EuroWire November 2015

Transatlantic Cable

of the British-based company’s Silicon Valley operation – said, “[Delphi] reached out to all the states we were going to be passing through, just to say ‘Hey, FYI, we’re going to be making this journey.’” † Late this year, self-driving vehicle testing will begin along stretches of Interstate 95 and the Capital Beltway encircling Washington, DC. Virginia has designated 70 miles of public roads for the project, o ering to repaint roads or provide high-de nition maps for tests sanctioned by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. But cars can legally be tested statewide, said Myra Blanco, who runs the institute’s automation research. † Researchers consulted by Mr Moore say that running tests on public roads in the snarled tra c conditions of Northern Virginia is a key step in developing lifesaving and lucrative innovations. According to Lux Research (New York), driverless cars could one day eliminate the leading cause of tra c fatalities: human error. And the market for vehicle automation technology could be worth $87 billion by 2030. “On real roads is where you get your real gold standard,” Ms Blanco told the Washington Post . “What is happening when people are driving out there?” Electric vs hydrogen vehicles essentially comes down to Tesla vs Toyota, with power availability strongly favouring Tesla “By any measure, EVs are crushing hydrogen vehicles. But understanding why may show why hydrogen is paying a game of catch-up it may never win.” Travis Hoium, writing in the investment letter Motley Fool , discloses his own preference for the electric vehicle produced by Tesla Motors (Palo Alto, California). But his conviction that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) stand little chance against today’s EVs has a basis in some hard numbers. According to the electric vehicle news site InsideEVs , 320,713 EVs were sold worldwide in 2014. And sales by mid-2015 had already reached 200,000, with year-over-year growth every month of the year. By way of comparison, Toyota, which has made the biggest commitment to FCVs of any automaker, is launching its Mirai this autumn at eight lots in California. The company’s stated goal is to sell 3,000 units of the model, inspired by the Japanese word for ‘future’, by the end of 2017. (“Electric Vehicles Are Leaving Hydrogen in the Dust,”22 nd August)

Automotive

As testing of driverless cars picks up, few US states have regulations in place governing their presence on public roads “We’re having to learn on the go. It’s a signi cant investment. But, on the other hand, it’s the future of transportation.” For spokesman David Fierro of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, “learning on the go,” meant that the DMV had to dedicate nearly half of its small research division for more than a year to get up to speed on the technology of self-driving cars. Other Washington Post interviewees expressed similar views, as to both the pressure to master vehicle automation technology and the bene ts to be expected from it. But the Post’ s Thad Moore was more struck by another aspect of the autonomous vehicle phenomenon: an untypical reticence on the part of lawmakers and regulators. When self-driving cars take to the roads of Northern Virginia this year, the testers behind the wheel will not need a special licence and the vehicles will not need any special registration. “In the eyes of the law,” Mr Moore wrote, “they’ll be regular cars.” The Virginia authorities are not being irresponsible. The Google self-driving test car will be equipped with radar, laser range nders, and cameras to monitor its surroundings and dictate the appropriate response. But it has the “right” to ply the roads not because of its aptitudes but because the law does not stipulate otherwise. “Automated vehicles are probably legal,” the Post was told by Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor whose research helped advance that interpretation. “That is the default assumption.” It works for Texas. Mr Moore noted that, when Google put driverless, retro tted Lexus SUVs on the road in Austin this summer, it was the rst time the tech giant had run tests outside of California. Texas transportation o cials disclaim any involvement with the project. Also on the strength of the default argument, in March the parts maker Delphi Automotive sent a prototype driverless car on a trip cross-country from San Francisco to New York. The route took it through 15 states, nearly all of them without laws that address autonomous cars. (“As Self-Driving Cars Come to More States, Regulators Take a Back Seat,” 28 th August) This was no stealth operation, either. According to the tech news site Ars Technica, cited in the Post , John Absmeier – the director

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel

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November 2015