[Note: This is a biweekly round-up of some of the articles on autonomous vehicles that elicited commentary from this author. Note, with all the buzz about autonomous vehicles, this list isn’t comprehensive.]
L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti: We Will Be the First City to Do Autonomous Vehicles Right
Los Angeles, the city that grew up around the automobile, may be the first major city to embrace the autonomous automobile. This article summarizes some of the ideas that Eric Garcetti, the mayor of the nation’s 2nd largest city, has for making his burg the capital of the autonomous transport. He suggests that the autonomous vehicle could provide a good public transportation alternative, particularly in LA’s urban core. Silicon Valley leaders, are you listening?
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Iowa City Region Aims to be the Center of Autonomous Vehicle Testing
Meanwhile, in the heartland, the Iowa City Area Development Group, is inviting those involved in the development of autonomous vehicles to do their testing in this seven county of East Iowa known as Iowa’s creative corridor. Viewers of ViodiTV should be familiar with this area, as this region features South Slope Cooperative Communications, a Communications Service Provider with an extensive Fiber to the Home network serving much of this area (click here to watch a video about they work with the town of North Liberty, IA to spur economic development). This region is also home to the University of Iowa and the National Advanced Driving Simulator. In addition, ICAD president, Mark Nolte, points to favorable state regulation and local community proclamations that welcome the testing of autonomous vehicles as signs that this part of Iowa is a good fit for companies wishing to prove their technology in real-world conditions.
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6 Clues That Google Will Turn Uber Into a Self-Driving Home Delivery Service
This is the first I heard of the term “Goober” to describe the resulting product that would come from a Google/Uber integration. A subscription “Transport as a Service” seems viable and would make it easy for a Google to take care of the insurance questions by “self-insuring”. Simple modeling I outlined here suggests a net savings in transport for consumers across the board, as well as a revenue significant revenue opportunity; the losers, today’s automotive ecosystem.
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Do self-driving cars have more ‘green’ potential than plugins?
This article summarizes the views of a Michigan research professor and former Environmental Defense Fund Fellow regarding how autonomous vehicles have the potential to provide great environmental benefits than automobile electrification. Not that the autonomy and electrification are mutually exclusive, but things like reduction in traffic, number of cars required per capita (from a Transport as a Service model, where sharing is the norm) offer the potential for a greater reduction in total resources required to move a given number of people.
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