Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the Tech Area.
Speaker 1: It's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This
Speaker 1: one is titled the Great Google Car Crash of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin joined the show to talk about this. This
Speaker 1: was one of those news stories that was a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal in twenty sixteen. The episode originally published on
Speaker 1: April twenty seventh, twenty sixteen. And you know autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: well really that we don't have a truly autonomous car yet,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of a new concept, like new
Speaker 1: in the sense that we hadn't really seen too many
Speaker 1: of them out on actual street back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: So Google getting into a little car accident was big news. Now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: in the years since, we have had a lot more
Speaker 1: accidents involving autonomous vehicles or semi autonomous vehicles, so things
Speaker 1: have definitely continued to be complicated and sometimes tragic, but
Speaker 1: this one was more of an interesting, lighthearted look at
Speaker 1: why an autonomous car might get into an accident. So
Speaker 1: sit back and enjoy this episode from twenty sixteen. We're
Speaker 1: talking today about a peculiar event, something that happened in
Speaker 1: February twenty sixteen, and it's just taken me this long
Speaker 1: to finally get around and addressing it. You might have
Speaker 1: heard in previous episodes of Tech Stuff about how I
Speaker 1: would champion the fact that Google with their self driving
Speaker 1: cars had had enormous success, flawless. You might argue, success
Speaker 1: something like one point four to five million miles driven
Speaker 1: without a single accident caused by the autonomous system. That
Speaker 1: there had been about fourteen or so accidents, but all
Speaker 1: of those were either the fault of a person manually
Speaker 1: driving the car in manual mode or another driver colliding
Speaker 1: with the autonomous car, but never the fallow the autonomous
Speaker 1: car itself. It was a perfect system until February twenty sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is the day of what I'll caohol, And
Speaker 1: I really don't mean to over dramaticize this at all,
Speaker 1: So maybe I'm titling this episode. I think maybe sure
Speaker 1: we should call this the Saint Valentine's Day Google self
Speaker 1: driving Car Massacre. Oh, that's an excellent title, and I'm
Speaker 1: all for it. Definitely not overly dramatic in any way. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's also funny because we're recording this
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 till 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 and suddenly it
Speaker 1: sounded like Google's autonomous car had caused an enormous pile
Speaker 1: up on the highway. Everyone was much more cautious. So
Speaker 1: you're maybe not buying my alternate title. Then, is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying? What's your alternate title? No, no, that
Speaker 1: I'm totally no. I think it is a maskacer, but
Speaker 1: I think it's a massacer in the sense of the
Speaker 1: public perception of autonomous cars. I see, Okay, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of from a pr st, I could I could
Speaker 1: take this opportunity to gloat and say, ah, they're not
Speaker 1: as infallible as you thought they're They're not perfect, but
Speaker 1: but I'm going to take a different stance here in
Speaker 1: this in this podcast, And and I think that as
Speaker 1: we as we talk through this, we're going to realize
Speaker 1: that they've been held to a much higher standard than
Speaker 1: they probably need to be right. And I know that's
Speaker 1: that's tough to to take, you know, when you when
Speaker 1: you just hear it that way, But listen to our
Speaker 1: argument back and forth about this, and and understand that
Speaker 1: they're being held to perfection when they probably shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: When humans, I mean, we're not perfect, of course, right,
Speaker 1: there's a vast m a chasm between what the standards
Speaker 1: that they're held to versus the standard that human test
Speaker 1: drivers are held too. Sure, yeah, if you look at
Speaker 1: if you look at the standard driving test that you
Speaker 1: have to pass before you get a license, I would
Speaker 1: argue most autonomous cars could likely pass such a test
Speaker 1: as close to flawlessly as you can get. But you
Speaker 1: don't have to be flawless when you take a driver's test.
Speaker 1: There's room for you to not completely do something perfectly,
Speaker 1: Like if your parallel parking isn't exactly right, you're going
Speaker 1: to get points deducted from your total, but you may
Speaker 1: still be you know, high enough, score high enough so
Speaker 1: that you could pass the full driver's test. Exactly. You
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, oh, we'll get that thing. It's it's
Speaker 1: pilot junk. Yeah, exactly. It's interesting that you point that
Speaker 1: out too, because that ties into a different discussion. I
Speaker 1: saw it south by Southwest that wasn't specifically about autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: It was about robots. So this is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tangent, but it goes to illustrate the point
Speaker 1: you just made. I love tangents, So this h pammel
Speaker 1: about robots. There was a woman, Leila Takayama, who used
Speaker 1: to work for Google X, but not in the autonomous
Speaker 1: car division. She talked about how she ran an experiment.
Speaker 1: She got a guy from Pixar to do a series
Speaker 1: of very simple animations to show people the interactions between
Speaker 1: a robot and a person and then to judge which
Speaker 1: robot is considered intelligent versus not intelligent. And the whole
Speaker 1: point of this was to show the differences between succeeding
Speaker 1: and failing, but giving no indication that the robot understands
Speaker 1: it succeeded or failed, or building in expressions for the
Speaker 1: robot to follow a success or failure to indicate it
Speaker 1: quote unquote understands what happened. And it was fascinating because
Speaker 1: they showed a very simple experiment with a robot trying
Speaker 1: to open the door. And again, this is an animation,
Speaker 1: so there was different scenarios. There's one where the robot
Speaker 1: opens the door and the door opens and then the
Speaker 1: robot just sits there and it's done because it's done
Speaker 1: what it was supposed to do. There's one where the
Speaker 1: robot opens the door and then kind of perks up, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I did what I wanted to do. There was one
Speaker 1: where the robot fails to open the door and then
Speaker 1: does nothing, and then there was one where the robot
Speaker 1: fails to open the door and then slumps down a
Speaker 1: little bit as if to say, oh, I'm disappointed I
Speaker 1: didn't succeed. They then asked able to judge which robots
Speaker 1: they thought were the most intelligent, and everyone said the
Speaker 1: robot that failed but showed disappointment was more intelligent than
Speaker 1: the robot that succeeded but didn't show any expression at all.
Speaker 1: No kidding, And when you think about that again. It's
Speaker 1: holding robots to a standard that doesn't necessarily apply to
Speaker 1: 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. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this comes up in an article that I read
Speaker 1: in let's see, it was in the Verge. Yes, and
Speaker 1: the Verge article you might have read the same thing.
Speaker 1: An excellent article. Yeah, it really is. And a person
Speaker 1: by the name of Jennifer Harun. She's the head of
Speaker 1: business operations for Google self driving project. And by the way,
Speaker 1: let's come back to the details of the accident and
Speaker 1: just a moment. Sure, we'll describe what happened, but she
Speaker 1: says that, well, you know what, maybe I need to
Speaker 1: back this up just a second here. How about this,
Speaker 1: Let's describe the accident and then we'll talk about what
Speaker 1: she said, because it plays perfectly into it. So in
Speaker 1: helping understand what happened. So here's here's how you can
Speaker 1: imagine it. All right, You've got an intersection in Mountain View, California,
Speaker 1: which is where Google's headquarters is located, and you've got
Speaker 1: the Google self driving car. Correct me if I get
Speaker 1: any of this wrong, Scott, I'm going from memory. That's
Speaker 1: all right, I'm doing mostly the same. It's so the
Speaker 1: Google self driving cars in the right lane and at
Speaker 1: once it's planning on making a right turn at this intersection. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: at the corner of the intersection, there were some sandbags
Speaker 1: that were a partial obstruction of the lane. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you're 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 lane,
Speaker 1: over the next lane to the left before making a
Speaker 1: right turn. Behind the Google car, approaching at a blistering
Speaker 1: speed of fifteen miles per hour was a bus, and
Speaker 1: so the Google car recognized there was a bus coming.
Speaker 1: He 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 was,
Speaker 1: in fact a driver behind the wheel of the Google Car.
Speaker 1: It's just the driver wasn't in control. The autonomous system
Speaker 1: was in control. And some people might say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the bus driver just didn't let the car in. But
Speaker 1: Google actually said this is important. Google came out and said,
Speaker 1: we accept responsibility for this. This is something that it's
Speaker 1: it's valuable that this information has come to light because
Speaker 1: it means that we need to revisit this particular part
Speaker 1: of the autonomous car programming. Now, I thought that was
Speaker 1: really interesting. First of all, I have never heard of
Speaker 1: a company accepting responsibility for something so fast in my life. Well,
Speaker 1: they did, and they didn't. I mean, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of versions of this. Now you got the details of
Speaker 1: the accident correct, Although I did hear and this this
Speaker 1: is a bit confusing. I didn't hear that the lanes
Speaker 1: in this particular part of town are extremely wide, and
Speaker 1: so what happened was the car kind of edged itself
Speaker 1: over toward the curb. So it was I guess, mimicking
Speaker 1: human behavior again. And I'll get to that in just
Speaker 1: a minute. But um, you know, once this accident happened
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, we do need to investigate this,
Speaker 1: they did that to the tune of about thirty five
Speaker 1: hundred new tests that they've now implemented since this accident
Speaker 1: that said, we're going to watch for this. You know,
Speaker 1: we need to understand a little more deeply that some
Speaker 1: of these larger vehicles may have a different, more difficult
Speaker 1: times stopping in traffic than a smaller vehicle will. And
Speaker 1: and that's the reason why some of these bigger vehicles
Speaker 1: like to continue on their path and think, well, maybe
Speaker 1: someone behind me will let them in. Google did say
Speaker 1: we were relying on an element of human kindness 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 going to be that off
Speaker 1: handed time where you know, someone does cut through and
Speaker 1: they're just like they're like, no, I need to get
Speaker 1: through that intersection in this light cycle, and no one
Speaker 1: is going to stop me. Yeah, I mean I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be ten feet ahead of you when all this happens, right,
Speaker 1: That's where I you know, that's that's my goal. But
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 Jennifer
Speaker 1: had mentioned. Now, 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 conference
Speaker 1: as well, and she said that the Lexus, it's a
Speaker 1: Lexus vehicle that was outfitted with this gear so that
Speaker 1: it struck the bus in part because it was imitating
Speaker 1: human behavior. And that's I found that interesting that she
Speaker 1: kind of is deferring the fault here and to say, well,
Speaker 1: we were just imitating what we see on the streets
Speaker 1: and that's that's kind of what happened. So well, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a double deferral in a way, right, because
Speaker 1: first they say we were counting on an element of
Speaker 1: human kindness, which is already kind of a deferral in itself. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're essentially saying, well, we were we were thinking
Speaker 1: that the bus driver would be a decent human being
Speaker 1: and not a Lexus hating scumbag. That's I'm paraphrasing what
Speaker 1: they said. Obviously I'm taking a little liberty. And then
Speaker 1: in this one, you're saying, she's also saying, well, we
Speaker 1: designed the car to behave the way we see actual
Speaker 1: cars behaving on the road. So in both cases, you're
Speaker 1: almost it's a little bit of backing away from taking
Speaker 1: full responsibility exactly. And this imitating human behavior that she's
Speaker 1: talking about was that they had recently taught the vehicles
Speaker 1: to hug the right hand side of that lane when
Speaker 1: they're making that right hand turn, and that that's when
Speaker 1: it's encountered the sandbags that were unexpected. And so this
Speaker 1: is what I find interesting is if it's a wide
Speaker 1: lane and she's saying that it was hugging the right
Speaker 1: hand side of that lane trying to make the turn
Speaker 1: as most humans do, if it was in the center
Speaker 1: of the lane, she's saying, if it had just behaved
Speaker 1: as they normally would do it. You know that it
Speaker 1: 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: shouldn't 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 brother issues that are right. If a vehicle, let's
Speaker 1: say that it's an autonomous car heading toward an intersection,
Speaker 1: the light goes from green to amber, and there's technically
Speaker 1: enough space for the car to break safely and come
Speaker 1: to a complete stop as the light turns red. Knowing
Speaker 1: that most humans would just gun it, or at least
Speaker 1: just continue at the same speed to go through the
Speaker 1: intersection while it's still amber, you might want to think
Speaker 1: about that when you're designing your autonomous car so that
Speaker 1: you don't cause a pile up behind you, like you don't.
Speaker 1: If the person directly behind the autonomous car expects the
Speaker 1: car in front of them to continue through the intersection,
Speaker 1: you could potentially get rear ended. Yeah, that happens a
Speaker 1: thousand times around. I mean more than that. But it
Speaker 1: happens all over the world, really, especially in Atlanta, where
Speaker 1: the rule is if the light turns red, three cars
Speaker 1: get to go through. It is so true, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like once one goes through, two more following. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'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 going to name any names, buckhead, but I'm just saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: never accelerate immediately on a green light anywhere in this area.
Speaker 1: You can expect there's going to be that that odd
Speaker 1: ball car that comes through every 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'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 stated these these spokesman stated.
Speaker 1: They say, it's vital for us to develop advanced skills
Speaker 1: 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 expect
Speaker 1: you you understand how other drivers are going to behave
Speaker 1: in the same situation, and you expect that to happen, right,
Speaker 1: and you behave in that way and it all works.
Speaker 1: But when something comes in, a spoiler comes in and
Speaker 1: it follows exactly to the letter of the log the
Speaker 1: way that's supposed to happen, that person maybe you know
Speaker 1: the standout right. Another great example of that in Atlanta
Speaker 1: would be we have a couple of different highways that
Speaker 1: run through the city and one that runs around the
Speaker 1: city two eighty five, and two eighty five is often
Speaker 1: thought of as the type of highway that if you
Speaker 1: get on it, you have to speed. You cannot go
Speaker 1: the speed limit on two eighty five. It's just too
Speaker 1: dangerous because everyone else is going above the speed limit.
Speaker 1: Massive truck traffic, Yeah, yeah, and there are enormous, enormous
Speaker 1: semis rushing down there, and you don't want to get
Speaker 1: you 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 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 discussed this yesterday, because we're
Speaker 1: talking off air about this just a little bit to
Speaker 1: prep for today, and the idea would be that's kind
Speaker 1: of like schooling, almost like fish schooling, and that the
Speaker 1: cars know where the other one is at all times
Speaker 1: and they can communicate between them. The problem is when
Speaker 1: you throw in the human driver element into that mix,
Speaker 1: or you know, if you have just one autonomous car
Speaker 1: among all humans, that's the other problem. It's the other issue,
Speaker 1: and right now, that's the battle that they're fighting right right.
Speaker 1: So once we get to a point where there's that
Speaker 1: tipping point one way or the other, then things will
Speaker 1: be very different. But there's going to be some growing paints.
Speaker 1: And this also leads into something that I talked about
Speaker 1: earlier in twenty sixteen when I went to CEES Toyota
Speaker 1: had their big AI discussion. You know, they're investing millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in AI research for autonomous cars and beyond,
Speaker 1: and one of the things they've talked about was how
Speaker 1: autonomous cars in general are really really good at handling
Speaker 1: all the mundane stuff that you would typically encounter on
Speaker 1: a normal day driving from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: What they are not good at is dealing with stuff
Speaker 1: that's outside of that norm and the sandbags that we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. Would be a great example of that.
Speaker 1: It's some form of obstruction that's partially blocking off part
Speaker 1: of 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 that the car couldn't handle the situation. It's just
Speaker 1: that the method that the car used turned out to
Speaker 1: not be reliable. Yeah, this was an extremely slow speed crash,
Speaker 1: as we've said. Yes, the bus was traveling fifteen miles
Speaker 1: per hour in the other lane trying to get through
Speaker 1: that gap. But the Google car was traveling I think
Speaker 1: they said to two miles per hour. Yeah, very very slow,
Speaker 1: very slow speed. So the thing is like with the
Speaker 1: with the compensation for this, you know, the thirty five
Speaker 1: hundred tests that they're now going to run additional tests, uh,
Speaker 1: to determine or to find a way around that situation.
Speaker 1: So it's never going to happen again. We're gonna do
Speaker 1: everything we can, but to to think about it that way,
Speaker 1: to say, the thirty five hundred tests that are going
Speaker 1: to allow this vehicle to to think about that exact
Speaker 1: situation and never let it happen again where where it
Speaker 1: just kind of noses out into into a lane that
Speaker 1: appears open. Yeah, that's remarkable. I mean it just lets
Speaker 1: you know that there there are tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: of um programs or are thoughts, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to say it, right, that are they're going through this
Speaker 1: thing at all times, you know, um as calculations and
Speaker 1: parameters and just you know, if this then that you know,
Speaker 1: those scenarios are being run all the time. It's just incredible,
Speaker 1: mind boggling, it really is. And I was looking into
Speaker 1: you said one one point four or five million miles
Speaker 1: have been driven, uh flawlessly, right, I mean they hadn't
Speaker 1: have any problems, you know, at at fault I guess
Speaker 1: the autonomous vehicle. Do you know how much they test
Speaker 1: on a daily basis and on actually on a daily basis? No? No, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's see, I've got I got a note here.
Speaker 1: I should have looked for that reading that. Okay, here
Speaker 1: we go. All right, so actually this is a per
Speaker 1: week and then a per day thing. All right, They
Speaker 1: drive ten thousand miles per week and that's like you know,
Speaker 1: somebody in a vehicle on the road ten thousand miles
Speaker 1: per week, per day though this number is incredible. Per day,
Speaker 1: they are driving three million miles of computer simulation miles.
Speaker 1: Oh so three million the equivalent of three million miles.
Speaker 1: That's because they can quickly just go through that and
Speaker 1: have multiple systems running these things, you know, So the
Speaker 1: amount of testing that they do in a year is
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. I don't have yearly stats or anything, but
Speaker 1: you can extrapolate those numbers to that well. And the
Speaker 1: other point in the Toyota press conference that was interesting
Speaker 1: to me, and this goes back to what you were
Speaker 1: saying at the beginning of the show about holding autonomous
Speaker 1: cars at a different standard than we hold human drivers.
Speaker 1: They talked about how you offer a lot of the
Speaker 1: autonomous car industry talks about the one hundred million mile benchmark,
Speaker 1: saying that you want you want one hundred million miles
Speaker 1: traveled of proven safety. And they said, you know that's
Speaker 1: not enough. You need to go much bigger than that
Speaker 1: one hundred billion miles. And I thought, wow, that is
Speaker 1: I mean, I get it for you want that many
Speaker 1: miles so that you can encounter as many possible different
Speaker 1: situations as you might encounter on the road, because obviously,
Speaker 1: if you if you plan a system and it's great
Speaker 1: for handling ninety nine percent of the situations, that's fine
Speaker 1: until you run into that one percent. And when you
Speaker 1: do figure out how many cars are on the road
Speaker 1: in the United States alone, traveling on any given day,
Speaker 1: you realize the odds are Eventually, I mean, statistics show,
Speaker 1: statistics prove like odds are sooner rather than later, one
Speaker 1: of those autonomous cars will encounter a situation that would
Speaker 1: have been impossible to anticipate in the programming phase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so well, I get it. On one hand. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, I get frustrated because I really want to
Speaker 1: see this feature get here as soon as possible. But
Speaker 1: I totally understand the need for that level of precision
Speaker 1: that's demanded so that you can be sure that nothing
Speaker 1: catastrophic happens when a car encounters something that the programmers
Speaker 1: just did not anticipate. Now, Chris Rmson again, he was
Speaker 1: the what was his title, shoot, I think as director
Speaker 1: of the self driving car project. I couldn't remember director
Speaker 1: or not, but he he did say, and this is
Speaker 1: I don't you can find this troubling, I guess if
Speaker 1: you want to. But I understand what he's saying. He
Speaker 1: says that, you know, of course the February fourteenth was
Speaker 1: a tough day for his team, obviously, but he says,
Speaker 1: and I thought this was interesting. He said, We've got
Speaker 1: to be prepared for more days just like that if
Speaker 1: we're going to ever succeed in creating this, this project,
Speaker 1: you know, making this work. And we're actually gonna have
Speaker 1: worse days than that. And when I when I hear that,
Speaker 1: you know we're gonna have worse days than that. Of
Speaker 1: course you think, you know the worst. Do you think
Speaker 1: that it's going to be involved in accident that is
Speaker 1: fatal or you know, harms somebody, anybody in any way,
Speaker 1: And of course that would be an awful day. That'd
Speaker 1: be a worse day than what we've seen. But you
Speaker 1: kind of have to expect something like that is going
Speaker 1: to happen if you're traveling, if you're traveling three hundred
Speaker 1: billion miles like you said, or you know whatever, the
Speaker 1: the enormous number of miles on the road that they
Speaker 1: want to travel is. Um I would guess that, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about three or three hundred million or
Speaker 1: billion or whatever it was, those might be computer simulated miles,
Speaker 1: because you know, the three million, three million a day
Speaker 1: is an hormous number and that adds up quickly. But
Speaker 1: you know, ten thousand miles per week of actual you know,
Speaker 1: physical drawn the road testing, that's that's pretty impressive still,
Speaker 1: But how long would that take to get up to
Speaker 1: three hundred million? And you know, I think somebody who
Speaker 1: laid it out pretty clearly here is the US Transportation Secretary.
Speaker 1: His name is Anthony Fox. And you know he's the
Speaker 1: one who said where I initially read, I guess, don't
Speaker 1: don't compare these two perfection You can't do that. And
Speaker 1: one of the quotes here in an article that I
Speaker 1: read from the BBC says that he says, it's not
Speaker 1: as surprise that at some point to be a crash
Speaker 1: when they've got this brand new technology in the road.
Speaker 1: But what I what I would challenge anyone to do,
Speaker 1: is to look at the number of crashes that occurred
Speaker 1: on the same day that with the result of human behavior.
Speaker 1: And that gets right back to what you were saying,
Speaker 1: and that you know, there's so many miles driven every
Speaker 1: day just here in the US, around the world, all
Speaker 1: over the place, that you just you know that bad
Speaker 1: stuff is happening all the time, every minute, literally, all right,
Speaker 1: but this is a great opportunity for me to transition
Speaker 1: from the Google story, which is you know it's again.
Speaker 1: It has huge implications for the autonomous car industry. Even
Speaker 1: though it was in the grand scheme of things, a
Speaker 1: minor accident, it was something that once you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: they're not perfect, then it starts raising some questions. These
Speaker 1: talks were a bit more subdued after that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at south By Southwest like that was definitely happening,
Speaker 1: although I went to a couple of different panels about
Speaker 1: autonomous cars where they didn't even bring it up. They
Speaker 1: were gung ho. I mean, the general feeling at south
Speaker 1: By Southwest is that autonomous cars are a definitive future
Speaker 1: that are coming, and that that most likely there will
Speaker 1: be some form of shared services model for autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: I think most people agreed that personal ownership is going
Speaker 1: to slowly phase out, largely because younger generations don't necessarily
Speaker 1: see the necessity of owning a car. And there some
Speaker 1: interesting statistics too. I saw a panel it's called robot
Speaker 1: cars and sharing road rage or smooth sailing, and this
Speaker 1: was said. Three panelists on it, a moderator and two panelists.
Speaker 1: One was the moderator was Frederick Sue of a company
Speaker 1: called NATO. NATO creates an app and a camera setup
Speaker 1: where you can essentially upgrade your car into a smart car,
Speaker 1: not an autonomous car, but a smart car where it's
Speaker 1: able to use information from the camera and run it
Speaker 1: through some algorithms that are on the back end of
Speaker 1: the data system that then transmits to your app to
Speaker 1: let you know things like how well, how good of
Speaker 1: a driver is the driver, that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: it's also a use for like fleet management. You can
Speaker 1: use it to figure out if the driver you've just
Speaker 1: hired to be one of your employees, if that was
Speaker 1: a good choice or not, or maybe you need to
Speaker 1: rethink that that kind of stuff based on driving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it pulls information from a lot of
Speaker 1: different sources, but the camera is the primary one. He
Speaker 1: was the moderator. And then you had Shad Laws from
Speaker 1: Renault and who was funny because he talked about Renault
Speaker 1: is a brand that is famous around the world but
Speaker 1: not here in the US. But you might know our
Speaker 1: partner Nissan. And then uh, yeah, we knew Renault back
Speaker 1: in what the mid eighties, I think, yeah, that's about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then there was a Mark platchin from BMW who
Speaker 1: was actually a substitute. Originally it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: Maryanne Wu of ge Ventures. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: of the great Google Car Crash of twenty sixteen after
Speaker 1: we take this quick break. So let me throw you
Speaker 1: some some statistics at you, or some of the facts
Speaker 1: at you that Sue brought up. So one of the
Speaker 1: things he said was that the hypoical American car spends
Speaker 1: ninety six percent of its life part of its life part.
Speaker 1: That's an enormous chunk of time. Yeah, so only four
Speaker 1: percent of your typical American car, knowing that there are
Speaker 1: cases outside on either end, four percent of it is
Speaker 1: actually used driving around. So with that when you hit
Speaker 1: someone with that, assuming that that is in fact correct,
Speaker 1: I don't know where his source was for ninety six percent,
Speaker 1: but assuming that is in fact correct, you can start
Speaker 1: to see an argument for a fleet of autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: that can drive around on demand and pick someone up
Speaker 1: and drop them off, because that means you could free
Speaker 1: up the space that would be taken by a part
Speaker 1: car and use it for something else, because I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of our spaces are reserver for parking. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are regulations for office buildings about how much square
Speaker 1: footage you have to set aside for parking in certain cities.
Speaker 1: It depends on the city. But imagine that you have
Speaker 1: a world where people are relying on autonomous cars to
Speaker 1: pick them up and drop them off. You don't need
Speaker 1: that space for parking anymore. You can actually dedicate that
Speaker 1: to something else and make bukuza money. I think it's
Speaker 1: the way they put it. But anyway, plant a tree,
Speaker 1: plant a tree. You could also do that. I think,
Speaker 1: come on, you tree hugger. No, I also think that
Speaker 1: would be awesome. So one of the things that I
Speaker 1: thought was shocking it. I think the effect on me
Speaker 1: was not what the speaker was planning. Shad laws of
Speaker 1: Renault was talking about the safety factor of autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: and his argument was that safety autonomous cars. First of all,
Speaker 1: we can't determine that they're more safe than human driven
Speaker 1: cars yet because we don't have enough information. We don't
Speaker 1: have enough autonomous cars on the road, we haven't had
Speaker 1: a enough scenarios to really tell. But then he also
Speaker 1: said safety is really not as big a deal as
Speaker 1: you might think, because the safety benchmark is to try
Speaker 1: and have fewer than one fatality per one hundred million
Speaker 1: kilometers driven. Now, in the United States it is one
Speaker 1: point zero eight fatalities for one hundred million miles. But
Speaker 1: a mile is longer than a kilometer, right, one mile
Speaker 1: is one point six kilometers, so it's still below that
Speaker 1: one fatality per one hundred 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 held to? Well, I
Speaker 1: think what he was trying to say is that human
Speaker 1: drivers are pretty safe already, and therefore you can't sell
Speaker 1: autonomous cars on the promise of safety because we're so
Speaker 1: safe already. I would counter that argument by saying, more
Speaker 1: than thirty thousand people died last year as a result
Speaker 1: of car accidents, as thirty thousand fewer people around today
Speaker 1: because of a car accident, and more something around the
Speaker 1: order of ninety percent of car accidents are at the
Speaker 1: fault of the human of a human driver, at least
Speaker 1: one human driver, And so my counter to that argument
Speaker 1: is that it may be statistically speaking, a safe thing,
Speaker 1: but when you get down to actual numbers, with real
Speaker 1: human being lives attached to it, I would argue that
Speaker 1: the autonomous vehicles so far have proven to be a
Speaker 1: really good move in the right direction to reduce that
Speaker 1: number dramatically. This is dangerous territory you're waiting into here,
Speaker 1: because on our show on Car Stuff, we sometimes talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the incredible rise in fatalities on Georgia highways
Speaker 1: last year, because there was a huge increase, like twenty
Speaker 1: five percent increase or something, you know, year over year. Wow,
Speaker 1: And it was really big, and it was the first
Speaker 1: time in a long, long time, a long stretch of
Speaker 1: time where you know, it had actually been on the rise.
Speaker 1: It it was going down up until that point, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly this big spike and trying to figure out why,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about distraction and all that stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: smartphones and things behind the wheel and trying to just
Speaker 1: you know, guess why it's happening that way. And of
Speaker 1: course somebody writes in and says, well, thirty eight thousand
Speaker 1: people is not that many people. And you say, well,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people die on us highways. And
Speaker 1: they say, now, how back in the nineteen fifties the
Speaker 1: number was like forty four thousand and that, you know,
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 sure angle, like trying
Speaker 1: to compare apples to apples, you know, back then, you know,
Speaker 1: sixty years ago to today. That's that'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 two, 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 eight thousands, a huge number,
Speaker 1: that was what it was last year in the US alone.
Speaker 1: That's a huge number, no matter how you look at it.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if, even if they'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: deathproof car. I mean, you can't, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: account for every situation, right, every single situation, but they're
Speaker 1: doing their best to make what is essentially a deathproof car.
Speaker 1: And there's several that, you know, several marks that they've got.
Speaker 1: They've gone years without a Yeah, I've got you know,
Speaker 1: the stats somewhere back on my desk, but there's a
Speaker 1: few that have gone I'm going to guess here, just
Speaker 1: based off my memory, it was like five or six
Speaker 1: years without a fatality, right, caused by a fault in
Speaker 1: a system in their vehicle. Right. Well, and that also
Speaker 1: leads me to a different panel that I saw. We'll
Speaker 1: come We'll come back to the road rage one because
Speaker 1: we got to get to the BMW's Yeah. But the
Speaker 1: other panel I saw that was related to this was
Speaker 1: called looking Forward to Rush Hour the Future of Transit,
Speaker 1: looking Forward to Rush Out. Yeah. This was from a
Speaker 1: couple of industrial designers without to it design talking about
Speaker 1: the future of transportation, and it wasn't just autonomous cars
Speaker 1: or even just the future of cars. That was one
Speaker 1: half of the panel, and that was done by a guy.
Speaker 1: The guy who led that part was Dan Dorley, but
Speaker 1: 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's
Speaker 1: working properly, but you have proof that because of the
Speaker 1: number of autonomous vehicles on the road, the number of
Speaker 1: crashes decreases dramatically, the number of deaths decreased dramatically. Then
Speaker 1: you can start to play around with other stuff, because
Speaker 1: if the autonomous cars are a proven 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: 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
Speaker 1: vehicle because you've made your vehicle lighter. Not that not
Speaker 1: that the battery's gotten any better, but it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to push as much weight around. Sure, And again this
Speaker 1: only works though, if every vehicle out there isn't the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to have you have to have enough autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 1: at least the majority, if not of them out there,
Speaker 1: so that you can be confident that by eliminating those
Speaker 1: safety features that are important right now, it's not going
Speaker 1: to make any difference. And I think that I think
Speaker 1: we're pretty far away from that. But I thought it
Speaker 1: was an interesting point. He also talked about more car
Speaker 1: manufacturers creating a sort of a universal chassis where lots
Speaker 1: of different bodies of vehicles could fit on top of
Speaker 1: the same basic chassis, leading to a future where ultimately
Speaker 1: you can and you can do this now. Actually, if
Speaker 1: you've got enough money, you can go to certain specialty
Speaker 1: companies and three D print a car design. You could
Speaker 1: design a car if you wanted to, and three D
Speaker 1: print a car body that fits on top of a
Speaker 1: particular chassis and motor drivetrain configuration, and so you can
Speaker 1: have your own Like people would say, well, what kind
Speaker 1: of cars as well, that's my car. I call it
Speaker 1: a Strickland. Yeah, it's it's a Strickland. It doesn't drive anywhere.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, that's that's a joke about me not driving.
Speaker 1: But yeah. I thought it was interesting that he was
Speaker 1: looking into implications of autonomous cars well beyond safety, well
Speaker 1: beyond the shared model. He was looking at au Thomas
Speaker 1: cars like, well, what does that do to the design
Speaker 1: of the car itself. That's interesting that you know, you
Speaker 1: could eliminate the things that we find that we have
Speaker 1: to have now. Yeah, and that's that's an interesting way
Speaker 1: to think about it, like if if, if it's just
Speaker 1: not necessary, what could you really pair that design down
Speaker 1: to what what what smart things could you do with
Speaker 1: that ye to make it work better as an electric form,
Speaker 1: as an autonomous platform, Right, you know, it all makes
Speaker 1: it makes good sense. But again you're you're counting on
Speaker 1: you know, participation in this. Yeah, you need to, you
Speaker 1: would need to have enough buy in so that there
Speaker 1: isn't a risk of having something like we saw with
Speaker 1: the previous Google tests. You know, we talked about there
Speaker 1: were more than a dozen accidents involving Google self driving cars,
Speaker 1: previously only only the previous ones until before February twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: They were all at the fault of a human driver,
Speaker 1: either the person manually controlling the self driving car or
Speaker 1: another driver. So the same thing is true. If you're
Speaker 1: in an autonomous vehicle and there are human drivers on
Speaker 1: the road, then there's a chance that one of them
Speaker 1: could make a terrible like there could just be an accident,
Speaker 1: it could be a failure, it could be a distracted driver,
Speaker 1: drunk driver, it could be anything. And until you eliminate
Speaker 1: those possibilities, it is pretty dangerous to just say, let's
Speaker 1: eliminate crumple zone. It's not very dangerous. You could do
Speaker 1: other stuff like imagine, you know, you have no need
Speaker 1: for controls, so you free up all that space in
Speaker 1: the front that would be normally be dedicated to steering
Speaker 1: wheel and pedals and that kind of stuff. You could
Speaker 1: have a workstation or an entertainment station. Because you're not driving,
Speaker 1: you don't even necessarily have to face forward. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can face backward. I had a discussion about this on
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking and Lauren immediately said, yeah, could never do that.
Speaker 1: I'd be yakking all over the inside of that car. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have that trouble on
Speaker 1: a train already or a bus, you know, in certain situations. Right,
Speaker 1: but imagine if you could sit sideways. Yeah, the design
Speaker 1: of the vehicle could just be so radically different that
Speaker 1: none of that really matter. You could you could probably
Speaker 1: design you know, those honeycomb systems where you could sleep
Speaker 1: in the car if you want it. Yeah. It's kind
Speaker 1: of funny because it actually opens up an enormous opportunity
Speaker 1: for designers. Yeah, right, unprecedented opportunity because you would be
Speaker 1: completely transforming the interior of a car. All the things
Speaker 1: we associate as being well, not all, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the things we associate as being the definition of
Speaker 1: what an inside of a car would look like go
Speaker 1: out the window, I mean figuratively speaking. And so you
Speaker 1: could then have all kinds of different configurations and designs
Speaker 1: almost like almost more like home design really, or room design,
Speaker 1: some sort of interior design for vehicles. Yeah, it's a strange,
Speaker 1: strange thought. Hey, by the way, I want to clarify
Speaker 1: one thing, really, sure, just something's been bugging me for
Speaker 1: the last ten minutes. All right, I do know that
Speaker 1: there were rent 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 the I guess I'm going to mention the failure
Speaker 1: that that was. It was, it was not not all
Speaker 1: that well received. Yeah, but I think most of my
Speaker 1: listeners are most of them, let me let me clarify,
Speaker 1: most of my listeners in the US are probably unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with the brand Renault. Yeah, probably because 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 way. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot like pougeaux or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's reasons, but not the right show. It's so funny
Speaker 1: when you start throwing around car manufacturer names and car
Speaker 1: brand names, and then you come to that weird realization
Speaker 1: that in other parts of the world they are totally
Speaker 1: different ones that and some some of which that are
Speaker 1: prevalent in the United States, are largely unknown in certain
Speaker 1: parts of the world. And it just reminds you like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. The whole world, isn't the US. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's it's it is strange. And once you travel outside
Speaker 1: and you see that you see the same vehicle but
Speaker 1: it's named something different or something like that, it's just unusual.
Speaker 1: It's just a it's it is eye opening. Really. Now,
Speaker 1: I've been teasing this for the whole episode, but let's
Speaker 1: get back to BMW and Mark Platchin. Is this intended
Speaker 1: to hurt me? No, it's time tend to hurt you.
Speaker 1: I just want to see what your reaction is Scott.
Speaker 1: Scott and I started talking about this off microphone yesterday,
Speaker 1: and as I was talking a little voice in my
Speaker 1: head said, shut up, Jonathan, save it for the show.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're gonna do. It's not really you
Speaker 1: might just shrug and say, oh all right. But in
Speaker 1: order to set this up first, what is bmw slogan?
Speaker 1: Now they're known as it's It's a driver's car, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's um the ultimate driving machine. Yea, I mean
Speaker 1: the ultimate driving machine, the ultimate driving machine. So you
Speaker 1: would think that, you know, of course they're going to
Speaker 1: dabble in autonomous systems like you know, maybe adaptive cruise
Speaker 1: control something like that. But I just I've had a
Speaker 1: hard time all along seeing BMW going fully autonomous because
Speaker 1: of the way they market their company right now, it's
Speaker 1: 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 it. You know something
Speaker 1: that's 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: why are they messing around with autonomous vehicles? That's that's
Speaker 1: my thoughts. Plashin works specifically with the autonomous vehicle section
Speaker 1: in BMW, and his response to the first part would be,
Speaker 1: I imagine I'm putting some words into his mouth, so
Speaker 1: take this with a grain of salt. But I imagine
Speaker 1: he would say, it's where the future of vehicles definitely
Speaker 1: happens to be completely understand that and you cannot ignore it.
Speaker 1: If you do, you'll be left behind. Yes, he said
Speaker 1: that the company was at a real they were in
Speaker 1: a quandary. He actually said that. I think it was
Speaker 1: last year he was brought in to talk, or maybe
Speaker 1: it was a few years ago. He was taught brought
Speaker 1: in to talk about the concepts they needed to talk
Speaker 1: about in an upcoming conversation. They were going to hit
Speaker 1: like some corporate milestone, and they wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: what are the next one hundred 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 one hundred years out is impossible.
Speaker 1: I can't. Yeah, the only thing I can predict tomorrow
Speaker 1: is that if I don't wear some block, I will
Speaker 1: be sunburnt. That's it, because I know I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: outside a lot. But he said it was his job
Speaker 1: to try and help coordinate this vision of BMW for
Speaker 1: the next one hundred years. And taking into account the
Speaker 1: fact that autonomous cars are I mean everyone it's suth
Speaker 1: By Southwest was talking about them as if it's a
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion. That's the future, that's where we're going. So
Speaker 1: taking that as part of it, they actually had serious
Speaker 1: internal discussions what does this mean with our slogan the
Speaker 1: ultimate driving machine? What do we do? Do we rebrand?
Speaker 1: How do we rebrand? This is something we pry ourselves upon.
Speaker 1: It is a corporate identity. It's it's kind of the
Speaker 1: central mantra of the company. It'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. Oh, boy, yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's why. I yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: about this all right. Well, so it's almost like you're
Speaker 1: putting the emphasis on the on the other part, I
Speaker 1: don't know, how how do you even look at that?
Speaker 1: I guess it's how you would say, I'd say the emphasis.
Speaker 1: The emphasis previously was on driving because you think of
Speaker 1: driving as a verb that people indulge. So now it's
Speaker 1: the ultimate driving machine. I see. Okay, well boy, that's
Speaker 1: so subtle. So if you make and this was also
Speaker 1: an interesting discussion because people ask the questions and what
Speaker 1: happens to brand identity in a future of autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: that are likely not going to be owned by individuals
Speaker 1: but will be in some form of shared economy. And
Speaker 1: 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, Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody will pay a premium for that feature, right, because
Speaker 1: if you're like, hey, we noticed that 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. Well, 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'll so, I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: weird to be in a world where, assuming that the
Speaker 1: shared car approach is what what wins out, it'll be
Speaker 1: weird 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. Scott and I will conclude our discussion
Speaker 1: about the Great Google car crash of twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 1: first we need to take another break. What about all
Speaker 1: the stuff that's in a car. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: people have stuff that they keep in their car, and
Speaker 1: it might word in equipment or you know things like
Speaker 1: that diapers, Yeah, stuff like the new parents might have
Speaker 1: a box of diapers in the car so that when
Speaker 1: they travel places they have their supply right there. Sure,
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,
Speaker 1: and you would either have to pare down the stuff
Speaker 1: so that you're saying, well, I might not be prepared
Speaker 1: for certain situations. But yeah, but it's a trade off.
Speaker 1: Isn't it really nice to just kind of leave an
Speaker 1: umbrella in your car and have it when you need
Speaker 1: it and you don't have to remember it every single
Speaker 1: time you go out the door. And it was funny
Speaker 1: because Platschin actually said, well, maybe we'll have services where
Speaker 1: you could actually store your stuff and what would account
Speaker 1: what would end up being like a mobile storage unit
Speaker 1: and you can just call upon it to come to
Speaker 1: you whenever you needed it. And I thought that puts
Speaker 1: more cars on the road. That's a terrible idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd just tell you right now, that's a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Joe and Lauren both agree with you, and I do too.
Speaker 1: I also thought like, well, that doesn't sound like that's ideal.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's obviously some huge trade offs that would happen.
Speaker 1: We'll imagine a block of lockers, you know, that's would
Speaker 1: it be a block of lockers driving down the road
Speaker 1: with your stuff and everybody else's stuff in it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And what if some went across town. Need I know
Speaker 1: that they would probably keep it in a central area.
Speaker 1: Central area. Yeah, but people don't all like Like, let's
Speaker 1: say that my next door neighbor and I both use
Speaker 1: the same unit because we both live next door to
Speaker 1: each other. We don't necessarily work anywhere close to each other,
Speaker 1: so he might work on the other side of town.
Speaker 1: He needs his umbrella, I need my umbrella. That car,
Speaker 1: I mean, easily you could see problems with that model.
Speaker 1: There was a similar model that I also let me
Speaker 1: see once you think about this one by Scott so
Speaker 1: talking about shared cars. Now, in the examples I've been
Speaker 1: giving so far, it's essentially a fleet of service vehicles,
Speaker 1: something along the lines of an uber or a lift,
Speaker 1: only with no human drivers. Right. Yes, one of the
Speaker 1: alternatives I heard, Shad Law actually mentioned this possibility, which
Speaker 1: I think is almost as bad as the traveling locker idea.
Speaker 1: What if instead of it being a fleet car, it's
Speaker 1: a communal car among multiple households, and you own like
Speaker 1: a sixth of that car. Can you imagine that working out?
Speaker 1: How would you guarantee that the car would be available
Speaker 1: for all the households? Well, I guess the man Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't as bad an idea as I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand that it's it's not great. Yeah, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of flaws to this one as well, But um,
Speaker 1: isn't this kind of the idea behind you know, the
Speaker 1: the companies that allow you to have kind of a
Speaker 1: lease on three different types of vehicles at one time
Speaker 1: and you can use the one that you need when
Speaker 1: you need it. So you lease, um, you know, a sedan,
Speaker 1: you lease a compact car that's very good, you know
Speaker 1: with mileage, and you lease, you know, a pickup truck
Speaker 1: and when you need to pickup truck on the weekend,
Speaker 1: you can rent that. You can you can have that
Speaker 1: brought to you, or you can go get it. Um
Speaker 1: use it for that amount of time. But what if
Speaker 1: somebody else is using that that that sedan when you
Speaker 1: need it, you know, they need it for the week
Speaker 1: and you also need it for the week. I mean,
Speaker 1: how does that all work? I don't Again, same set
Speaker 1: of problems. I think, yeah, maybe a smaller scale than
Speaker 1: the one that I'm talking I mean maybe if there's
Speaker 1: maybe the only way I can see it working is
Speaker 1: that you again go back to the fleet of cars,
Speaker 1: so you've got a fleet of autonomous cars. You've got
Speaker 1: a group of people who have essentially collectively invested so
Speaker 1: that they own the quote unquote own one of those cars.
Speaker 1: They don't actually own a car, they just own a
Speaker 1: share time share. Yeah, it's like a timeshare for those
Speaker 1: vehicles that are on demand. So if I call for
Speaker 1: a car and my neighbor calls for a car, and
Speaker 1: they're both and we're both on this plan, two different
Speaker 1: cars come because of the way we've agreed with this fleet,
Speaker 1: and it's the purchase price of the vehicle that ends
Speaker 1: up covering the cost of the individual trip as opposed
Speaker 1: to doing a trip, you know, a fee per trip,
Speaker 1: like like a typical rental car. Now. Yeah, so essentially
Speaker 1: it would be like, all right, well, collectively, we all
Speaker 1: got together and we put in thirty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to quote unquote buy a car. What that really does
Speaker 1: is give us unlimited travel using the 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. Yeah, And I could
Speaker 1: see it working that way maybe, but I can't see
Speaker 1: it working in such a way where you actually physically
Speaker 1: have one car to share between the multiple house that
Speaker 1: would never work. Yeah, just wouldn't work out. There's got
Speaker 1: to be a way around it, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: got to be there's gotta be a pool of vehicles
Speaker 1: to draw from. Yeah, it just wouldn't work. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this wasn't I wish you could have gone because I
Speaker 1: wish you could have seen panels like days and some
Speaker 1: of the other ones too, Like I was only able
Speaker 1: to go to three panels total, but there were so many,
Speaker 1: there were all about autonomous vehicles. It sounds fascinating. I
Speaker 1: really didn't know until some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: reports that I've been reading just for this podcast, that
Speaker 1: this show is so focused on that type of technology.
Speaker 1: I tend to think of more of cs to be
Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, rather than this south By Southwest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's It's interesting because south By Southwest Interactive for
Speaker 1: many years was focused on mobile apps, like that was
Speaker 1: the big thing, mobile apps and some gaming. But usually
Speaker 1: you're talking about the next Twitter. You know. Merecat and
Speaker 1: Periscope both came out in twenty fifteen. Meercat went under
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. Periscope is still around because it's owned
Speaker 1: by Twitter. Anyway, that's the kind of stuff you would expect,
Speaker 1: But they had different tracks of programming under Interactive and
Speaker 1: one of the tracks was titled Intelligent Future, and that's
Speaker 1: where all the robotics and autonomous vehicles and AI all
Speaker 1: those discussions fell under that. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: it had to do with the future of cars, and
Speaker 1: again not just autonomous cars, but the idea of what
Speaker 1: what is it going to look like from multiple standpoints.
Speaker 1: I think autonomous played a huge role because everyone just
Speaker 1: assumes that's going to be part of the future, no
Speaker 1: matter how it turns out. Yeah. You know, one thing
Speaker 1: we should probably point out here is that we always
Speaker 1: talk about how it's happening. It's it's incrementally happening. What's
Speaker 1: going on, and we're getting little bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: it now and we see it, you know, in our
Speaker 1: everyday cars, but not the whole package yet. And the
Speaker 1: whole package they always it seems like it's always ten
Speaker 1: years out, is what they say. But yeah, I'm seeing
Speaker 1: estimates now that range anywhere from three years to thirty years. Yes,
Speaker 1: and those are all to be honest, those are all realistic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could take thirty years, it could be
Speaker 1: faster than that. It could be we could I have
Speaker 1: this by twenty twenty. You never know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think three years is probably what we would we
Speaker 1: would start to see actual vehicles make their way onto
Speaker 1: the roads. Thirty years is where you get to the
Speaker 1: point where you're at saturation. Yeah, and you know, I
Speaker 1: know on this podcast, even especially in car stuff, but
Speaker 1: on this one, we've we've mentioned before they're already out
Speaker 1: there there cars that can drive you home from work
Speaker 1: without you touching the wheel or doing anything. You but
Speaker 1: they simply can't say it's an autonomous vate. You have
Speaker 1: to be sitting down the wheel and allow it to
Speaker 1: You can allow it to do it, but you have
Speaker 1: to be there, and you have to be ready to
Speaker 1: take control at anymore. And often often you'll get a
Speaker 1: little little beep asking you to make sure you make
Speaker 1: contact with the wheel to prove that you're still paying
Speaker 1: attention and everything exactly. You're not taking a nap on
Speaker 1: the way home. You don't want to, you know, those
Speaker 1: companies don't want to be liable for a terrible accident.
Speaker 1: So the three to thirty years we're talking about is
Speaker 1: where the companies are actually confident enough to say this
Speaker 1: is an autonomous self driving car. Let it do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad you're able to join me on
Speaker 1: this this episode and talk about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I know that I come across as I love to
Speaker 1: needle you with these because you're the car guy and
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's all good fun. I should also mention
Speaker 1: that pretty much everyone's agreed that personal car ownership is
Speaker 1: not ever gonna go away entirely in the United States,
Speaker 1: that no one seemed to believe that that was the case.
Speaker 1: People said that it may be that fewer people own
Speaker 1: their own vehicles, but you'll you'll still be allowed to
Speaker 1: own and operate your own vehicle. Yeah, I could see
Speaker 1: that happening, especially for things like rural areas. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to have an autonomous car service out serving
Speaker 1: way all the way. Rural areas, like you know, cattle
Speaker 1: ranchers aren't going to have any need for that. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a congested city situation. Yes, this is for urban,
Speaker 1: dense urban environments, and it's not ideal for other situations.
Speaker 1: So but one guy did say that he could envisioned
Speaker 1: a future in which car ownership of like an actual
Speaker 1: car owner, will be about as rare as horse owners
Speaker 1: are today. Really. Yeah, so there are plenty of people
Speaker 1: who still own horses, just not the general population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of wide open space out there,
Speaker 1: and I think that, you know, that's where they'll be
Speaker 1: still used. Of course, yeah, maybe in cities. You know,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but there may be a
Speaker 1: point where, you know, you can't drive into the city
Speaker 1: in your own personal vehicle. You maybe have a giant
Speaker 1: parking lot in the outskirts of the city and you
Speaker 1: get out from there and then you take your city
Speaker 1: city approved transportation once you're inside. And I wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be something. I mean, it'd be a dramatic change in
Speaker 1: the way that we do things now. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would significantly changed the well the entire city scape. Really
Speaker 1: everything would be different. So it's fascinating topic. And again,
Speaker 1: thanks for inviting me in today to do this. I
Speaker 1: always have fun talking with you, and I know you
Speaker 1: like to rib me a little bit about car ownership
Speaker 1: and you know the way it's going, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I agree on a lot of this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we can have a decent conversation back and
Speaker 1: forth about I understand that you know, things are moving
Speaker 1: towards autonomous vehicles, but I also and I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you said it too, that you know it's never gonna
Speaker 1: go completely away. Well, and to be fair, we're so
Speaker 1: so so in the baby stage of this, right, we're
Speaker 1: in the earliest stages of this autonomous era. Sure that
Speaker 1: making any definitive statement as autonomous cars will completely replace
Speaker 1: manual cars, or that car ownership will completely become a
Speaker 1: thing of the past, or even that manual cars will
Speaker 1: no longer be allowed within city limits, any of those.
Speaker 1: It's so premature to make any kind of statement like that.
Speaker 1: And honestly, it may turn out that we just see
Speaker 1: that the ideal mix is somewhere in the middle, with
Speaker 1: a mixture of autonomous cars and manually driven cars. We
Speaker 1: don't know. You know, the mathematical models suggests that if
Speaker 1: you went all autonomous, you avoid a lot of problems,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily the way it will actually shake
Speaker 1: out in real life. Well, I'm with you. I try
Speaker 1: to avoid the predictions because it just ends up making
Speaker 1: you look like a fool later right when it 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 actually pretty exciting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and you know, you got to remember the autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: if they'd 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 autonomously driven car and you can do work
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 got to wrap up here, but you're
Speaker 1: you're making me think of you know, the the uh
Speaker 1: the kind of pros cons you you wagh if you're
Speaker 1: making a short trip on a plane, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're flying from here to or Lando, sure, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is like like from here, it's like an hour little
Speaker 1: a little less than an hour and a half flight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then then you have to take an account. You
Speaker 1: gotta get up early, you got to pack the car,
Speaker 1: you gotta get to the air important park and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. It ends up taking more than half the day.
Speaker 1: But you could just drive there too, And if you
Speaker 1: can do that in a way that doesn't it's not
Speaker 1: taxing on you, right, it's it's it's actually comfortable and
Speaker 1: you're in your own your own car. It's a lot
Speaker 1: more comfortable than being crammed into an airplane. Sure, why
Speaker 1: would you not do that? You have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: stop at a specific place to have food rather than
Speaker 1: just buying whatever little snack box happens will be on
Speaker 1: the plane. Yeah, so you're right. It does change even
Speaker 1: you know that short distance sure 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. I hope you enjoyed that classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. Like I said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: there have been a lot more accidents involving cars that
Speaker 1: are in autonomous or semi autonomous modes. Obviously the most
Speaker 1: publicized ones are Tesla, but it's not like Tesla has,
Speaker 1: you know, the exclusive rights to accidents. It's just that
Speaker 1: they tend to make headlines across the world when it happens.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and of course Tesla has the ongoing issue
Speaker 1: between saying calling its products things that make it sound
Speaker 1: like they're autonomous vehicle products, while also saying this is
Speaker 1: not an autonomous vehicle product, So we get into that
Speaker 1: complication as well. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
Speaker 1: out to me and let me know. You can download
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and you can navigate over to tech
Speaker 1: Stuff by putting that into the little search engine. You
Speaker 1: will see that when you go to the tech Stuff page,
Speaker 1: there's a microphone icon. If you click on that, you
Speaker 1: can actually leave a voice message for me and let
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