a perfect system until February, and that is the day
Speaker 1: of what what I'll cahol And I really don't mean
Speaker 1: to over dramaticize this at all, So maybe I'm titling
Speaker 1: this episode. I think maybe we should call this the St.
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day Google self driving Car Massacre. That is an
Speaker 1: excellent title and definitely not overly dramatic in any way. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's also funny because we're recording this, uh,
Speaker 1: the week after I've gotten back from south By Southwest,
Speaker 1: and this was a topic that was discussed heavily at
Speaker 1: south By Southwest because until this incident, it was a
Speaker 1: very easy sell to say autonomous cars are the way
Speaker 1: to go. And then this little accident happened, and and
Speaker 1: it it wasn't terrible. We'll get into the details of
Speaker 1: the accident. But this little accident happened suddenly it sounded
Speaker 1: like Google's autonomous car had caused an enormous pile up
Speaker 1: on the highway. Everyone was much more cautious. So you're
Speaker 1: maybe not buying my alternate title, then, is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying? What's your alternate No, No, that I'm totally no.
Speaker 1: I think it is a massacre, but I think it's
Speaker 1: a massacre in the sense of the public perception of
Speaker 1: autonomous cars. I see, okay, yeah, I'm thinking of from
Speaker 1: a pr stuff. I could I could take this opportunity
Speaker 1: to gloat and say, ah, they're not as infallible as
Speaker 1: you thought they're They're not perfect. But but I'm going
Speaker 1: to take a different stance here in this in this podcast,
Speaker 1: And and I think that as we as we talk
Speaker 1: through this, h we're gonna realize that they've been held
Speaker 1: to a much higher standard than they probably need to
Speaker 1: be right. And I know that's that's tough to to take,
Speaker 1: you know, when you when you just hear it that way,
Speaker 1: But listen to our argument back and forth about this,
Speaker 1: and and understand that they're being held to perfection when
Speaker 1: they probably shouldn't be when humans, I mean, we're not perfect.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's a vast um a chasm between what
Speaker 1: the standards that they're held to versus the standard that
Speaker 1: human test drivers are held to. Sure, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: look at if you look at the standard driving test
Speaker 1: that you have to pass before you get a license, uh,
Speaker 1: I would argue most autonomous cars could likely pass such
Speaker 1: a test as close to flawlessly as you can get,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to be flawless when you take
Speaker 1: a driver's test. There's room for you to not completely
Speaker 1: do something perfectly, like if your parallel parking isn't exactly right,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get points to die did from your total,
Speaker 1: but you may still be you know, high enough, score
Speaker 1: high enough so that you could pass the full driver's test. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Knock over cone. It's not really a big deal, but
Speaker 1: an autonomous car knocks over a cone, everybody points at
Speaker 1: it and says, look at that thing, it's it's pilot junk. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you point that out too, because that
Speaker 1: ties into a different discussion. I saw it south by
Speaker 1: Southwest that wasn't specifically about autonomous cars. It was about robots.
Speaker 1: So this is a little bit of a tangent, but
Speaker 1: it it goes to illustrate the point you just made.
Speaker 1: So this this UH panel about robots. There was a woman,
Speaker 1: Layla taka Yama, who used to work for Google X
Speaker 1: but not in the autonomous car division. She talked about
Speaker 1: how she ran a a an experiment. She got a
Speaker 1: guy from Pixar to do a series of very simple
Speaker 1: animations to show people, the interactions between a robot and
Speaker 1: a person, and then to judge which robot is considered
Speaker 1: UH in elligent versus not intelligent. And the whole point
Speaker 1: of this was to show the differences between succeeding and failing,
Speaker 1: but giving no indication that the robot understands it succeeded
Speaker 1: or failed, or building in expressions for the robot to
Speaker 1: follow a success or failure UH to indicate it quote
Speaker 1: unquote understands what happened. And it was fascinating because they
Speaker 1: showed a very simple UH experiment with a robot trying
Speaker 1: to open the door. And again this is an animation,
Speaker 1: so there was a different scenarios. There's one where the
Speaker 1: robot opens the door and the door opens and then
Speaker 1: the robot just sits there and it's it's done because
Speaker 1: it's done what it was supposed to do. There's one
Speaker 1: where the robot opens the door and then kind of
Speaker 1: perks up like, oh, I did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: There was one where the robot fails to open the
Speaker 1: door and then does nothing UH. And then there was
Speaker 1: one where the robot fails open the door and then
Speaker 1: slumps down a little bit as if to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed I didn't succeed. They then asked people to
Speaker 1: judge which robots they thought were the most intelligent, and
Speaker 1: everyone said the robot that failed but showed disappointment was
Speaker 1: more intelligent than the robot that succeeded but didn't show
Speaker 1: any expression at all. And when you think about that again,
Speaker 1: it's holding robots to a standard that doesn't necessarily apply
Speaker 1: to them because of the human element this human robot interaction.
Speaker 1: We're holding autonomous cars to a similar standard that perhaps
Speaker 1: is not fair. We're holding robots to a standard that's
Speaker 1: not fair, But that means that people who are designing
Speaker 1: autonomous cars and people who are designing robots have to
Speaker 1: take that into consideration because that's the way humans are. Well,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because you're you're mentioning specifically imitating human behavior.
Speaker 1: And this comes up in an article that I read
Speaker 1: in I let't see it was in the Verge, and
Speaker 1: the Verge you might have read the same thing article.
Speaker 1: It really is and a person by the name of
Speaker 1: Jennifer Haroun. She's the head of business operations for Google
Speaker 1: self driving project. And by the way, let's come back
Speaker 1: to the details of the accident and just a moment,
Speaker 1: we'll describe what happened. But she says that, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, maybe I need to back this up just
Speaker 1: a second here. How about this, Let's describe the accident
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about what she said, because it
Speaker 1: plays perfectly into it, so and helping understand what happened.
Speaker 1: So here's here's how you can imagine it. All right,
Speaker 1: You've got an intersection, uh in Mountain View, California, which
Speaker 1: is where Google's headquarters is located, and you've got the
Speaker 1: Google self driving car. Correct me if I get any
Speaker 1: of this wrong, Scott, I'm going from memory. I'm doing
Speaker 1: mostly the same. It's so the Google self driving cars
Speaker 1: in the right lane and at once it's playing on
Speaker 1: making a right turn at this intersection. Now, at the
Speaker 1: corner of the intersection, there were some sandbags that were
Speaker 1: a partial obstruction of the lane. Then I think you're
Speaker 1: blocking a sewer entry a great maybe or something. Right,
Speaker 1: So the Google car detected that there was an obstruction,
Speaker 1: and so it had to plan an alternate way to
Speaker 1: make its right turn. It still wanted to follow the
Speaker 1: route that it had planned, so the change would have
Speaker 1: been for it to kind of edge into the next
Speaker 1: lane over, the next lane to the left before making
Speaker 1: a right turn. Behind the Google car, approaching at a
Speaker 1: blistering speed of fifteen miles per hour, was a bus.
Speaker 1: And so the Google car recognized there was a bus coming.
Speaker 1: It was moving at a very slow speed at two
Speaker 1: miles per hour. The Google car said, well, based upon
Speaker 1: my programming, what I should expect happen is that the
Speaker 1: bus will slow down, allow me to move through. I'll
Speaker 1: clear the intersection, the bus will continue. What actually happened
Speaker 1: was the Google Car made the move into the lane,
Speaker 1: the bus continued, and there was a low speed collision
Speaker 1: and there were no injuries. No one was hurt. There
Speaker 1: was in fact a driver behind the wheel of the
Speaker 1: Google car. It's just the driver wasn't in control. The
Speaker 1: autonomous system was in control. And some people might say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the bus driver just a let the car end.
Speaker 1: But Google actually said, and this is important. Google came
Speaker 1: out and said, we accept responsibility for this. This is
Speaker 1: something that uh, it's it's valuable that this information has
Speaker 1: come to light because it means that we need to
Speaker 1: revisit this particular part of the autonomous car programming. Now
Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting. First of all, I
Speaker 1: have never heard of a company accepting responsibility for something
Speaker 1: so fast in my life. Well they did, and they didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a couple of versions of this. Now,
Speaker 1: you got the details of the accident, correct, Although I
Speaker 1: did hear, and this this is a bit confusing. I
Speaker 1: didn't hear that the lanes in this particular part of
Speaker 1: town are extremely wide, and so what happened was the
Speaker 1: car uh kind of edged itself over toward the curb.
Speaker 1: So it was I guess mimicking human behavior again. And
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in just a minute. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, once, once this accident happened and they said,
Speaker 1: you know, we do need to investigate this. They did
Speaker 1: that to the tune of about thirty five hundred new
Speaker 1: tests that they have now implemented since this accident, that said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna watch for this. You know that we need
Speaker 1: to understand a little more deeply that some of these
Speaker 1: larger vehicles may have a different and more difficult times
Speaker 1: stopping in traffic than a smaller vehicle will. And and
Speaker 1: that's the reason why some of these bigger vehicles like
Speaker 1: to continue on their path and think, well, maybe someone
Speaker 1: behind me will let them in. Google did say we
Speaker 1: were relying on an element of human kindness UM to
Speaker 1: let us into that lane. And that's normally what happens.
Speaker 1: It really does. Usually there's a back and forth or
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there's always gonna be that off handed
Speaker 1: time where you know someone does cut through and they're
Speaker 1: just like they're like, no, I need to get through
Speaker 1: that intersection in this light cycle, and no one is
Speaker 1: gonna stop me. Yeah. I mean I'm gonna be ten
Speaker 1: feet ahead of you when all this happens. And that's
Speaker 1: where I you know, that's that's my goal. But uh,
Speaker 1: usually what happens is it's an alternating pattern and they
Speaker 1: expected that to happen, and it didn't happen in this case.
Speaker 1: And this is where it plays right into what UM
Speaker 1: Jennifer had mentioned. Jennifer Harun, who is the head of
Speaker 1: business operations for Google self driving project, explained at and
Speaker 1: I think she was at the south By Southwest Kind
Speaker 1: Prince as well, and she said that the Lexus, it's
Speaker 1: a Lexus vehicle. It was outfitted with this gear so
Speaker 1: that it struck the bus in part because it was
Speaker 1: imitating human behavior. And that's I found that interesting. That
Speaker 1: she she kind of is deferring the fault here and
Speaker 1: to say, well, we were just imitating what we see
Speaker 1: on the streets and that's that's kind of what happened.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a double deferral in a way, right,
Speaker 1: because first they say we were counting on an element
Speaker 1: of human kindness, which is already kind of a deferral
Speaker 1: in itself. You're you're essentially saying, well, we were concert
Speaker 1: we were thinking that the bus driver would be a
Speaker 1: decent human being and not a Lexus hating scumbag. That's
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing what they said. Obviously, I'm taking a little liberty.
Speaker 1: And then in this one you're saying she's also saying, well,
Speaker 1: we designed the car to behave the way we see
Speaker 1: actual cars behaving on the road. So in both cases
Speaker 1: you're almost it's a little bit of backing away from
Speaker 1: taking full responsibility exactly. And this imitating human behavior that
Speaker 1: she's talking about was that they had recently taught the
Speaker 1: eals to hug the right hand side of that lane
Speaker 1: when they're making that right hand turn, and that that's
Speaker 1: when it's encountered the sandbags that were unexpected, and so
Speaker 1: this is what I find interesting is if it's a
Speaker 1: wide lane and she's saying that it was hugging the
Speaker 1: right hand side of that lane, trying to make the
Speaker 1: turn as most humans do. If it was in the
Speaker 1: center of the lane, she's saying, if it had just
Speaker 1: behaved as they normally would do it, you know that
Speaker 1: it would be in the exact dead center of that lane.
Speaker 1: The bus wouldn't have had the gap, I guess, and
Speaker 1: try to try to make it through that gap, so
Speaker 1: it would have just been behind the car. Never would
Speaker 1: have happened. So she's saying, in effect, because we're trying
Speaker 1: to make it mimic human behavior, and we were hugging
Speaker 1: that right side, that's why this accident happened, maybe we
Speaker 1: should have done that. But then again they come back
Speaker 1: and say that that's absolutely necessary for them to mimic
Speaker 1: human behavior, because if they don't, that causes trouble as well.
Speaker 1: There's proather issues that are right, like if a if
Speaker 1: a vehicle, let's say that it's an autonomous car heading
Speaker 1: toward an intersection, the light goes from green to amber,
Speaker 1: and there's technically enough space for the car to break
Speaker 1: safely and come to a complete stop as the light
Speaker 1: turns red, knowing that most humans would just gun it,
Speaker 1: or at least just continue at the same speed to
Speaker 1: go through the intersection while it's still amber. You might
Speaker 1: want to think about that when you're designing your autonomous
Speaker 1: car so that you don't cause a pile up behind
Speaker 1: you like you don't. If the person directly behind the
Speaker 1: autonomous car expects the car in front of them to
Speaker 1: continue through the intersection, you could potentially get rear ended.
Speaker 1: That happens a thousand times around. I mean more than that,
Speaker 1: but it happens all over the world, especially in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: where the rule is that the light turns red, three
Speaker 1: cars get to go through. It is so true, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It seems like once one goes through, two more follow you.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah, I've seen it happen in multiple places
Speaker 1: around the city. There's some neighborhoods where it's worse. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna name any names, Buckhead, but I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: never accelerate immediately on a green light anywhere in this area,
Speaker 1: because you can expect there's gonna be that that odd
Speaker 1: ball car that comes through it, right, and there's gonna
Speaker 1: be like a car that's been waiting to turn left
Speaker 1: the whole time, and they say, I'm not waiting another
Speaker 1: light cycle, I'm just going now, like even if they're
Speaker 1: behind the stop line. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: happens everywhere. It's it's particularly bad in these congested areas. Yes,
Speaker 1: So to your point, it is important to take those
Speaker 1: things into consideration when designing the autonomous car. You don't
Speaker 1: want an autonomous car to drive like an inconsiderate jerk
Speaker 1: of a driver. But at the same time, you can't
Speaker 1: have it be so clinically precise that it is standing
Speaker 1: out from all the other drivers. The only way that
Speaker 1: works is if you get to a point where you're
Speaker 1: at a saturation point with autonomous cars on the road,
Speaker 1: where then you can affect the behavior on a mass
Speaker 1: scale across a fleet of cars and not have that
Speaker 1: issue of human drivers having awful interactions with robotic drivers exactly.
Speaker 1: Here's here's the way they state at these These spokesman
Speaker 1: stated and say it's vital for us to develop advanced
Speaker 1: skills that respect not just the letter of the traffic code,
Speaker 1: but the spirit of the road. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good way to put it. The spirit of the road.
Speaker 1: I understand that. I completely get that when I read
Speaker 1: it is that, Yeah, there's little rules here and there
Speaker 1: that we'd bend, but everybody bends them, and you you
Speaker 1: expect you you understand how other drivers are gonna behave
Speaker 1: in the same situation, and you expect that to happen,
Speaker 1: and you behave in that way, and it all works.
Speaker 1: But when something comes in, a spoiler comes in, um
Speaker 1: and it follows exactly to the letter of the log
Speaker 1: the way that's supposed to happen, that person maybe the
Speaker 1: you know, the standout right. Another great example of that
Speaker 1: in Atlanta would be, uh. We have a couple of
Speaker 1: different highways that run through the city and one that
Speaker 1: runs around the city and is often thought of as
Speaker 1: the type of highway that if you get on it,
Speaker 1: you have to speed. You cannot go the speed limit
Speaker 1: on two five. It's just too dangerous because everyone else
Speaker 1: is going above the speed limit. Massive truck traffic, yeah
Speaker 1: and yeah, and there are enormous, enormous semis uh rushing
Speaker 1: down there, and you don't want to get you don't
Speaker 1: want to be poking along when they come up behind you.
Speaker 1: So again, an autonomous car would need to have that
Speaker 1: information and take that into account unless you've got to
Speaker 1: a point where you had so many autonomous vehicles on
Speaker 1: the road that it was no longer a concern. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is where we we discussed this yesterday because
Speaker 1: we're talking off air about this just a little bit
Speaker 1: too prep for today. And uh, the idea would be
Speaker 1: that's kind of like schooling, almost like fish schooling, UM,
Speaker 1: and that the cars know where the other one is
Speaker 1: at all times and they can communicate between them. The
Speaker 1: problem is when you throw in the human driver element
Speaker 1: into that mix, or you know, if if if you
Speaker 1: have just one autonomous car among all humans. That's the
Speaker 1: other problem with the other issue, and right now, that's
Speaker 1: the battle that they're fighting right right. So once we
Speaker 1: get to a point where there's that that tipping point
Speaker 1: one way or the other, then things will be very different.
Speaker 1: But there's going to be some growing paints. And this
Speaker 1: also leads into something that I talked about earlier in
Speaker 1: UM when I went to ce S Toyota had their
Speaker 1: big AI discussion. You know, they're they're investing millions of
Speaker 1: dollars in AI research for autonomous cars and beyond. And
Speaker 1: one of the things they've talked about was how autonomous
Speaker 1: cars in general are really really good at handling all
Speaker 1: the mundane stuff that you would typically encounter on a
Speaker 1: normal day driving from point A to point B. What
Speaker 1: they are not good at is dealing with stuff that's
Speaker 1: outside of that norm, and the sandbags that we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier would be a great example of that. It's
Speaker 1: some form of obstruction that's partially blocking off part of
Speaker 1: the road and that ends up causing a different scenario.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the card behaves in a way that works
Speaker 1: out for everybody. In this case, it didn't, And it's
Speaker 1: not it's not that the car couldn't handle the situation.
Speaker 1: It's just that the method that the car used turned
Speaker 1: out to not be reliable. Yeah, this was an extremely
Speaker 1: slow speed crash, as we've said, and the bus was
Speaker 1: traveling fifteen miles per hour in the other lane trying
Speaker 1: to get through that gap. But the Google car was
Speaker 1: traveling i think they said to two miles per hour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very very slow, very slow speed. So the thing is
Speaker 1: like with the with the the compensation for this, you know,
Speaker 1: the thirty five hundred tests that they're now going to
Speaker 1: run additional tests, uh to determine or to to find
Speaker 1: a way around that situation. Said, it's never gonna happen again.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do everything we can, but to to think
Speaker 1: about it that way, to say, the thirty five hundred
Speaker 1: tests that are gonna allow this vehicle to to think
Speaker 1: about that exact situation and never let it happen again.
Speaker 1: Where where just kind of noses out into uh, into
Speaker 1: a lane that appears open. That's remarkable. I mean it
Speaker 1: just lets you know that, uh, they're there are tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of of UM programs are or or thoughts,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to say it, that are they're
Speaker 1: going through this thing at all times. You know, um,
Speaker 1: all these calculations, calculations and parameters and just you know,
Speaker 1: if this then that you know, those scenarios are being
Speaker 1: run all the time. It's just incredible, mind boggling, it
Speaker 1: really is. And and I was looking into you said
Speaker 1: one one point four or five million miles have been driven,
Speaker 1: uh flawlessly, right, I mean they hadn't have any problems,
Speaker 1: you know at at fault. I guess the autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: Do you know how much they test on a daily
Speaker 1: basis and on actually on a daily basis. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's see, I've got I got a note here I
Speaker 1: should have looked for that reading. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: All right, So, actually this is a per week and
Speaker 1: then a per day thing. They drive ten thousand miles
Speaker 1: per week and that's like, you know, somebody in a
Speaker 1: vehicle on the road, ten thousand miles per week. Per day, though,
Speaker 1: this number is incredible. Per day, they're driving three million
Speaker 1: miles of computer simulation miles, so three million the equivalent
Speaker 1: of three million miles. That's because they can quickly just
Speaker 1: go through that and have multiple systems running these things,
Speaker 1: you know. So so the amount of testing that they
Speaker 1: do in a year is just unbelievable. I don't have
Speaker 1: yearly stats or anything, but you can extrapolate those numbers
Speaker 1: to that. Well and and uh, the other point in
Speaker 1: the Toyota press conference that was interesting to me, and
Speaker 1: this goes back to what you were saying at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the show about holding autonomous cars at a
Speaker 1: different standard than we hold human drivers. Uh. They talked
Speaker 1: about how you offer a lot of the autonomous car
Speaker 1: industry talks about the hundred million mile um benchmarks, saying
Speaker 1: that you want you want a hundred million miles traveled
Speaker 1: of proven safety, and they said, you know that's not enough.
Speaker 1: You need to go much bigger than that, a hundred
Speaker 1: billion miles. And I thought, wow, that is I mean,
Speaker 1: I get it for you want that many miles so
Speaker 1: that you can encounter as many possible different situations as
Speaker 1: you might encounter on the road. Because obviously, if you
Speaker 1: if you plan a system and it's great for handling
Speaker 1: percent of the situations, that's fine until you run into
Speaker 1: that one percent. And when you do figure out how
Speaker 1: many cars are on the road in the United States
Speaker 1: alone traveling on any given day, you realize the odds
Speaker 1: are Eventually, I mean, statistics show statistics proved like odds are,
Speaker 1: sooner rather than later, one of those autonomous cars will
Speaker 1: encounter a situation that would have been impossible to anticipate
Speaker 1: in the programming phase. So I get it. On one hand.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I get frustrated because I really
Speaker 1: want to see this feature get here as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: But I totally understand the need for that level of
Speaker 1: of precision that's demanded so that you can be sure
Speaker 1: that nothing catastrophic happens when a car encounters something that
Speaker 1: the programmers just did not anticipate. Now, Chris again, he
Speaker 1: was the what was his title, I think his director
Speaker 1: of the self driving car project director, that's right that
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember if he's director or not, but he
Speaker 1: um he did say, and this is I don't you
Speaker 1: can find this troubling, I guess if you want to.
Speaker 1: But I understand what he's saying. He says that, you know,
Speaker 1: of course the February fourteenth was a tough day for
Speaker 1: his team, obviously, but he says, and I thought this
Speaker 1: was interesting. He said, We've got to be prepared for
Speaker 1: more days just like that if we're gonna ever succeed
Speaker 1: in creating this this project, you know, making this work,
Speaker 1: and we're actually gonna have worse days than that. And
Speaker 1: when I when I hear that, you know we're gonna
Speaker 1: have worse days than that, of course you think, you
Speaker 1: know the worst. Do you think that it's going to
Speaker 1: be involved in an accident that is fatal or you know,
Speaker 1: harms somebody, anybody in any way, And of course that
Speaker 1: would be an awful day, that'd be a worse day
Speaker 1: than what we've seen. But you kind of have to
Speaker 1: expect something like that. Is gonna happen if you're traveling,
Speaker 1: If you're traveling three hundred billion miles like you said,
Speaker 1: or you know whatever, the the enormous number of miles
Speaker 1: on the road that they want to travel is um
Speaker 1: I would guess that when you're talking about three or
Speaker 1: three million or billion or whatever it was, those might
Speaker 1: be computer simular to miles, because you know, the three million,
Speaker 1: three million a day is a is an enormous number,
Speaker 1: and that adds up quickly. But you know, ten thousand
Speaker 1: miles per week of actual you know, physical drawn the
Speaker 1: road testing, that's that's pretty impressive still, But how long
Speaker 1: would that take to get up to million? And you know,
Speaker 1: I think somebody who laid it out pretty clearly here
Speaker 1: is the U S Transportation Secretary. His name is Anthony Fox,
Speaker 1: and you know he's the one who said where I
Speaker 1: initially read, I guess, don't don't compare these two perfection
Speaker 1: You can't do that. And one of the quotes here
Speaker 1: in an article that I read from the BBC says
Speaker 1: that he says, it's not as surprised that at some
Speaker 1: point to be a crash when they've got this brand
Speaker 1: new technology in the road. But what I what I
Speaker 1: would challenge anyone to do is to look at the
Speaker 1: number of crashes that occurred on the same day that
Speaker 1: the result of human behavior, and that gets right back
Speaker 1: to what you were saying, and that you know, there's
Speaker 1: so many miles driven every day just here in the US,
Speaker 1: around the world, all over the place, that you just
Speaker 1: you know that bad stuff is happening all the time,
Speaker 1: every minute literally. All right, But this is a great
Speaker 1: opportunity for me to transition from the Google story, which
Speaker 1: is you know it's again it has huge implications for
Speaker 1: the autonomous car industry. H even though it was in
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things, a minor accident, it
Speaker 1: was something that uh once once you realize, oh they're
Speaker 1: not perfect, then it starts raising some questions. These talks
Speaker 1: were a bit more subdued after that point. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the south By Southwest like that was definitely happening, although
Speaker 1: I went to a couple of different panels about autonomous
Speaker 1: cars where they didn't even bring it up. They were
Speaker 1: gung ho. I mean, the general feeling and south By
Speaker 1: Southwest is that autonomous cars are a definitive future that
Speaker 1: are coming and that uh that most likely there will
Speaker 1: be some form of shared services model for autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: I think most people UH agreed that personal ownership UH
Speaker 1: is going to slowly phase out, largely because younger generations
Speaker 1: don't necessarily see the necessity of owning a car. And
Speaker 1: there were some interesting statistics too. I saw a panel
Speaker 1: it's called Robot Cars and sharing, road rage or smooth
Speaker 1: sailing and UH. This was This had three panelists on it,
Speaker 1: a moderator and two panelists. One was the moderator was
Speaker 1: Frederick Sue of a company called NATO. NATO creates an
Speaker 1: app and a camera set up where you can essentially
Speaker 1: upgrade your car into a smart car, not an autonomous car,
Speaker 1: but a smart car where it's able to use information
Speaker 1: from the camera and run it through some algorithms that
Speaker 1: are on the back end of the data system that
Speaker 1: then transmits to your app to let you know things
Speaker 1: like how well, how good of a driver is the driver,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So it's also used for like
Speaker 1: fleet management. UH. You can use it to figure out
Speaker 1: if the driver you've just hired to be one of
Speaker 1: your your employees, if that was a good choice or
Speaker 1: not it or maybe you need to rethink that. That
Speaker 1: kind of stuff based, yeah, and uh, and it pulls
Speaker 1: information from a lot of different sources, but the camera
Speaker 1: is the primary one. He was the moderator. And then
Speaker 1: you had Shad Laws from Renault. Uh and who was
Speaker 1: funny because he talked about Renault is a brand that
Speaker 1: is famous around the world but not here in the US,
Speaker 1: but you might know our partner Nissan. And then uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we knew Renault back in what the mid eighties I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there was Mark Plattchen from BMW, who was
Speaker 1: actually a substitute. Originally it was supposed to be Maryanne
Speaker 1: Wu of ge Ventures. But we'll have a little bit
Speaker 1: more to say about BMW in just a minute, because
Speaker 1: I can't wait to tell Scott about this. So one
Speaker 1: one some let me throw you some some statistics at you,
Speaker 1: or some of the facts at you that Sue brought up.
Speaker 1: So one of the things he said was that the
Speaker 1: typical American car spends of its life part of its
Speaker 1: life park That's an enormous chunk of time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: only four of your typical American car, knowing that there
Speaker 1: are cases outside on either end, uh, four percent of
Speaker 1: it is actually used driving around. So with that, when
Speaker 1: you when you hit someone with that. Assuming that that
Speaker 1: is in fact correct, I don't know where his source
Speaker 1: was for, but assuming that is in fact correct, you
Speaker 1: can start to see an argument for a fleet of
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles that can drive around on demand and pick
Speaker 1: someone up and drop them off, because that means you
Speaker 1: could free up the space that would be taken by
Speaker 1: a parked car and use it for something else, because
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of our spaces are reserver for parking.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are regulations for office buildings about how
Speaker 1: much square footage you have to set aside for parking
Speaker 1: in certain cities. It depends on the city. But imagine
Speaker 1: that you of a world where people are relying on
Speaker 1: autonomous cars to pick them up and drop off, you
Speaker 1: don't need that space for parking anymore. You can actually
Speaker 1: dedicate that to something else and make becausa money. I
Speaker 1: think it's the way they put it. But anyway, plant
Speaker 1: a tree, plant a tree, you could also do that.
Speaker 1: Come on, you tree hugger, um No, I also think
Speaker 1: that would be awesome. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: I thought was shocking it. I think the effect on
Speaker 1: me was not what the speaker was planning. Shad laws
Speaker 1: of Renault was talking about the the safety factor of
Speaker 1: autonomous cars, and his argument was that um safety a
Speaker 1: Thomas cars. First of all, we can't determine that they're
Speaker 1: more safe than human driven cars yet because we don't
Speaker 1: have enough information. We don't have enough autonomous cars on
Speaker 1: the road, we haven't had enough scenarios to really tell.
Speaker 1: But then he also said safety is really not as
Speaker 1: big as as you might think, because the safety benchmark
Speaker 1: is to try and have fewer than one fatality per
Speaker 1: one million kilometers driven. Now, in the United States it
Speaker 1: is one point oh eight fatalities for one million miles.
Speaker 1: But a mile is longer than a kilometer, right, one
Speaker 1: mile is one point six kilometers, so it's still below
Speaker 1: that one fatality per one million kilometers. And then he
Speaker 1: said for most countries that's the case. There are a
Speaker 1: few that are above it, but not many. So is
Speaker 1: this an unrealistic standard to be to be held to? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think what he was trying to say
Speaker 1: is that human drivers are pretty safe already, and therefore
Speaker 1: you can't sell autonomous cars on the promise of safety
Speaker 1: because we're so safe already. I would counter that argument
Speaker 1: by saying more than thirty thousand people died last year
Speaker 1: as a result of car accidents, as thirty fewer people
Speaker 1: around today because of a car accident, and more. Something
Speaker 1: around the order of ninet percent of car accidents are
Speaker 1: at the fault of the human of a human driver,
Speaker 1: at least one human driver. And so my counter to
Speaker 1: that argument is that it may be statistically speaking a
Speaker 1: safe thing, but when you get down to actual numbers,
Speaker 1: with real human being lives attached to it, I would
Speaker 1: argue that the autonomous vehicles so far have proven to
Speaker 1: be a really good move in the right direction to
Speaker 1: reduce that number dramatically. This is dangerous territory you're waiting
Speaker 1: into here, because on our show on Car Stuff, we
Speaker 1: sometimes talk about, you know, the uh, the incredible rise
Speaker 1: in in fatalities on Georgia highways last year because there
Speaker 1: was a huge increase increase or something, you know, year
Speaker 1: over year, and it was really big and it was
Speaker 1: the first time in a long, long time, long stretch
Speaker 1: of time where um, you know, it had had actually
Speaker 1: been on the rise. It it was going down up
Speaker 1: until that point, and then suddenly this big spike and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out why, and we're talking about distraction
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, you know, smartphones and things behind
Speaker 1: the wheel and trying to just, you know, guess why
Speaker 1: it is happening that way. And of course somebody writes
Speaker 1: in and says, well, thirty eight thousand people is not
Speaker 1: that many people. And you say, well, that that's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that die on on US highways. And
Speaker 1: they say, now, now, back in the nineteen fifties, the
Speaker 1: number was like forty four thousand, and that you know that,
Speaker 1: and that was with less drivers on the road. And
Speaker 1: they give you all these stats about population and number
Speaker 1: of miles driven and all that night, and I get
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest, I get kind of confused with
Speaker 1: with that, you know, with that angle, like trying to
Speaker 1: compare apples to apples, you know, back then, you know,
Speaker 1: sixty years ago to today. That's it's kind of tough
Speaker 1: to do well, especially you know, there's so many other
Speaker 1: factors there. Right, Yeah, you might have fewer drivers on
Speaker 1: the road, but your safety regulations weren't anything like they
Speaker 1: are today years ago exactly. That was one thing and
Speaker 1: we always argue that point too. There were no crumple zones,
Speaker 1: there were no air bags, there's none of that stuff
Speaker 1: going on, so maybe that it counts for it, but
Speaker 1: then they counter with another argument. So I'm just saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel that somebody out there is going
Speaker 1: to have some kind of issue with you know, mentioning
Speaker 1: that thirty. You know, thirty a huge number. That was
Speaker 1: what it was last year in the U. S. Alone.
Speaker 1: That's a huge number, no matter how you look at it.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if even if there're more people driving,
Speaker 1: I think my response to anyone who would argue like
Speaker 1: that that this is less than in the past, I
Speaker 1: would say, that's good, but it could be lower and
Speaker 1: lower number of people who die as a result of
Speaker 1: car accidents. I think it's hard to argue that that's
Speaker 1: a bad thing. No, you certainly want that number to
Speaker 1: be as low as close to zero as you could
Speaker 1: possibly make it. Of course, automakers strive for that. They're trying,
Speaker 1: they're they're trying everything they can to make essentially a
Speaker 1: death proof car. I mean, you can't, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't account for every situation, every single situation, but they're
Speaker 1: doing their best to make what is essentially a death
Speaker 1: proof car. And there's several that, you know, several marks
Speaker 1: that they've got they've gone years without a fatality, and
Speaker 1: they've got you know, the stats somewhere back on my desk.
Speaker 1: But there there's a few that have gone. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guess here, just based off my memory, it was like
Speaker 1: five or six years without fatality caused by a fault
Speaker 1: in a system in their vehicle, right well, And and
Speaker 1: that also leads me to a different panel that I saw.
Speaker 1: We'll come We'll come back to the road rage one
Speaker 1: because we got to get to the BMW's But the
Speaker 1: other panel I saw that was related to this was
Speaker 1: called looking Forward to Rush Our the Future of Transit
Speaker 1: looking Forward to Russia. Yeah, this was from a couple
Speaker 1: of industrial designers without to it design talking about the
Speaker 1: future of transportation, and it wasn't just autonomous cars or
Speaker 1: even just the future of cars. That was one half
Speaker 1: of the panel, and that was done by a guy.
Speaker 1: The guy who who led that part was not Dan Dorley,
Speaker 1: but there was also Chip Walters who did the other half,
Speaker 1: which was more about the hyper loop. Also fascinating, but
Speaker 1: that we're not talking about the hyper loop today. So
Speaker 1: switching back over to Dorley, one of the things Dorley
Speaker 1: said that I thought was really interesting was that once
Speaker 1: you get to a level where you have a lot
Speaker 1: of autonomous cars on the road, like let's say the
Speaker 1: majority of cars on the road or autonomous, and you
Speaker 1: have proof I mean, obviously this only works if everything
Speaker 1: is working properly, but you have proof that because of
Speaker 1: the number of autonomous vehicles on the road, the number
Speaker 1: of crashes decreases dramatically, the number of deaths decreased dramatically.
Speaker 1: Then you can start to play around with other stuff
Speaker 1: because if the autonomous cars are approven technology that's safe,
Speaker 1: you can let up on some of the major safety
Speaker 1: considerations you've had to put into place over the last
Speaker 1: few years. In order to minimize that number that we
Speaker 1: talked about, that thirty thousand or higher number. You could
Speaker 1: remove crumple zones. You can make cars smaller and lighter,
Speaker 1: so which is especially important if your cars also are electric,
Speaker 1: because the battery will have less weight to have to
Speaker 1: move around. That will extend the driving range of your vehicle.
Speaker 1: But because you've made your vehicle lighter, not that not
Speaker 1: that the battery has gotten any better, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to push as much weight around. And again, this
Speaker 1: this only works though, if every vehicle out there is
Speaker 1: the same. Yeah, you have to have you have to
Speaker 1: have enough autonomous vehicles, at least the majority, if not
Speaker 1: of them out there, so that you can be confident
Speaker 1: that by eliminating those safety features that are important right now,
Speaker 1: it's not going to make any difference. Um, and I
Speaker 1: think that, I think we're pretty far away from that,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was an interesting point. He also
Speaker 1: talked about more man car manufacturers creating a sort of
Speaker 1: a universal chassis where lots of different bodies of vehicles
Speaker 1: could fit on top of the same basic chassis, leading
Speaker 1: to a future where ultimately you can and you can
Speaker 1: do this now. Actually, if you've got enough money, you
Speaker 1: can go to certain specialty companies and three D print
Speaker 1: a car design. You could design a car if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, and three D print a car body that
Speaker 1: fits on top of a particular chassis and motor drive
Speaker 1: train configuration, and uh so you can have your own.
Speaker 1: Like people would say, well, what kind of cars as
Speaker 1: that's my car. I call it a Strickland. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a Strickland. It doesn't drive anywhere. Um, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a joke about me not driving. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that he was looking into
Speaker 1: implications of autonomous cars well beyond safety, well beyond the
Speaker 1: shared model. He was looking at au Thomas cars like, well,
Speaker 1: what does that do to the design of the car itself.
Speaker 1: That's interesting that, you know, you could eliminate the things
Speaker 1: that we find that we have to have now. And
Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting way to think about it, Like
Speaker 1: if if, if it's just not necessary, what could you
Speaker 1: really pair that design down to? What what what smart
Speaker 1: things could you do with that to make it work
Speaker 1: better as an electric platform, as an autonomous platform. You know,
Speaker 1: it all makes it makes good sense. But again you're
Speaker 1: you're counting on you participation in this. Yeah, you need to.
Speaker 1: You would need to have enough buy in so that
Speaker 1: there isn't a risk of having something like we saw
Speaker 1: with the previous Google tests. You know, we talked about
Speaker 1: there were more than a dozen accidents involving Google self
Speaker 1: driving cars previously only only the previous ones until before
Speaker 1: February two thousand sixteen. They were all at the fault
Speaker 1: of a of a human driver, either the person manually
Speaker 1: controlling the self driving car or another driver. So the
Speaker 1: same thing is true if you're in an autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: and there are human drivers on the road, then there's
Speaker 1: a chance that one of them could make a terrible
Speaker 1: like there could just be an accident, it could be
Speaker 1: a failure, it could be a distracted driver, drunk driver,
Speaker 1: could be anything. And until you eliminate those possibilities, it
Speaker 1: is pretty dangerous to just say, let's eliminate crumple zoneserous
Speaker 1: you could do other stuff like imagine, you know, you
Speaker 1: have no need for controls, so you free up all
Speaker 1: that space in the front that would be normally be
Speaker 1: dedicated to steering wheel and pedals and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You could have a workstation or an entertainment station. Because
Speaker 1: you're not driving, you don't even necessarily have to face forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can face backwards. I had a discussion about this
Speaker 1: on Forward Thinking and Lauren immediately said, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: never do that. I'd be yakking all over the inside
Speaker 1: of that car. I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: their trouble on a train already or a buss, you know,
Speaker 1: in certain situations. But imagine if you could sit sideways. Uh,
Speaker 1: the design of the vehicle could just be so radically
Speaker 1: different that none of that really matter. You could you
Speaker 1: could probably design you know, those honeycomb systems where you
Speaker 1: could sleep in the car if you want it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny because it actually opens up an
Speaker 1: enormous opportunity for designers, right, unprecedented opportunity, because you would
Speaker 1: be completely transforming the interior of a car. All the
Speaker 1: things we associate as being well, not all, but a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we are so as being the
Speaker 1: definition of what an inside of a car would look
Speaker 1: like go out the window, I mean figuratively speaking. And
Speaker 1: so you could then have all kinds of different configurations
Speaker 1: and designs almost like almost more like home design really
Speaker 1: or room design and some sort of interior design for vehicles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's strange, strange thought. Hey, by the way, I want
Speaker 1: to clarify one thing really, just something that's been bugging
Speaker 1: me for last ten minutes. I do know that there
Speaker 1: were were no cars on US roads prior to the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. I was just mentioning their brief comeback, you know,
Speaker 1: with the Alliance lineup and uh and and the kind
Speaker 1: of I guess I'm going to mention the failure that
Speaker 1: that was. It was, it was not not all that
Speaker 1: well received. Yeah, but I think most of my listeners
Speaker 1: are most of them let me let me clarify, most
Speaker 1: of my listeners in the US are probably unfamiliar with
Speaker 1: the brand Rent. Yeah, probably because I'm I'm guessing many
Speaker 1: of them were born in the eighties. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: It is a seldom seen vehicle on the roads here
Speaker 1: in the United States, but in other parts of the
Speaker 1: world it is a very popular. Yeah, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot like pougeot or something like that. You know, there's reasons,
Speaker 1: but not the right show. It's so funny when you
Speaker 1: start throwing around, uh, car manufacturer names and car brand names,
Speaker 1: and then you come to that weird realization that in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world they're totally different ones that
Speaker 1: and some some of which that are prevalent in the
Speaker 1: United States are largely unknown in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 1: And it just reminds you like, oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: The whole world isn't the US. Yeah, it's it's it
Speaker 1: is strange. And once you travel outside and you see that,
Speaker 1: you see the same vehicle but it's named something different
Speaker 1: or something like that, it's just unusual. It's just it's
Speaker 1: it is eye opening. Really. Now I've been teasing this
Speaker 1: for the whole episode. But let's get back to BMW
Speaker 1: and Mark Platchen. Is this intended to hurt me? No,
Speaker 1: it's not tend to hurt you. I just want to
Speaker 1: see what your reaction is. Scott. I. Scott and I
Speaker 1: started talking about this off microphone yesterday, and as I
Speaker 1: was talking, a little voice in my head said, shut up, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: save it for the show. So that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: It's not really you might just shrug and say, oh,
Speaker 1: all right. But in order to set this up first,
Speaker 1: what is bmw slogan? Now they're known as It's It's
Speaker 1: a driver's car, right, It's a it's um the ultimate
Speaker 1: driving machine means the ultimate driving machine, the ultimate driving machine.
Speaker 1: So you would think that, you know, of course they're
Speaker 1: gonna dabble in autonomous systems like you know, maybe adaptive
Speaker 1: cruise control something like that. But I just I've had
Speaker 1: a hard time all along seeing BMW going fully autonomous
Speaker 1: because of the way they market their company. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's it is the ultimate driving machine. It's a driver's vehicle.
Speaker 1: If you want something that's fun to drive, that's an experience,
Speaker 1: you get a BMW. You get you know something that's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's top of the line, it's expensive, it's plush,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a well handling car, it's powerful, it's
Speaker 1: it's everything you want, and again, ultimate driving machines. So
Speaker 1: so why are they messing around with autonomous vehicles? That's
Speaker 1: that's my thoughts. Plantation works specifically with the autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: section in BMW, and his response to the first part
Speaker 1: would be, I imagine I'm putting some words into his mouth,
Speaker 1: so take this with a grain of salt, But I
Speaker 1: imagine he would say, it's where the future of vehicles
Speaker 1: definitely happens to be completely understand that and you cannot
Speaker 1: ignore it. If you do, you'll be left behind. Yes,
Speaker 1: he said that the company was at a real um.
Speaker 1: They were in a quandary. He actually said that. I
Speaker 1: think it was last year he was brought in to talk,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was a few years ago. He was
Speaker 1: taught brought in to talk about the concepts they needed
Speaker 1: to talk about in an upcoming conversation. They were gonna
Speaker 1: hit like some corporate milestone, and they wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about what are the next one years of BMW going
Speaker 1: to look like? Now? Anyone who's listened to forward thinking.
Speaker 1: You know, predicting the future is hard. Predicting five years
Speaker 1: out is hard. Predicting a hundred years out is impossible.
Speaker 1: I can't. Yeah. Uh. The only thing I can predict
Speaker 1: tomorrow is that if I don't wear some block, I
Speaker 1: will be sunburnt. That's it, because I know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be outside a lot. But he said it was his
Speaker 1: job to try and help coordinate this, this vision of
Speaker 1: BMW for the next one years, and taking into account
Speaker 1: the fact that autonomous cars are I mean, everyone is
Speaker 1: stuff byself. West was talking about them as if it's
Speaker 1: a foregone conclusion. That's the future, that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: So taking that as part of it, they actually had
Speaker 1: serious internal discussions what does this mean with our slogan
Speaker 1: the Ultimate driving Machine? What do we do? Do we rebrand?
Speaker 1: How do we rebrand? This is something we pride ourselves upon.
Speaker 1: It is a corporate identity. It's it's kind of the
Speaker 1: center role mantra of the company's it's the DNA of
Speaker 1: the company. They started playing with alternatives to the slogan,
Speaker 1: like maybe we change it to something else, and they
Speaker 1: tried a few different things out and all internally, and
Speaker 1: no one liked them. No one liked them. And then
Speaker 1: finally someone said, well, technically it's a driving machine. It's
Speaker 1: a machine that's driving. It is the driving machine. We
Speaker 1: can make the ultimate driving machine. So it's still the
Speaker 1: same slogan. The context is redefined. Yeah, boy, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's why I went, yeah, I don't know about this
Speaker 1: all right. Well, so it's almost like you're putting the
Speaker 1: the emphasis on the on the other part. I don't
Speaker 1: know how how do you even look at that? I
Speaker 1: guess it's just how you would say that. I'd say
Speaker 1: the emphasis. The emphasis previously was on driving because you
Speaker 1: think of driving as a verb that people indulge. So
Speaker 1: now it's the ultimate driving machine. I okay, Well, a boy,
Speaker 1: that's so subtle. So if you make And this was
Speaker 1: also an interesting discussion because people ask the questions and
Speaker 1: what happens to brand identity in a future of autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles that are likely not going to be owned by
Speaker 1: individuals but will be in some form of shared economy.
Speaker 1: And they had a really good response for this. They said, well,
Speaker 1: you could argue that all autonomous cars would essentially be
Speaker 1: alike that one you know, robo uber car would be
Speaker 1: the same as the next robot uber car, except eventually
Speaker 1: someone would come along and say, you know what, We're
Speaker 1: going to make a different robot uber car that has
Speaker 1: X features in it, which appeals to why demographic somebody
Speaker 1: will pay a premium for that feature, right, Because if
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, we noticed that, uh that young people
Speaker 1: between the ages of such and such and such and such,
Speaker 1: they really care about these things and they don't care
Speaker 1: about these other things. Let's make some cars that go
Speaker 1: straight straight to what they care about, and we'll be
Speaker 1: able to dominate that market. And then you get competition
Speaker 1: there because other companies will follow, which means you still
Speaker 1: end up getting that differentiation. You still get the brand identity.
Speaker 1: The question is how do they define themselves so that
Speaker 1: the experience of being in, say a BMW autonomous car
Speaker 1: is different from being an Alexis autonomous car. And now
Speaker 1: we know all they do is put the emphasis on machine.
Speaker 1: That's it, right, But I thought, I guess it beats
Speaker 1: like BMW we give up or BMW it was fun
Speaker 1: well at last, Yeah, yeah, you can come up with
Speaker 1: a bunch of funny slogans. I'm sure for it. But
Speaker 1: but honestly like to stick with what they have. Really,
Speaker 1: I think maybe if if that's what they're gonna do,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna push it that way, that may be
Speaker 1: exactly what they do. They may you may hear that
Speaker 1: emphasized machine over over driving, which we are now. So
Speaker 1: that's gonna be really weird, isn't it. I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, I also think it's gonna be weird to
Speaker 1: be in a world where, assuming that the shared car
Speaker 1: approach is what what wins out, it will be weird
Speaker 1: to live in that world for lots of different reasons,
Speaker 1: because a lot of us are very used to having
Speaker 1: our own personal vehicle for multiple reasons, not just for
Speaker 1: the convenience sake, but convenience outside of just I have
Speaker 1: a car whenever I need to go someplace, assuming that's
Speaker 1: not broken down. What about all the stuff that's in
Speaker 1: a car, Like a lot of people have stuff that
Speaker 1: they keep in their car, and it might equipment or
Speaker 1: you know that diapers, Yeah, stuff like a new parents
Speaker 1: might have a box of diapers in the car so
Speaker 1: that when they travel places they have their supply right there.
Speaker 1: If they need to run out to the car, they
Speaker 1: can or but in the future if you have shared vehicles,
Speaker 1: obviously you can't just keep stuff in a car. You'd
Speaker 1: have to carry everything you need with you all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you either have to pare down the stuff so
Speaker 1: that you're saying, well, I might not be prepared for
Speaker 1: certain situations. But yeah, but it's a trade off. Isn't
Speaker 1: it really nice to just kind of leave an umbrella
Speaker 1: in your car and have it when you need it
Speaker 1: and you don't have to remember every single time you
Speaker 1: go out the door. It was funny because Plain actually said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll have services where you could actually store your stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh and what would account what would end up being
Speaker 1: like a mobile storage unit and you could just call
Speaker 1: upon it to come to you whenever you needed it.
Speaker 1: And I thought that puts more cars on the road.
Speaker 1: That's a terrible idea. Yeah, I I'll just tell you
Speaker 1: right now, that's a bad idea. Joe and Lauren both
Speaker 1: agree with you, and I do too. I also thought like, well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like that's ideal. So yeah, there's obviously
Speaker 1: some huge trade offs that would happen. We'll imagine a
Speaker 1: block of lockers, you know, that's would it be a
Speaker 1: block of lockers driving down the road with your stuff
Speaker 1: and everybody else's stuff in it, And what if some
Speaker 1: went across town. Need I know that they would probably
Speaker 1: keep it in a central area, central area, but people
Speaker 1: don't all like Like, let's say that my next door
Speaker 1: neighbor and I both use the same unit because we
Speaker 1: both live next door to each other. We don't necessarily
Speaker 1: work anywhere close to each other, so he might work
Speaker 1: on the other side of town. He needs his umbrella.
Speaker 1: I need my umbrella. That car, I mean, easily you
Speaker 1: could see problems with that model. There was a similar
Speaker 1: model that I also. Let me see what you think
Speaker 1: about this one by Scott so talking about shared cars. Now,
Speaker 1: in the examples I've been giving so far, it's essentially
Speaker 1: a fleet of service vehicles, something along the lines of
Speaker 1: an uber or a lift, only with no human drivers. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the alternatives I heard, Shad Law actually mentioned
Speaker 1: this possibility, which I think is uh almost as bad
Speaker 1: as the traveling locker idea. What if instead of it
Speaker 1: being a fleet car, it's a communal car among multiple households,
Speaker 1: and you own like a sixth of that car. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine that working out? How would you guarantee that
Speaker 1: the car would be available for all the households. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't as bad an idea is, and I understand
Speaker 1: that it's it's not great, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: flaws to this one as well. But um, isn't this
Speaker 1: kind of the idea behind you know, the the companies
Speaker 1: that allow you to have kind of a lease on
Speaker 1: three different types of vehicles at one time and you
Speaker 1: can use the one that you need when you need it.
Speaker 1: So you lease, um, you know, a a sedan, you
Speaker 1: lease a compact car that's very good, you know with mileage,
Speaker 1: and you lease, you know, a pickup truck, and when
Speaker 1: you need to pickup truck on the weekend, you can
Speaker 1: rent that. You can you can have that brought to you,
Speaker 1: or you can go get it. Um use it for
Speaker 1: that amount of time. But what if somebody else is
Speaker 1: using that that that sedan when you need it, you know,
Speaker 1: they need it for the week and you also need
Speaker 1: it for the week. I mean, how does that all work?
Speaker 1: I don't Again, same set of problems. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a smaller scale and the one that I'm talking about, mean,
Speaker 1: maybe if there's maybe the only way I can see
Speaker 1: it working. Is that you again go back to the
Speaker 1: fleet of cars. So you've got a fleet of autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: You've got a group of people who have essentially collectively
Speaker 1: invested so that they own the quote unquote owned one
Speaker 1: of those cars it and actually own a car. They
Speaker 1: just own a share share. Yeah, it's like a timeshare
Speaker 1: for those vehicles that are on demand. So if I
Speaker 1: call for a car and my neighbor calls for a car,
Speaker 1: and they're both and we're both on this this plan,
Speaker 1: two different cars come because of the way we've agreed
Speaker 1: with this fleet, and it's the purchase price of the
Speaker 1: vehicle that ends up covering the cost of the individual
Speaker 1: trip as opposed to doing a trip, you know, a
Speaker 1: fee per trip, like you like a typical rental car. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so essentially it would be like, all right, well, collectively,
Speaker 1: we all got together and we put in thirty dollars
Speaker 1: to quote unquote buy a car. What that really does
Speaker 1: is give us unlimited travel using this service within its
Speaker 1: range of service, you know, assuming that it isn't you know,
Speaker 1: state or a countrywide or whatever. And I can see
Speaker 1: it working that way maybe, but I can't see it
Speaker 1: working in such a way where you actually physically have
Speaker 1: one car to share between the multiple house That would
Speaker 1: never work, just wouldn't work out. There's gotta be a
Speaker 1: way around it, Like you said, it's gotta be there's
Speaker 1: gotta be a pool of vehicles to draw from. It
Speaker 1: just wouldn't work. But this was the I wish you
Speaker 1: could have gone because I wish you could have seen, uh,
Speaker 1: panels like these and some of the other ones too.
Speaker 1: Like I was only able to go to three panels total,
Speaker 1: but there were so many there were, all about autonomous vehicles.
Speaker 1: It sounds fascinating. I really didn't know until some of
Speaker 1: the you know, the reports that have been reading just
Speaker 1: for this podcast, uh, that that this show is so
Speaker 1: focused on that type of technology. I tend to think
Speaker 1: of more of cs to be like that rather than
Speaker 1: this south By Southwest. Yeah, it's it's It's interesting because
Speaker 1: south By Southwest Interactive for many years was focused on
Speaker 1: mobile apps, like that was the big thing, mobile apps
Speaker 1: and some gaming. But usually you're talking about the next Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know, a mere Cat and Periscope both came out
Speaker 1: in mere Cat went under. Periscope is still around because
Speaker 1: it's owned by Twitter. Uh. Anyway, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff you would expect. But they had different tracks of
Speaker 1: programming under Interactive and one of the tracks was titled
Speaker 1: Intelligent Future, and that's where all the robotics and autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles and AI all those discussions fell under that. And
Speaker 1: uh so a lot of it had to do with
Speaker 1: the future of cars, and again not just autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: but the idea of, uh what what is it going
Speaker 1: to look like? From multiple standpoints. I think autonomous played
Speaker 1: a huge role because everyone just assumes that's going to
Speaker 1: be part of the future, no matter how it turns out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And one thing we should probably point out
Speaker 1: here is that we always talk about how it's happening.
Speaker 1: It's it's incrementally happening. What's going on, and we're we're
Speaker 1: getting little bits and pieces of it now and we
Speaker 1: see it, you know, in our everyday cars, but not
Speaker 1: the whole package yet. And the whole package they always
Speaker 1: it seems like it's always ten years out, is what
Speaker 1: they say. But I'm seeing estimates now that rain anywhere
Speaker 1: from three years to thirty years, and and those are
Speaker 1: all to be honest, those are all realistic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could take thirty years. It could be faster than that,
Speaker 1: it could be we could I have this by you
Speaker 1: never know. Yeah, I think I think three years is
Speaker 1: probably what we would we would start to see actual
Speaker 1: vehicles make their way onto the roads. Thirty years is
Speaker 1: where you get to the point where you're at saturation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I know on this podcast, even especially
Speaker 1: in car stuff, but on on this one, we've we've
Speaker 1: mentioned before they're already out there their cars that can
Speaker 1: drive you home from work without you touching the wheel
Speaker 1: or doing anything. You but they simply can't say it's
Speaker 1: an autonomous You have to be sitting down the wheel
Speaker 1: and allow it to You can allow it to do it,
Speaker 1: but you have to be there, and you have to
Speaker 1: be ready to take control at any moment. And often
Speaker 1: often you'll get a little little beep asking you to
Speaker 1: make sure you make contact with the wheel to prove
Speaker 1: that you're still paying attention and everything exactly, you're not
Speaker 1: taking a nap on the way home. You don't wanna,
Speaker 1: you know, those companies don't want to be liable for
Speaker 1: a terrible accident. So the three to thirty years were
Speaker 1: talking about is where the companies are actually confident enough
Speaker 1: to say, this is an autonomous you know, self driving car,
Speaker 1: Let it do it. Yeah, and and uh, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you're able to join me on this this episode
Speaker 1: and talk about this kind of stuff. I know that
Speaker 1: I come across as I love to needle you with
Speaker 1: these because you're the car guy and it's fun. It's fun.
Speaker 1: I should also mention that pretty much everyone's agreed that
Speaker 1: personal car ownership is not ever going to go away
Speaker 1: entirely in the United States, that no one seemed to
Speaker 1: believe that that was the case. Uh. People said that
Speaker 1: it may be that fewer people own their own vehicles,
Speaker 1: but you'll you'll still be allowed to own and operate
Speaker 1: your own vehicle. I could see that happening, especially for
Speaker 1: things like rural areas. It doesn't make sense to have
Speaker 1: an autonomous car service out serving way all the way.
Speaker 1: Rural areas, like you know, cattle ranchers aren't going to
Speaker 1: have any need for that. Now, this is a congested
Speaker 1: city situation. Yes, this is for been dense urban environments
Speaker 1: and not it's not ideal for other situations. So, but
Speaker 1: one guy did say that he could envision a future
Speaker 1: in which car ownership of like an actual car owner
Speaker 1: will be about as rare as horse owners are today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's plenty of people who still own horses, just
Speaker 1: not the general population. There's a there's a lot of
Speaker 1: wide open space out there, and I think that you know,
Speaker 1: that's where they will be still used. Of course, and
Speaker 1: maybe in cities, you know, I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but there may be a point where you know, you
Speaker 1: can't drive into the city in your own personal vehic.
Speaker 1: You maybe have a giant parking lot in the outskirts
Speaker 1: of the city and you get out from there and
Speaker 1: then you take your city city approved transportation once you're inside.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't that be something. I mean, it'd be
Speaker 1: a dramatic change in the way that we do things now.
Speaker 1: I mean it would significantly changed the well, the entire
Speaker 1: city escape really everything would be different. So um, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Top and again, thanks for inviting me in today to
Speaker 1: do this. I always have fun talking with you, and
Speaker 1: I know you like to rib me a little bit
Speaker 1: about car ownership and you know the way it's going,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I agree on a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff. I mean, I think we we can have
Speaker 1: a decent conversation back and forth about Um, I understand
Speaker 1: that you know things are moving towards autonomous vehicles, but
Speaker 1: I also and I'm glad that you said it too,
Speaker 1: that you know it's never gonna go completely away. Well,
Speaker 1: and and to be fair, we're so so so in
Speaker 1: the baby stage of this, right, we're in the earliest
Speaker 1: stages of this autonomous era. That making any definitive statement
Speaker 1: such as autonomous cars will completely replace manual cars, or
Speaker 1: that car ownership will completely become a thing of the past,
Speaker 1: or even that manual cars will no longer be allowed
Speaker 1: in within city limits, any of those, It's so premature
Speaker 1: to make any kind of statement like that, Um. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it may turn out that we just see that the
Speaker 1: idea old mix is somewhere in the middle, with a
Speaker 1: mixture of autonomous cars and manually driven cars. We don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, the mathematical models suggests that if you went
Speaker 1: all autonomous, you avoid a lot of problems, but that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the way it will actually shake out in
Speaker 1: real life. Well, I'm with you. I try to avoid
Speaker 1: the predictions because it just ends up making you look
Speaker 1: like a fool later, right when when what happens eventually?
Speaker 1: But that's pretty much status quo for me. Well, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to though, you know, anyways, I really
Speaker 1: I don't like to do that, but that I like
Speaker 1: to just kind of sit back and and kind of
Speaker 1: just take it all in because there's so many changes
Speaker 1: happening right now. It's it's actually pretty exciting. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and you know, you got to remember the autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: if they've become a thing, like a real serious thing,
Speaker 1: like most people believe, there are implications well beyond the
Speaker 1: auto industry that things that could really be effective, like
Speaker 1: like airline industry. You know, if you're able to jump
Speaker 1: into an autonomous autonomously driven car and you can do
Speaker 1: or you can go to sleep and you are not
Speaker 1: you don't need to get to whatever your destination is
Speaker 1: within a couple of hours, that could really impact a
Speaker 1: lot of airline travel. So well, yeah, I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: I know we gotta wrap up here, but you're you're
Speaker 1: making me think of you know, the the uh, the
Speaker 1: kind of pros cons you you wait, if you're making
Speaker 1: a short trip on a plane, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: flying from here to or Lando, sure, and it's like
Speaker 1: like from here, it's like an hour a little a
Speaker 1: little less than an hour and a half flight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then then then you have to take a new can.
Speaker 1: You gotta get up early, you gotta pack the car,
Speaker 1: you gotta get to the airport and park and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. It ends up taking more than half of
Speaker 1: the day. But you could just drive there too, And
Speaker 1: if you can do that in in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't it's not taxing on you. It's it's it's actually
Speaker 1: comfortable and you're in your own your own car. It's
Speaker 1: a lot more comfortable than being crammed into an airplane.
Speaker 1: Why would you not do that? You have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to stop at a specific place to have food rather
Speaker 1: than just buying whatever little snack box happens to be
Speaker 1: on the plane. Yes, so you're right. It does change
Speaker 1: even you know that short distance travel. Yeah, Now for
Speaker 1: long distances, obviously, I think air travel. Unless you're determined
Speaker 1: to do the Great autonomous American road trip, I think
Speaker 1: you're The airlines will still be very much a strong
Speaker 1: player in that, but it will affect their bottom line,
Speaker 1: and that will affect how they route planes, how they
Speaker 1: design planes, how they how they price tickets. So there's
Speaker 1: some big potentially disruptive things that could happen ripple out
Speaker 1: from the automotive industry out into many other ones. So
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting stuff. So, Scott, it's been fantastic. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining. Well, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me again. I appreciate it. I'm I I'd be happy
Speaker 1: to come back and talk about stuff like this anytime
Speaker 1: you want. Well, I'll definitely be having you back on
Speaker 1: here before too long, I'm sure. And of course people
Speaker 1: can listen to your show car stuff you and Ben
Speaker 1: bowl and tackle all things vehicular. Uh, and that's it's
Speaker 1: amazing show. So if you guys haven't listened to that,
Speaker 1: make sure you go and subscribe to it because, uh,
Speaker 1: if there ever happened to be a question you had
Speaker 1: about vehicles, whether it's how they work or the design
Speaker 1: stories behind them, or even stuff like I still love
Speaker 1: the series you did about Coast to coast races. I
Speaker 1: loved it very good. I didn't know your listener. Well,
Speaker 1: I appreciate the you know, the plug for our show there.
Speaker 1: That's that's very nice. And and we have something like
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty episodes. So if you go to
Speaker 1: our you know, our our website which is car Stuff
Speaker 1: Show um dot com and you can find every one
Speaker 1: of the podcasts we've ever done there. I think iTunes
Speaker 1: limits it to what like two or three the latest
Speaker 1: two hundreds. So if you go to car Stuff Show
Speaker 1: dot com, then you can check out all of them
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know, take a look, find some that
Speaker 1: immediately tickle your fancy, listen to them, and then I
Speaker 1: guarantee you're gonna get hooked, and then you're just gonna
Speaker 1: go on a binge. Shucks. I appreciate it. Thank you.
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