AV-politik står i centrum i USA!

Our most recent AV overview concluded that the technology is now largely in place, at least among the leading companies, and that the battleground is shifting toward scaling and business models.

This view was further reinforced in December, when an expert from the medical community argued that, from a traffic safety perspective, state-of-the-art robotaxis are now so safe that their deployment should be treated as a public health intervention, much like emergency medical measures are implemented during a serious epidemic.

Then, seemingly all of a sudden, new kinds of “system-level” challenges began to emerge. In Los Angeles, a Waymo vehicle followed traffic rules correctly while passing a line of stationary cars, but unaware that it was entering an active emergency zone involving a police standoff.

A few weeks later, several Waymo vehicles were stranded during a major power outage in San Francisco, which both disabled traffic signals and disrupted communications between the vehicles and Waymo’s operations center.

It did not end there. In January, a Waymo vehicle struck a schoolgirl in Los Angeles, following a series of reported interactions involving school buses in Austin, Texas. Waymo however largely got praised for how it handled these situations

Meanwhile, Tesla has reported 14 incidents from its still limited robotaxi deployment in Austin. Unlike Waymo, whose publicly reported data indicates safety performance significantly better than the average human driver, based on these statistics Tesla’s current system does clearly not yet outperform a human driver.

Likely triggered both by these developments and by an ongoing political effort to consolidate AV regulation at the federal level, the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), convened a hearing in early February. Tesla and Waymo were represented by senior executives, alongside a representative of the legal community (Drive Sweden ’fellow’) Bryant Walker Smith and Jeff Hannah, CEO of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association.

The 2+ hour hearing covered a wide range of topics: geopolitical competition with China, labor market implications, sensor redundancy, and safety protocols — while most participants expressing strong confidence in the long-term importance of AVs for next-generation transportation. (However, in the State of New York, robotaxis are suddenly facing strong political headwinds.) 

The hearing sparked extensive industry debate in its aftermath. Arguably one of the most interesting topics was Waymo’s dependency on humans overseeing its operations remotely. During the actual Senate hearing, Waymo did not come across particularly well on that issue. Yet in a follow-up letter to the questioning senator, the company provided a far more comprehensive and credible response, and at the same time clarifying that the ratio of required remote operators/monitors to deployed vehicles is significantly more favorable than many analysts had assumed. Something which clearly boosts the robotaxi business case.

In other AV news, here are some highlights from around the world:

• Stellantis will be a main contributor to Bolt’s plan to launch 100,000 AVs
• In Oslo, Ruter and Holo choose MOIA with Mobileye Drive for next stage of AVs
• Geely’s ride-hailing platform Caocao Mobility unveils global robotaxi strategy
• Motional stages a comeback to the AV scene, leveraging its Hyundai relation
• Tensor and GreenMobility plan to deploy 2,000 shared AVs in Denmark
• And finally, London is becoming the European hotbed for robotaxis