Happy Friday to you all. It’s almost the weekend, so I’m listening to The Weeknd this morning. It’s probably because I watched his live concert show on HBO last night. It’s pretty good. Anyway, let’s talk cars: today we have news about General Motors’ attempts to get those pesky Cruise Origin shuttles on the road, plus shakeups at Mazda, Rivian, and GM’s own marketing division. You have my word that a grand time will be had by all.
Barra Meets With Senators To Get Cruise Shuttles On The Road
Pictured: Me and my Urban Millennial Friends enjoying some autonomous micro-mobility. Oh, the fun we’re having! Credit: GM
Last year was a semi-apocalyptic one in the self-driving space, particularly the robotaxi “business,” and I put that in quotes there because a lot of companies are trying that out but none can figure out how to do it at scale and in a way that makes actual money. Also, the feds are starting to crack down on the deployment of autonomous shuttles on city streets, just as the test cars keep getting headlines for breaking down and causing 30-minute traffic jams in places in like San Francisco.
Other than that, everything’s going great. Thanks for asking.
It’s particularly irksome for GM’s Cruise division, which has allocated precious manufacturing capacity to build and then deploy some 2,500 Origin vehicles—bus-like robotaxis with no steering wheel or pedals—onto city streets. But that plan has been on hold this year pending approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This is because the feds are looking into whether the Origin is really even street-legal and safe to operate, let alone to put people in; GM’s requesting an exemption from federal safety standards to put the shuttles on the road. GM has logged half a million hours in those autonomous Chevy Bolt test vehicles, but the Origin bus hasn’t been able to hit the road yet.
So on Thursday, GM CEO Mary Barra met with two U.S. senators in Washington to try and get things moving. Here’s Reuters on what happened:
Barra met with Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Sen. Gary Peters, a fellow Democrat and a Commerce Committee member, the company confirmed.
Congress has been stymied for more than six years over legislation to ease regulations that would allow for the deployment of thousands of autonomous vehicles.
“We must act to ensure U.S. manufacturers can compete with countries like China, create jobs here and improve roadway safety,” said Peters, who represents Michigan, where GM is based. He added that Barra discussed with the lawmakers “the future of mobility — including autonomous vehicles.”
Perhaps Cantwell and Peters can help get things moving. But between NHTSA’s investigations into Cruise and Amazon’s subsidiary Zoox, robotaxi companies seem to be getting a higher degree of scrutiny lately than they did in years past. To which I say: good, honestly. Humans certainly suck at driving, but we don’t need to add these things to city streets if they’re going to make existing messes even worse.
But I’m still curious what GM’s endgame is with Cruise Origin. Is it L4 autonomy? Building an actual robo-taxi business in cities? Why do we keep reinventing the bus and calling it innovation? Why can’t we just have more decent public transit in our cities? Anyway, Cruise is still hoping to get these onto the Austin streets soon, but they won’t be open to passengers for a while. Get excited to help GM beta-test these things on top of your already horrific traffic, Austin.
GM’s EV Marketing Shakeup
Photo credit: Cadillac
Speaking of GM, its global marketing chief Deborah Wahl has “elected to retire” from the company, according to the automaker. While Barra has offered buyouts to salaried employees in order to cut costs, one imagines there’s more to the story when your CMO and a member of your executive team does that. Wahl, 60, joined GM in 2018 where she headed up Cadillac marketing and took the top job in 2019.
That’s kind of a quick turnaround, especially since Wahl was just added to the GM executive team in October, AdAge reports. It may have something to do with the major EV push GM is planning for 2023, or just new blood at the company:
Wahl in October was added to GM’s 18-person corporate leadership team, adding the senior vice president moniker to her CMO title — making her exit some five months later somewhat surprising.
But GM is also being steered by some new members of its board of directors, who are known to take a keen interest in the automaker’s marketing direction, according to a person familiar with the matter. The current board has “a very different tenor from previous orientations,” said this person.
New board members include Jonathan McNeill, co-founder and CEO of venture firm DVx Ventures. McNeill, who was appointed in October, is a former chief operating officer at Lyft and former president of global sales, delivery and service at electric vehicle leader Tesla. Also joining the board last year was Joanne Crevoiserat, CEO of Tapestry, whose brands include Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Members added in 2021 included Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and co-CEO of software firm Workday.
Additionally, there’s speculation GM could tap some outside expertise for marketing duty next:
Whether or not the board pushes GM to hire its next CMO from outside the auto industry remains to be seen. But that is a real possibility, suggested Dean Evans, a former executive at Cars.com and former CMO at Hyundai and Subaru.
As automakers embrace EVs and new ways of shopping online, “all of that forces this conversation on [hiring] a marketing person that’s outside of the industry,” he said, suggesting the mindset of corporate leaders is, “while we’ve been sitting here in an archaic industry that needs to move forward, why would we put a retread into that?”
It’s tricky to parse what happened here, especially after Wahl’s Super Bowl and Netflix ad wins. I also think a bigger problem for GMs is EV production, actually getting these cars on dealer lots, not so much marketing. Either way, expect a different direction for these cars soon.
Mazda Gets A New Boss, Too, And He’s Had Wins In America
Photo: Mazda
The Japanese auto industry seems to be going through a bit of a shakeup right now. Nissan and Renault are rethinking how they do things. Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda is stepping aside to make room for a younger executive with a bolder EV plan. Subaru’s doing the same, we learned just this month.
Next up in the executive shuffle game is Mazda. CEO Akira Marumoto, who has held the top post since 2018, will be replaced by longtime Mazda North America boss Masahiro Moro. Moro’s an interesting guy, according to Automotive News. He’s a fluent English speaker, was based in Europe for a time, and was credited with turning around the dealer network and getting some sales wins in America.
Moro’s also adding making North American executive Jeffrey Guyton the company’s global finance boss and a board member. “We want to bring fresh eyes to the company,” Moro said at a press conference, stressing the need for cost-cutting and big rollouts.The takeaway here is you’re about to see a Mazda that is more focused on the crucial North American market (that’s 36% of global sales) and, along with the rest of this new crop of Japanese industry execs, will probably take EVs more seriously than past leaders did.
As that story notes, this kind of turnover happens at Subaru and Mazda every five years, so it’s not super uncommon. But between these changes and Koji Sato taking over at Toyota, it’s a lot of change at once for an auto industry now accused of lagging behind rivals in America and Europe on various forms of future-car tech.
Rivian Chief Engineer Heads Back To McLaren
Photo credit: Rivian
I don’t think it’s unfair to say things aren’t going amazingly at Rivian these days. Like most EV startups, it’s going through significant production ramp-up challenges, exacerbated by supply chain woes and an objectively shitty capital market right now. Now its top engineer, Charles Sanderson, is headed back to his old employer McLaren Automotive as Chief Technical Officer. He had been at Rivian since 2018, and Automotive News reports it was Sanderson’s decision to move on.
Here’s a rundown of Rivian’s other problems:
The EV startup based in Irvine, Calif., has been struggling with manufacturing issues at its Normal, Ill., plant and has forecast output of about 50,000 vehicles this year. Originally, Rivian had forecast 2022 production at that level, but it produced just under 25,000 consumer and commercial vehicles last year.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said on an earnings call last month that supply chain constraints are holding back production and making it difficult to ramp up a second assembly shift for the R1T pickup and R1S crossover. Rivian makes an electric delivery van for Amazon on a different line.
In the last seven months, at least half a dozen executives have left Rivian.
Among the departures are Randy Frank, who was vice president of body and interior engineering, and Steve Gawronski, vice president for parts purchasing, The Wall Street Journal reported in January. Rivian confirmed the departures. The company also lost its chief lobbyist, general counsel and a senior strategy director.
The automaker has had two rounds of layoffs in the past year, each shedding about 6 percent of staff. The latest, in February, included about 840 employees out of a total work force of 14,000.
I do hope Rivian can get past this current moment; I have a lot of respect for Scaringe and it makes an impressive product. But this environment is an arguably even worse one than Tesla faced when it was going through its version of “production hell” a few years ago. Meanwhile, McLaren has its own set of troubles, particularly with quality as it seeks to refresh its lineup. Sanderson’s got his work cut out for him over there too.
Your Turn
What do you think of robotaxis? Where does that technology, and that business, go in 2023?
22 thoughts on “GM’s Autonomous Cruise Origin Shuttle Is Still All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go”
I’m highly distrustful of autonomous vehicles precisely because of the current legal framework regarding liability coupled with the technology not yet being as “good” as a human operator. I think generally they are a terrible idea, one whose appeal is toward those who would rather text on their phone than pay attention to the road in front of them. These vehicles will inevitably end up highly controlled by government and probably littered with data collection devices to spy upon the occupants and feed them a constant stream of advertisements. Meanwhile, the roads will become increasingly hostile to pedestrians, cyclists, and classic car operators, as a result of these autonomous machines.
A solution looking for a problem if there ever was one, and it will create new problems as a result.
The more I read about robotaxis the less I understand what problem they are trying to solve. The closest I can figure is that it is trying to address the inadequacy of our public transit systems in the US, but I don’t really understand how robot driven pods accomplishes that better than improved trains, buses, etc. The robo part implies that the human operator is the problem in these systems, but I don’t think I buy that.
In a nutshell? Computer people got it into their collective minds that they could solve all the world’s auto accidents.
A worthwhile goal i’m sure you’ll agree.Too bad they were off with the fairies.
Even computer nerds can possess hubris so deep it’s palpable
“Even”? There are very few industries with the size of ego that the tech industry has. I’m also betting most of the people pushing this aren’t strictly “computer nerds” either. It’s a bunch of executive-level people like Elon Musk who want to be the next big thing. The actual computer people likely have a much more realistic view of this stuff. Specifically that they get a really big paycheck for working on it even it fails in the long run.
What do I think of robotaxis?
In an era when we have people trying for jobs and a desperate need for better public transportation, I think we need to hire more bus drivers.
Hear, hear. Oh, and expand rail and make bike routes safer. That’s a better use of public funds that doesn’t rely on the programming to get it 100% right, 100% of the time.
I’ve seen the Cruise pods around town and…nah. Nah! I’m mildly curious about the tech, but given the autonomous industry’s lackadaiscal attitude towards safety and regulation, it’s gonna be a hard pass from me as it sits. One of those little Bolts going Robo-Leeroy Jenkins into a brodozer it doesn’t “see” in garbage Austin traffic is not the way I wanna go out.
The world is so busy fighting one another that it cannot be agreed upon about how we, as a society, need to address this.
This 100% absolutely needs to be controlled by the Government first, with private entities following a path that is agreed upon by all players in the field. I say path for a reason. We need to get to point B from point A, but not completely restrict the path to do so. All the players in the field need a way to get there on their own volitions, but guided by an overall strategy set by everyone, not JUST one.
The reason robo taxis remain a “thing”, rather than more funding for busses or trains is as depressing as it is predictable. No one wants to share space with the homeless people, drug users, mentally ill folks, etc who are currently there. And there’s no appetite in todays society to crack down either, which is admirable in a justice sense, but also reduces demand for public transit. It’s a tough problem to solve!
The numbers of homeless people, drug users, and mentally ill are only increasing because society itself is becoming increasingly inhospitable to the needs of the humans that compose it. An average home used to cost 8x a year’s labor at Federal minimum wage, and now it costs 24x a year’s labor at Federal minimum wage. Rent has increased in cost by a similar proportion.
It’s gotten to the point that roughly half of homeless people are employed, yet priced out of shelter and other hallmarks of a basic existence, so it’s little wonder that they turn to drugs or become mentally ill along that journey. When I worked crappy low wage jobs, some of my coworkers confided to me that they were homeless. One of them worked TWO jobs.
Among those who don’t find themselves homeless, a majority have gone into 6-figure debt, and generally just want to avoid seeing those who are homeless so that they aren’t made uncomfortable by the fact that they themselves are two or three paychecks, or a medical event, or an arrest, away from ending up homeless themselves. Seeing homeless people is a reminder of their vulnerability and it makes them deeply uncomfortable on a visceral level.
There is no local solution that will actually work for a local area. Removing homeless encampments and giving them one-way bus tickets to another city doesn’t do anything to change their status. Throwing them in jail only costs the taxpayers money. Throwing taxpayer money at the problem to institutions that help the homeless is going to fail as well. More taxpayer money thrown at it will just be grifted away by a homeless industrial complex that does not want to solve the problem because they too will lose their 6-figure jobs. Meanwhile, middle class NIMBYs demand that no affordable homes are built in THEIR suburban neighborhood because they went into six-figure debt to avoid THOSE people, and many places have zoning laws that prevent cheaper housing from being built, as well as mixed use neighborhoods from forming(forcing Americans into automobile dependency). In most of the U.S., there are even minimum square footage requirements on the size of a home the local government will allow you to build, because the government wants more property tax revenue. More “law and order” to deal with the drugs is going to do more to impact otherwise responsible people and get them further entrenched into the increasingly rapacious, corrupt, and authoritarian criminal “justice” system that wants to extract as much money as possible from them, than it will actually help those who are homeless and drug addled, the homeless and drug addicted who will become increasingly enslaved by this system as well because they cannot pay the imposed fines and in turn end up in jail/prison where they will be forced to do jobs for greatly less than minimum wage, jobs that decades ago used to pay Americans a living wage. And the mental illness that pervades this society is a reaction to the consequences of this society’s policies and the fact that this society is becoming increasingly unlivable, greatly moreso than it is an inherent feature of the person afflicted with the mental illness, because living in this country has become extremely stressful and demanding. Various statistics on happiness around nations of the world confirm this. Lots of demand from the left for a Universal Basic Income did not occur in a vacuum. People are sick of working all the damned time and having nothing to show for it.
This is all a direct result of the economic system we are living under and the increasing complexity of the so-called “society” we are living in, where endless money keeps being printed up by the Federal Reserve and handed out first to the wealthiest institutions in society, who get to spend it on accumulating hard assets(such as real estate, and even collectable cars), driving the prices up, while ordinary working people are driven into debt to accommodate those increased costs. If these institution fail, they are bailed out at taxpayer expense. The rich keep getting richer, and will continue supporting the current paradigm of endless growth that is making them richer, without concern for resource constraints or the people who are extracted from via their labor. The consequence is that it has gotten to the point that a shack in Seattle that was once used as a garage, now turned into a “home”, is over $300k, which a minimum or even a median wage earner will be completely and utterly priced out of affording without a second income to make payments on it, and even then, will spend the majority of their life in debt.
This problem is systemic and this country needs some fundamental changes in big ways at the very top of the hierarchy for this problem to be addressed. Anything less is a bandaid on a gaping wound. Neither political party will do a thing to address this, as both are captured by a ruling class.
There are no easy solutions. You’re 100% right about that. But getting rid of the aristocracy that is deciding humanity’s collective future while it is gaslighting everyone into believing we all live in a “democracy” wouldn’t merely be a good start, but a prerequisite, to begin addressing these problems. People have no real control over their futures, but are instead being led around by the hoops they are forced to jump through to “make it” in life, like trained animals, as their autonomy is increasingly legislated out of existence and suppressed using all of the advancements which technology has offered coupled with increasing debt burdens to keep them in line so that they don’t end up like the homeless that they are uncomfortable seeing. Everyone that has been using debt to pretend their way to prosperity, has far fewer options than those who live within their means. And the means of the average working person are NOT what they used to be here in the U.S., in spite of all of the manipulated statistics using various “adjustments” to say otherwise(Consumer Price Index using hedonic adjustments to understate real-world price increases, for instance, or the BLS Unemployment Rate not accounting for all sorts of people who are unemployed and as a result very likely understating the actual number of jobless people by a factor of 4-5x).
It doesn’t have to be this way, but that is currently how it is. If nothing is done, some sort of collapse will be the inevitable result, because the current course is not sustainable. This is especially true of the modern auto industry. $30k for a decent running used car is the average now paid, when most people don’t even have $1,000 in their savings account. The $500 clunker has become the $5,000 clunker, and I know people who have gone into debt just to have that, something they used to be able to pay cash for. They certainly are hoping it doesn’t break down or else they can’t get to work to make payments on the clunker they went into debt for, and then won’t be able to make the next month’s rent. Without alternative means to get to work, people are being forced into debt, while being told that it is their fault/responsibility if they fail, basically forcing them to arrange their entire lives to every whim of their employer and whatever tyrants keep imposing new laws onto them. Need your job but are reluctant to take a mandatory experimental vaccine to keep it? You’re told no one is forcing you to do so. It’s a giant gaslight. Your money then dictates what tastes and “freedoms” you’re allowed to have, and if you’re at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy, you functionally have no freedom. American “individualism” at its finest. A lot of people who are homeless have come to this realization and said “fuck it”, but are often simply dismissed as “mentally ill”.
IMO, the best solution to these problems is to stop throwing money at them, stop trying to tell people what to do, stop trying to control people, and instead, break down institutions and corporations and remove as many rules as possible, have a massive debt jubilee for all and wipe it all away letting the rich creditors take the losses, burn the entire credit system to the ground, then let the cards fall where they may.
If some junky wants to shoot up on the sidewalk, more power to them. But the moment they try to break into my home and steal from me, guess what? They leave or they get shot. There shouldn’t be anyone telling me I can’t have a gun to defend myself or what gun I’m allowed to have. When the auto industry inevitably goes tits-up during the next economic crash, this also means NO BAILOUTS. Let smaller, more adaptable enterprises gain a foothold and take their place, and on top of that, get rid of various regulations and barriers to entry to accommodate that.
Large, moneyed institutions, and all of the rules and regulations they bring, are a collective albatross around the neck of humanity that are a driving source for most of its woes, and are concurrently the source of increasing instability and precarity. If you have money, things seem to be getting better. But not everyone has money, nor is it easy for them to obtain it.
“Also, the feds are starting to crack down on the deployment of autonomous shuttles on city streets, just as the test cars keep getting headlines for breaking down and causing 30-minute traffic jams in places in like San Francisco.”
What? But the sole purpose of public funded streets is to allow private companies to beta test 3000lbs+ vehicles with a history of accidents and fatalities! Especially in a way that you can’t opt out of maybe being run down because they weren’t paying attention! (/All The Sarcasm)
“We must act to ensure U.S. manufacturers can compete with countries like China, create jobs here and improve roadway safety,”
Oh, well, improving roadway safety is easy.
Simply issue a permanent ban against alpha and beta testing anything ‘self-driving’ on public roads, and make the penalty for doing so “DOT permanently refuses your car FMVSS certification.”
“Next up in the executive shuffle game is Mazda. CEO Akira Marumoto, who has held the top post since 2018, will be replaced by longtime Mazda North America boss Masahiro Moro.”
Masahiro might be a good pick for Mazda, might be a bad pick. While North America is 36% of the market, remember that he also is the person who advocated for and brought the failure that is the Mazda MX-30 BEV with a whole 92 miles of range.
They sold 505 of them. Total.
Whether it will make any difference? Probably not. Their management remains strictly an Old Boys Club (their entire board is old Japanese men with two token women.) Outgoing CEO Akira Morumoto is the one who brought the rotary back (remember, cars take years to develop.) Mr. Moro hasn’t really made any big waves or big changes. Instead, he has largely practiced hourensou and Kaizen. Which is fine if your focus is on continuous, incremental improvements. That’s what has improved Mazda’s dealer network so much.
But when you’re at 1.2% market share in Europe with minimal movement, 2.16% in North America also with minimal movement, and 5.2% and falling at home? You need to make bold moves. You need to shake the tree, get some new eyes on things, and try something different.
” Now its top engineer, Charles Sanderson, is headed back to his old employer McLaren Automotive as Chief Technical Officer. He had been at Rivian since 2018, and Automotive News reports it was Sanderson’s decision to move on.”
Yes, because he sees the writing on the wall.
Don’t frame Rivian’s problems as being “we can’t make enough cars” or “the capital markets are shit.” They aren’t. Are these things true? Absolutely. Unequivocally.
They aren’t the problem though. Rivian’s problem simply is that they showed up with a design that is extremely divisive and challenging for customers about five minutes before Ford said “hey what if the truck you keep buying but now with a battery?” And of course, the R1S came after the Mustang Mach-E.
That’s why all of the executives are leaving. Which has been going on a lot longer than the Fed has been jacking interest rates through the roof claiming it will fix “inflation” which is just profiteering (and consequently blowing all this shit up themselves. It’s a straight fucking line.)
Rivian doesn’t have the money and it doesn’t have the product to compete with the likes of Ford. Forget everyone else. Ford’s the one that matters; F150 is the best selling truck in North America in (insert literally any year you like here.) By a lot. Production fuckups? Ford is only competing with themselves. If the customer can’t get an F150 Lightning, “well how about this F150 V6 on the lot today?”
Which is why they sold an F-series every 49 seconds last year.
“What do you think of robotaxis? Where does that technology, and that business, go in 2023?”
If there was even a single just god, right into the bin with every promoter being relegated to /dev/null for the rest of their lives.
Instead they’re just going to keep burning cash in the dumpster for warmth, until they get bailed out on our dime. For something that doesn’t have any hope of being ‘safer’ or even working reliably in my lifetime or yours.
Actual, usable Robotaxi technology is kind of like fusion power: only 5-10 years away, but will be that way for 40 years+. They need a major shift in AI tech that we don’t have yet, and the folks trying to brute force it with current tech are more invested in making wildly hyperbolic promises to attract money from VCs and rubes.
There’s already a lot of automated rail-based systems. And I mean completely, 100% fully automated. The problem with them is the same as with cars.
You can’t operate them safely if the ROW isn’t STRICTLY controlled and completely inaccessible. And not just to humans. Miss that large branch down on the tracks and you could kill every passenger in the derailment.
On robotaxis, I am constantly concerned by sentiments such as “Congress has been stymied for more than six years over legislation to ease regulations that would allow for the deployment of thousands of autonomous vehicles.”
We need to be strictly regulating them, not deregulating for the sake of allowing companies to make a quick buck.
We’re talking about the arm of American government that has on the books the “series of tubes” discourse.
Do you think that these people are qualified to draw a committee to have an informed posistion THEN explain it to the rest of the jabronis/coffin stuffers?
I don’t disagree with you position on sensibly tight regulations.
While I agree, the point of “deregulating” here is to make them allowable at all – current regulations are built entirely around an occupant-driven vehicle, and thus requires specific safety and interface features that not applicable to L4+ self-driving vehicles, but that technically makes them illegal on the road if they lack said features.
Yeah love that quote from Peters about releasing all these vehicles let’s then compete and makes the roads safer. Gotta know guy from Detroit is on his knees to the auto industry.
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I’m highly distrustful of autonomous vehicles precisely because of the current legal framework regarding liability coupled with the technology not yet being as “good” as a human operator. I think generally they are a terrible idea, one whose appeal is toward those who would rather text on their phone than pay attention to the road in front of them. These vehicles will inevitably end up highly controlled by government and probably littered with data collection devices to spy upon the occupants and feed them a constant stream of advertisements. Meanwhile, the roads will become increasingly hostile to pedestrians, cyclists, and classic car operators, as a result of these autonomous machines.
A solution looking for a problem if there ever was one, and it will create new problems as a result.
The more I read about robotaxis the less I understand what problem they are trying to solve. The closest I can figure is that it is trying to address the inadequacy of our public transit systems in the US, but I don’t really understand how robot driven pods accomplishes that better than improved trains, buses, etc. The robo part implies that the human operator is the problem in these systems, but I don’t think I buy that.
In a nutshell? Computer people got it into their collective minds that they could solve all the world’s auto accidents.
A worthwhile goal i’m sure you’ll agree.Too bad they were off with the fairies.
Even computer nerds can possess hubris so deep it’s palpable
“Even”? There are very few industries with the size of ego that the tech industry has. I’m also betting most of the people pushing this aren’t strictly “computer nerds” either. It’s a bunch of executive-level people like Elon Musk who want to be the next big thing. The actual computer people likely have a much more realistic view of this stuff. Specifically that they get a really big paycheck for working on it even it fails in the long run.
The biggest problem with public transport is the public. No fancy tech or dedicated human operator can fix that.
What do I think of robotaxis?
In an era when we have people trying for jobs and a desperate need for better public transportation, I think we need to hire more bus drivers.
…especially if there are more electric busses for them to drive.
Hear, hear. Oh, and expand rail and make bike routes safer. That’s a better use of public funds that doesn’t rely on the programming to get it 100% right, 100% of the time.
I’ve seen the Cruise pods around town and…nah. Nah! I’m mildly curious about the tech, but given the autonomous industry’s lackadaiscal attitude towards safety and regulation, it’s gonna be a hard pass from me as it sits. One of those little Bolts going Robo-Leeroy Jenkins into a brodozer it doesn’t “see” in garbage Austin traffic is not the way I wanna go out.
Robotaxis? I wish all the people who annoy me would ride in them.
Robotaxi….
The world is so busy fighting one another that it cannot be agreed upon about how we, as a society, need to address this.
This 100% absolutely needs to be controlled by the Government first, with private entities following a path that is agreed upon by all players in the field. I say path for a reason. We need to get to point B from point A, but not completely restrict the path to do so. All the players in the field need a way to get there on their own volitions, but guided by an overall strategy set by everyone, not JUST one.
The reason robo taxis remain a “thing”, rather than more funding for busses or trains is as depressing as it is predictable. No one wants to share space with the homeless people, drug users, mentally ill folks, etc who are currently there. And there’s no appetite in todays society to crack down either, which is admirable in a justice sense, but also reduces demand for public transit. It’s a tough problem to solve!
The numbers of homeless people, drug users, and mentally ill are only increasing because society itself is becoming increasingly inhospitable to the needs of the humans that compose it. An average home used to cost 8x a year’s labor at Federal minimum wage, and now it costs 24x a year’s labor at Federal minimum wage. Rent has increased in cost by a similar proportion.
It’s gotten to the point that roughly half of homeless people are employed, yet priced out of shelter and other hallmarks of a basic existence, so it’s little wonder that they turn to drugs or become mentally ill along that journey. When I worked crappy low wage jobs, some of my coworkers confided to me that they were homeless. One of them worked TWO jobs.
Among those who don’t find themselves homeless, a majority have gone into 6-figure debt, and generally just want to avoid seeing those who are homeless so that they aren’t made uncomfortable by the fact that they themselves are two or three paychecks, or a medical event, or an arrest, away from ending up homeless themselves. Seeing homeless people is a reminder of their vulnerability and it makes them deeply uncomfortable on a visceral level.
There is no local solution that will actually work for a local area. Removing homeless encampments and giving them one-way bus tickets to another city doesn’t do anything to change their status. Throwing them in jail only costs the taxpayers money. Throwing taxpayer money at the problem to institutions that help the homeless is going to fail as well. More taxpayer money thrown at it will just be grifted away by a homeless industrial complex that does not want to solve the problem because they too will lose their 6-figure jobs. Meanwhile, middle class NIMBYs demand that no affordable homes are built in THEIR suburban neighborhood because they went into six-figure debt to avoid THOSE people, and many places have zoning laws that prevent cheaper housing from being built, as well as mixed use neighborhoods from forming(forcing Americans into automobile dependency). In most of the U.S., there are even minimum square footage requirements on the size of a home the local government will allow you to build, because the government wants more property tax revenue. More “law and order” to deal with the drugs is going to do more to impact otherwise responsible people and get them further entrenched into the increasingly rapacious, corrupt, and authoritarian criminal “justice” system that wants to extract as much money as possible from them, than it will actually help those who are homeless and drug addled, the homeless and drug addicted who will become increasingly enslaved by this system as well because they cannot pay the imposed fines and in turn end up in jail/prison where they will be forced to do jobs for greatly less than minimum wage, jobs that decades ago used to pay Americans a living wage. And the mental illness that pervades this society is a reaction to the consequences of this society’s policies and the fact that this society is becoming increasingly unlivable, greatly moreso than it is an inherent feature of the person afflicted with the mental illness, because living in this country has become extremely stressful and demanding. Various statistics on happiness around nations of the world confirm this. Lots of demand from the left for a Universal Basic Income did not occur in a vacuum. People are sick of working all the damned time and having nothing to show for it.
This is all a direct result of the economic system we are living under and the increasing complexity of the so-called “society” we are living in, where endless money keeps being printed up by the Federal Reserve and handed out first to the wealthiest institutions in society, who get to spend it on accumulating hard assets(such as real estate, and even collectable cars), driving the prices up, while ordinary working people are driven into debt to accommodate those increased costs. If these institution fail, they are bailed out at taxpayer expense. The rich keep getting richer, and will continue supporting the current paradigm of endless growth that is making them richer, without concern for resource constraints or the people who are extracted from via their labor. The consequence is that it has gotten to the point that a shack in Seattle that was once used as a garage, now turned into a “home”, is over $300k, which a minimum or even a median wage earner will be completely and utterly priced out of affording without a second income to make payments on it, and even then, will spend the majority of their life in debt.
This problem is systemic and this country needs some fundamental changes in big ways at the very top of the hierarchy for this problem to be addressed. Anything less is a bandaid on a gaping wound. Neither political party will do a thing to address this, as both are captured by a ruling class.
There are no easy solutions. You’re 100% right about that. But getting rid of the aristocracy that is deciding humanity’s collective future while it is gaslighting everyone into believing we all live in a “democracy” wouldn’t merely be a good start, but a prerequisite, to begin addressing these problems. People have no real control over their futures, but are instead being led around by the hoops they are forced to jump through to “make it” in life, like trained animals, as their autonomy is increasingly legislated out of existence and suppressed using all of the advancements which technology has offered coupled with increasing debt burdens to keep them in line so that they don’t end up like the homeless that they are uncomfortable seeing. Everyone that has been using debt to pretend their way to prosperity, has far fewer options than those who live within their means. And the means of the average working person are NOT what they used to be here in the U.S., in spite of all of the manipulated statistics using various “adjustments” to say otherwise(Consumer Price Index using hedonic adjustments to understate real-world price increases, for instance, or the BLS Unemployment Rate not accounting for all sorts of people who are unemployed and as a result very likely understating the actual number of jobless people by a factor of 4-5x).
It doesn’t have to be this way, but that is currently how it is. If nothing is done, some sort of collapse will be the inevitable result, because the current course is not sustainable. This is especially true of the modern auto industry. $30k for a decent running used car is the average now paid, when most people don’t even have $1,000 in their savings account. The $500 clunker has become the $5,000 clunker, and I know people who have gone into debt just to have that, something they used to be able to pay cash for. They certainly are hoping it doesn’t break down or else they can’t get to work to make payments on the clunker they went into debt for, and then won’t be able to make the next month’s rent. Without alternative means to get to work, people are being forced into debt, while being told that it is their fault/responsibility if they fail, basically forcing them to arrange their entire lives to every whim of their employer and whatever tyrants keep imposing new laws onto them. Need your job but are reluctant to take a mandatory experimental vaccine to keep it? You’re told no one is forcing you to do so. It’s a giant gaslight. Your money then dictates what tastes and “freedoms” you’re allowed to have, and if you’re at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy, you functionally have no freedom. American “individualism” at its finest. A lot of people who are homeless have come to this realization and said “fuck it”, but are often simply dismissed as “mentally ill”.
IMO, the best solution to these problems is to stop throwing money at them, stop trying to tell people what to do, stop trying to control people, and instead, break down institutions and corporations and remove as many rules as possible, have a massive debt jubilee for all and wipe it all away letting the rich creditors take the losses, burn the entire credit system to the ground, then let the cards fall where they may.
If some junky wants to shoot up on the sidewalk, more power to them. But the moment they try to break into my home and steal from me, guess what? They leave or they get shot. There shouldn’t be anyone telling me I can’t have a gun to defend myself or what gun I’m allowed to have. When the auto industry inevitably goes tits-up during the next economic crash, this also means NO BAILOUTS. Let smaller, more adaptable enterprises gain a foothold and take their place, and on top of that, get rid of various regulations and barriers to entry to accommodate that.
Large, moneyed institutions, and all of the rules and regulations they bring, are a collective albatross around the neck of humanity that are a driving source for most of its woes, and are concurrently the source of increasing instability and precarity. If you have money, things seem to be getting better. But not everyone has money, nor is it easy for them to obtain it.
“Also, the feds are starting to crack down on the deployment of autonomous shuttles on city streets, just as the test cars keep getting headlines for breaking down and causing 30-minute traffic jams in places in like San Francisco.”
What? But the sole purpose of public funded streets is to allow private companies to beta test 3000lbs+ vehicles with a history of accidents and fatalities! Especially in a way that you can’t opt out of maybe being run down because they weren’t paying attention! (/All The Sarcasm)
“We must act to ensure U.S. manufacturers can compete with countries like China, create jobs here and improve roadway safety,”
Oh, well, improving roadway safety is easy.
Simply issue a permanent ban against alpha and beta testing anything ‘self-driving’ on public roads, and make the penalty for doing so “DOT permanently refuses your car FMVSS certification.”
“Next up in the executive shuffle game is Mazda. CEO Akira Marumoto, who has held the top post since 2018, will be replaced by longtime Mazda North America boss Masahiro Moro.”
Masahiro might be a good pick for Mazda, might be a bad pick. While North America is 36% of the market, remember that he also is the person who advocated for and brought the failure that is the Mazda MX-30 BEV with a whole 92 miles of range.
They sold 505 of them. Total.
Whether it will make any difference? Probably not. Their management remains strictly an Old Boys Club (their entire board is old Japanese men with two token women.) Outgoing CEO Akira Morumoto is the one who brought the rotary back (remember, cars take years to develop.) Mr. Moro hasn’t really made any big waves or big changes. Instead, he has largely practiced hourensou and Kaizen. Which is fine if your focus is on continuous, incremental improvements. That’s what has improved Mazda’s dealer network so much.
But when you’re at 1.2% market share in Europe with minimal movement, 2.16% in North America also with minimal movement, and 5.2% and falling at home? You need to make bold moves. You need to shake the tree, get some new eyes on things, and try something different.
” Now its top engineer, Charles Sanderson, is headed back to his old employer McLaren Automotive as Chief Technical Officer. He had been at Rivian since 2018, and Automotive News reports it was Sanderson’s decision to move on.”
Yes, because he sees the writing on the wall.
Don’t frame Rivian’s problems as being “we can’t make enough cars” or “the capital markets are shit.” They aren’t. Are these things true? Absolutely. Unequivocally.
They aren’t the problem though. Rivian’s problem simply is that they showed up with a design that is extremely divisive and challenging for customers about five minutes before Ford said “hey what if the truck you keep buying but now with a battery?” And of course, the R1S came after the Mustang Mach-E.
That’s why all of the executives are leaving. Which has been going on a lot longer than the Fed has been jacking interest rates through the roof claiming it will fix “inflation” which is just profiteering (and consequently blowing all this shit up themselves. It’s a straight fucking line.)
Rivian doesn’t have the money and it doesn’t have the product to compete with the likes of Ford. Forget everyone else. Ford’s the one that matters; F150 is the best selling truck in North America in (insert literally any year you like here.) By a lot. Production fuckups? Ford is only competing with themselves. If the customer can’t get an F150 Lightning, “well how about this F150 V6 on the lot today?”
Which is why they sold an F-series every 49 seconds last year.
“What do you think of robotaxis? Where does that technology, and that business, go in 2023?”
If there was even a single just god, right into the bin with every promoter being relegated to /dev/null for the rest of their lives.
Instead they’re just going to keep burning cash in the dumpster for warmth, until they get bailed out on our dime. For something that doesn’t have any hope of being ‘safer’ or even working reliably in my lifetime or yours.
Actual, usable Robotaxi technology is kind of like fusion power: only 5-10 years away, but will be that way for 40 years+. They need a major shift in AI tech that we don’t have yet, and the folks trying to brute force it with current tech are more invested in making wildly hyperbolic promises to attract money from VCs and rubes.
Instead of robo taxies, why not invest in better public transit like maybe robo busses, or robo trains and subways
seems like a good time to make Norfolk Southern and others autonomous
There’s already a lot of automated rail-based systems. And I mean completely, 100% fully automated. The problem with them is the same as with cars.
You can’t operate them safely if the ROW isn’t STRICTLY controlled and completely inaccessible. And not just to humans. Miss that large branch down on the tracks and you could kill every passenger in the derailment.
If you want to see a good example of a fully automated system, Washington Dulles’ AeroTrain. (I always have to change planes at IAD, so I’m familiar.)
https://www.flydulles.com/travel-information/services-amenities/aerotrain-washington-dulles-international-airport
I was against robo busses and trains in Chicago until recently, when service has collapsed due to a lack of drivers.
On robotaxis, I am constantly concerned by sentiments such as “Congress has been stymied for more than six years over legislation to ease regulations that would allow for the deployment of thousands of autonomous vehicles.”
We need to be strictly regulating them, not deregulating for the sake of allowing companies to make a quick buck.
We’re talking about the arm of American government that has on the books the “series of tubes” discourse.
Do you think that these people are qualified to draw a committee to have an informed posistion THEN explain it to the rest of the jabronis/coffin stuffers?
I don’t disagree with you position on sensibly tight regulations.
While I agree, the point of “deregulating” here is to make them allowable at all – current regulations are built entirely around an occupant-driven vehicle, and thus requires specific safety and interface features that not applicable to L4+ self-driving vehicles, but that technically makes them illegal on the road if they lack said features.
Yeah love that quote from Peters about releasing all these vehicles let’s then compete and makes the roads safer. Gotta know guy from Detroit is on his knees to the auto industry.