My job means I get to drive brand-new, high-tech modern cars all of the time. They have gotten safer, faster, more efficient and overall better in just the decade I’ve been doing it. But when it comes to car safety, I’ve found that there’s still no substitute for just paying attention and general competence behind the wheel.
Even so, mistakes happen, and that’s why automatic braking systems—already a super-common feature on many new cars—may soon become required standard equipment in the U.S.
That story kicks off this Monday at The Autopian. Also on tap: electric car names are bad, electric charging companies struggle with Wall Street and more on the fight over AM radio in new cars. Let’s dive right in.
Auto Braking Is The Next Big Safety Standard
I say “cars have gotten safer” over the past few years, and that’s true, but America still saw almost 43,000 traffic deaths in 2022—about 117 people per day. Those unfortunate numbers have been rising for years now and to understand why, you have to look at who is dying: pedestrian and cyclist deaths are way up compared to the previous decade. There are a lot of reasons for this, including inadequate sidewalks and road infrastructure and the fact that our pivot to trucks and SUVs means cars are bigger, heavier and deadlier than ever for anyone not inside them.
So it’s no wonder why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing car companies make automatic emergency braking into standard equipment for new vehicles. Here’s The New York Times on this:
The agency is proposing that all light vehicles, including cars, large pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, be equipped to automatically stop and avoid hitting pedestrians at speeds of up to 37 miles per hour.
Vehicles would also have to brake and stop to avoid hitting stopped or slow-moving vehicles at speeds of up to 62 m.p.h. And the systems would have to perform well at night.
“We hope this will avoid many crashes,” Polly Trottenberg, a deputy transportation secretary, said at a news conference. “We know this is going to save lives.”
About 90 percent of the new vehicles on sale now have some form of automatic emergency braking, but not all meet the standards the safety agency is proposing.
What that means, according to NHTSA, is cars would be required to have automatic emergency braking systems that engage up to 62 mph and not only recognize pedestrians but recognize them at night too. While AEB systems are remarkably popular options and sometimes standard equipment on many cars, this would put them in place across the board just like airbags and anti-lock brakes.
Next, NHTSA will take public comments from automakers, safety groups and citizens before deciding to finalize the rule and that could take a year or more. After that, it’ll go into effect in another three years.
The downside, of course, is the added cost to automakers that will get pushed onto the consumer, as if modern cars aren’t expensive enough already. At the same time, we have all got to do something about this glut of person-outside-the-car deaths and this may just help make a big difference there.
What Is Going On With Electric Car Names?
Here’s something thankfully a bit lighter after that last item, but still relevant. How was “bZ4X” (something I have to continually Google each time I write it to make sure I got it right) the best Toyota could do for its first modern EV? Or Honda’s new Euro-market e:Ny1? How do you even pronounce that? E-NY 1? Eeeny-one? Is it named after New York 1, the greatest local news operation on the planet?
The truth is, all of these new EVs have names like physics equations, or one of Elon Musk’s kids. Bloomberg is here to call them out:
Over at Jaguar, a driver could be forgiven for assuming the carmaker’s electric option is the E-PACE, but that model has a gas engine. The battery-powered Jag is the I-PACE. And no one could fault a Volkswagen fan for confusing the carmaker’s ID.4, an SUV-shaped EV, with the ID. Buzz, a recast of the company’s famous van.“Honestly, a lot of these names are just trying too hard,” says David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, which helped name Lucid Group Inc., the Subaru Outback and the Honda Ridgeline. “Everyone is kind of scrambling.”
Placek says a great product name needs to check three boxes: It has to be memorable, noteworthy and distinctive within its category. It also helps if the moniker is “what we call ‘processing fluent,’” Placek says. “When the mind looks at it and says ‘OK, I can get that.’”
Many new EV names fall short. They either hew too closely to tradition to feel noteworthy, or stretch so far for distinction that they aren’t memorable.
A bunch of others just sound bad—EQS AMG from Mercedes, which is dumping the EQ branding now anyway—or Audi’s confusing “e-tron” lineup that also includes a standalone car called the e-tron. And it’s unlikely names like “EV6” will hold up well as these things become mainstream.
Do you know what the best EV name is right now? The Ford F-150 Lightning. Chef’s kiss, man. It almost makes up for the Mustang Mach-E, which has a hyphen even though historically “Mach 1” did not and it’s grammatically incorrect here. I will go to my grave mad about that.
Of course, now that I bring this complaint up, they’ll just bring back names I loved as a kid as EV crossovers. I’d hate to see the Honda Prelude and Toyota Celica go that way, but I also wouldn’t be shocked.
EV Charging Companies Face Wall Street Skepticism
With the glut of EVs coming soon, you’d think charging providers would be the next big thing. And they are! As I wrote for The Atlantic recently (yes, that’s a flex, but I’m pretty proud of it so allow me a moment to feel good about myself for a change) America’s public charging network needs to not only grow but grow up. This huge contingent of EV drivers won’t put up with the annoying stuff the early adopters did, like broken chargers, outdated plugs, proprietary payment apps and zero customer service.
A ton of new companies are rising to take advantage of the $7.5 billion the Biden Administration is putting forth to build out a better EV charging infrastructure, and most of the ones I’ve talked to are keen on fixing those problems.
The problem is, Wall Street investors want to place bets on the future. Revenues are up but stock prices are down at the charging providers.
And in a shitty capital market, they don’t like the overhead costs involved or the idea that many of these companies will not survive—or at lest not find a way to be profitable. Remember, many of them make their money (or the bulk of it) from selling maintenance contracts to property owners rather than selling electricity.
Here’s Bloomberg again:
But the companies are spending heavily to deploy chargers in what some liken to a land grab, and investors have grown leery of the amount of capital the companies will need to install their plugs along roadsides and parking lots. None of the charging companies has yet proven it can turn a profit, nor is it clear when any will. And the industry already has a cautionary tale: Volta Inc. The San Francisco company, worth an estimated $1.4 billion when it went public via a special purpose acquisition company in 2021, quickly used up its cash and accepted a $169 million buyout offer from Shell Plc in March.
“If you’re burning cash, and you still need to raise cash, well, that’s a stock that’s not going to get a lot of love,” said Gabriel Daoud, managing director of equity research with Cowen Inc. “There is certainly a risk that a number of these companies will run out of cash and become insolvent.”
There are larger economic factors at work here, of course. Interest rates are high, investors are carefully watching EV growth, and a few of these companies went public via SPAC deals and those have since gone kaput. I’d say a rebound feels imminent at some point; these cars have to get their electrons from somewhere.
AM Radio Doesn’t Go Down Without A Fight
Do you still listen to AM radio? Hell, do you still listen to FM radio? Both are functions automakers would love to kick to the curb as they seek to cut costs from new EVs any way they can. Plus, EV motors tend to create a slight interference with AM radio signals.
It’s an old-school technology that still has its defenders today even if automakers like BMW, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla and Volkswagen (among others) don’t offer AM radio on their new EVs. In fact, about a third of new EVs on sale in 2023 don’t have that function at all.
But government officials (and apparently, also people who long for the heyday of Rush Limbaugh) say dumping AM radio signals could have a huge impact on emergency broadcasts and disaster notifications. Lawmakers want to ensure it’s mandatory for future cars. Here’s Automotive News:
[…] Now, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, and other legislators are shepherding the AM for Every Vehicle Act through the House of Representatives. It would direct NHTSA to require that automakers maintain AM broadcast radio in vehicles for free, among other provisions. The bill’s champions in the Senate include Democrat Markey and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The House’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology has scheduled a hearing on the issue Tuesday, June 6.
It seems AM radio may have a few years, if not decades, left in it.
Your Turn
What radio do you listen to in the car? These days I’m pretty exclusively into XM Satellite radio (I got used to it on press cars and now can’t live without it) and Spotify for streaming music and podcasts. I can’t say I’ve touched an AM dial in about 10 years or more.
I’m very big on satellite radio. No matter your favorite music genre they have a lot of stations to choose from. The comedy channels are great for keeping you awake on long trips. FM radio is five songs, twenty minutes of commercials, repeat. AM radio is a sad state. I bought a car two months ago and haven’t even set any AM stations.
I tried it on my last car during the free trial and couldn’t find anything that I enjoyed listening to. I admit I have rather weird taste in music and don’t care for the more popular genres for the most part. I did find a classical station that had OK content, but the compression was so strong and the aliasing so bad, it was unlistenable. The car I bought last December has it along with the free trial, and I tried again for a few minutes and had pretty much the same result.
It was bad for free. I can’t imagine paying for it. I’m glad some folks can get benefit from satellite radio. I’m just not one of them. I haven’t even bothered with terrestrial radio for many of the reasons you mention. My car is 6 months old and has no presets set. The 512GB SD card in my phone works fine via Android Auto.
Something I’ve noticed whenever I have a press car: the XM stations’ playlists are WAY too damn short. Sometimes they have some great stuff (an all-emo channel and whatever Garth Brooks likes? hell yeah), but my gosh, if you’ve got a longer trip, you start to notice the repeats.
BBC World Service on Sirius is indispensable for longer drives. Not even NPR does in depth coverage like BBC.
I listen to left of the dial FM stations, Red Sox on the AM/FM and, um, cassettes I made in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, nearly the whole fleet has tape decks. The newest, a 2010 Mazda 5, has a CD player
Get very annoyed with the parents new RAV-4 where it takes touch screen gymnastics to get a local FM station…
The best name was Voltswagen!
Usually listen to music on FM but AM should be kept
Occasionally FM, but usually our USB/SD drives/card with music.
I’m not even sure the last time I listened to AM radio, besides accidentally.
I listent to the local FM rock station when I want to put my brain in neutral. Its still the best way I’ve found to discover new music. Everything else is from my personal library.
So Ford has both the best and worst-named EVs. *remembers that the Bees Forks exists* Okay, second worst. 😉
And if NHTSA wants to save lives they’ll ban these asinine in-car entertainment systems that allow games and movies to be played in view of the driver. That is such an insanely stupid feature added onto these insanely stupid touch-only interfaces.
I wonder if folks in government who are *demanding* that cars be equipped with AM radios are aware that, as recently as 10 years ago, vehicles could be sold WITHOUT ANY RADIO AT ALL. It wasn’t until the government demanded backup cameras (2015, maybe?) that a radio became standard in all vehicles (there had to be a screen for the camera, which pretty much meant they had to install a radio.)
I’m pretty sure that in 2013 you could buy a base Nissan Versa or Jeep Wrangler with no radio at all.
I know this is a revolutionary idea, but what if, instead of mandating a computer to brake, we mandated a driver who could brake when needed?
The world is not ready.
I think pedestrian and cyclist deaths are up due to the indignant indifference these individuals show for their own personal safety. G-Wagen or Versa, ped still dead. Also, mobile devices. People are just more self involved and expect others are paying attention. Unfortunately, the more self involved are also operating motor vehicles.
Android Auto for the interface
Spotify for music
Google Podcasts for, well, podcasts.
I know my car has an FM receiver because I hear 5-10 seconds of it every time I start the car before the bluetooth connects. It’s still set to whatever station the dealership had it on when I bought the car in 2019. It might have an AM receiver but honestly I have never looked for it.
I just spent a couple hours in the car going to and from some work meetings, and spent at least half the drive on FM, plus checking on AM to see if the one sports host I like is back from his medical leave. But, honestly, unless I happen to be in the car during his time slot, I never, ever listen to AM.
Pirates games were on AM until relatively recently (by which I mean like 15 years), and so that was heavy listening for me. Interestingly (or not), I recently had reason to listen to a game on AM (maybe I was somewhere they didn’t have an FM station for the network?), and it was unpleasant to listen to. Not static from poor reception, just low sound quality that I don’t recall from the past. I’ve read that there’s so much more happening in the spectrum that AM just doesn’t work as well as it used to; even aside from EVs, there’s just ubiquitous interference.
CBC Radio one (FM) here in Cunuckland. Generally thoughtful and interesting programming. Mostly calm enough to drive to without screaming jocks or too much blithering on about which circus animal throwing a ball or chasing a puck is getting paid the most this year.
I gotta say, I miss CBC3 on XM down here. That was always a decent mix of stuff I couldn’t hear anywhere else, and it didn’t repeat itself as much as the normal XM stations.
I use my unlimited cell phone plan to stream music from my Plex server at home through my phone to Android Auto wirelessly via a Motorola MA-1.
Greatest radio station in all of history. No commercials ever and every song kicks the llama’s ass.
Is this not a thing on every interstate highway? https://goo.gl/maps/gb5CDzELpPLtYLPr6
literally the only time I listen to AM radio lol: when the roads are THAT bad
Congrats on the Atlantic article: that’s a feather in your…helmet? Gatsby? I hope to Bog you don’t wear a Trilby!
Just heard-on FM – over the weekend a commercial telling people to contact their representative about this. Basically, ‘ you could die in a tornado or flood if they do away with car AM radio!’ Someone should look into who is funding these ads
I listen to baseball on AM radio, public radio and a couple local stations on FM. I certainly stream more than I listen to radio though.
Great, I love getting my windshield calibrated to the tune of 600$ every time I get a crack. Seriously that’s what it costs, and it has to be done at the dealer. This is on a 17k starting price vehicle.
I’m curious how many pedestrian deaths are due to the actions of the pedestrian and not the driver. I see a lot of clueless pedestrians randomly crossing streets and randomly walking into traffic while staring at their phones. Are cars the problem, or are distracted pedestrians the problem?
With rising obesity, pedestrians have gotten so big that drivers can’t even see them anymore. This is truly a lack of personal responsibility by pedestrians. Imagine if you didn’t have a huge SUV/Pickup and were driving in a lowly car and a pedestrian landed on your windshield. You’d be toast. It would be like hitting a moose.
In the last couple years I have witnessed four incidents, one of which I was the victim. Three cases, including mine, involved pedestrians on the sidewalk hit by vehicles illegally (not yielding) crossing the sidewalk (a dog on a leash was run over and killed in one of them) and another was a cyclist hit in a SEPARATED bike lane by a driver who had to actually mount the curb to hit her. Logic would dictate that this can only be solved by banning pedestrians and cyclists and ripping out all sidewalks and bike lanes.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to make cars and infrastructure safer, although I think it is worth considering whether pedestrian behavior has changed due to technology. Is it really absurd to think pedestrians might be more distracted in 2023 than they were in the past and that distracted pedestrians might be partially responsible for an increase in vehicle/pedestrian collisions?
Pedestrian behavior is worse. Driver behavior is much worse. Car designers are worse (due to humongous vehicles & A-pillars) too. These are not things that can be fixed with a technology band-aid.
You mean for the deaths caused by pedestrians running into stopped cars?
I mean deaths caused by distracted pedestrians stepping in front of vehicles. Again, I’m not sure why pedestrian behavior should be ignored in a discussion of pedestrian safety.
-When did “Look Both Ways And Cross When Clear” become “Punch The Pedestrian Crossing Beacon With A Fist And Then Immediately Turn And Start Crossing The Street Without A Glance Towards Oncoming Traffic”? I swear the flashing beacons do more harm than good.
New rule: no new standard equipment mandates for automobiles are allowed unless and until they first mandate the return of the floor mounted headlight dimmer switch, and the crotch cooler vent under the dashboard.
I don’t give a good goddamn about literally anything else that can be mandated to be screwed to a car until they get those two things right.
Also, if you bozos learn to drive, you won’t need automatic assisted anything. Try not hitting shit.
I’m a little mystified by the negative feedback on auto-braking I read here. The vision-based system on Mrs. OverlandingSprinter’s Subaru has never had a false positive I can recall, and the radar-based system in our Sprinter can get confused by vehicles we pass that are slowing on an off-ramp. However, I’ll take the Sprinter’s occasional confusion any day as it’s easy to correct. Both throw up their electronic hands when snow, mud or bugs cover the sensors, but that’s easily fixed. I guess we’re lucky.
I love and hate SiriusXM. Its compression makes music sound terrible. On the other hand, I can listen to live sportsball games of my choosing anywhere in North America, which is magic as far as I am concerned.
98% of the time I’m listening to a podcast, audiobook or a music mix from RadioParadise. I don’t think I’ve listened to more than five minutes of AM or FM in the last 15 years. {Very bad verb} all of the commercials on commercial radio and sponsorship messages on NPR.
I’m concerned about how accurate the automatic braking feature would be. My F250 has a of collision alert feature that flashes red and beeps when it decides a collision is imminent. It has gone off ~10 times in the 2 years I have owned the truck. These alerts have occurred when there is something at the side of a road (parked car, bus bench, tree, etc.) near a bend in the road. In no occasions was a collision likely, much less imminent. This is a problem since the red light/beeping is distracting/surprising to the point of being dangerous (I have no idea why Ford thinks the best way to avoid a collision is to distract the driver when a collision is likely). I can’t imagine if my truck also slammed on the brakes in these occasions. I don’t have a problem with automatic braking in theory, but with as lousy as my truck’s collision avoidance feature is, I doubt manufacturers could make this work reliably.
I’ve had press cars freak out and emergency-brake about like, tall grass before.
I hate it. So jarring.
It’s generally a useful feature and seems to take a lot more (as in, grass way up in the grille) to actually set off, though.
I don’t really listen to radio anymore. When I do, it’s because I’m in transit and there’s a sporting event I’m following. Most of the time I’m playing music off one of my devices (iPod). I have over 12K of songs ripped from a lifetime of collecting CDs (have around 1,000 CDs). Playlists hundreds of songs long. For me, it is heaven.
I’ve had Sirius/XM before from car purchases, but I learned last year on a very long road trip, there’s a lot of repetition in their playlists day to day and I kind of got bored with it. There were some excellent shows, one off items they had that are good, but not enough to justify maintaining the subscription.
But satellite radio did introduce me to Yours, Truly, Johnny Dollar which I desperately would love to somehow turn into a video game. I mean the slogan “the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account.”
Sports Radio 66, The FAN, WFAN!!!!!
Traffic and News on the 8’s!
I listen to the internet broadcast of my local community radio station while on the road, KVMR, through my phone bluetoothed (is that now a verb?) to the car system with it plugged in for power. The vehicle QI charger does not provide enough juice to both charge and broadcast BT.
As for auto-braking. Call me somewhat skeptical. The few times the must-brake warning lights have come on are when the vehicle ahead is turning and I am still going straight. The system only senses the object ahead, and doesn’t have the foresight to recognize that the object is actually moving out of the collision path.
Patrick, you and I disagree on so many things. That’s ok. If I ever meet you, I’ll happily buy you a beer.