By Jeff Sanford
Toronto, Ontario — February 26, 2017 — This week’s Autonomous Report looks at a lawsuit Waymo has launched against a former employee, the special problems facing a second-hand connected car, Bill Gates’ proposal for a tax on robot labour and much, much more!
– Big news in Ontario this week concerning Tesla as it emerged that the former chief of staff for the Ontario minister of the environment, Ian Myrans, left his position and went straight into a job at Tesla. The fact that Myrans was involved in the decision to extend a $14,000 subsidy for electric cars to luxury e-cars like the Tesla vehicle generated some controversy. Progressive Conservative politicians were quick to take the government to task. The Liberals increased the subsidy for buyers of e-cars from $3,000 to $14,000. Progressive Conservative politicians are now asking why this subsidy is being applied to e-cars like the Tesla that sell for more than $100,000, and are only bought by “millionaires.”
“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” PC leader Patrick Brown said this week. “You’ve got someone that is leaving a minister’s office and going to a company that is now benefiting from these decisions.”
A Tesla Model S sedan can cost in the range of $90,000 to $100,000. Under the previous subsidy program, cars like Tesla in the $75,000 to $150,000 price category qualified for a smaller $3,000 rebate. Several months after the new rebate program was first announced in 2016 a decision was made to remove the $3,000 cap on Teslas, allowing the full $14,000 subsidy (retroactive to January 1). Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath piled on as well:
“Why does somebody who can afford a luxury vehicle … need a tax break from the government? It makes no sense.”
– A report out this week suggests that the rise of autonomous vehicles (AVs) could increase the demand for liquid fuels. “The next decade of innovations in automotive technologies is likely to dramatically change the process by which passengers and goods are moved … Low-cost, efficient travel is likely to encourage greater use of passenger travel through light duty vehicles (LDVs), which may come at the cost of more efficient public transit options. The result is likely to increase overall transportation sector energy consumption. Vehicle fuels that compete well in small LDV segments will see more demand from this shift than those in large LDV segments because automated services are likely to utilize smaller vehicles,” according to the report.
That said, “The lengthy lifespan of vehicles relative to other consumer products will, however, spread the revolutionary impact on the existing transportation system and regional fuels markets over decades.”
– Waymo, the AV car business spun out of Google, launched a federal lawsuit this week against ride-sharing service Uber. Waymo claims the head of Uber’s AV division, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded 14,000 files from Google a month before leaving to start his own self-driving car company, Otto (which Uber acquired in August).
The possible theft came to light when a Waymo employee was “inadvertently” copied on an email between a supplier and Uber. The email contained drawings of the circuit board Uber had designed for its LiDAR technology. Waymo charges Uber’s design bears “a striking resemblance to its proprietary and highly secret design” for the light-ranging radar Waymo has been working on for years.
Waymo published a post on its corporate blog explaining why they had to bring the suit. “One of the most powerful parts of our self-driving technology is our custom-built LiDAR … LiDAR is critical to detecting and measuring the shape, speed and movement of objects like cyclists, vehicles and pedestrians … Hundreds of Waymo engineers have spent thousands of hours, and our company has invested millions of dollars to design a highly specialized and unique LiDAR system. Waymo engineers have driven down the cost of LiDAR dramatically even as we’ve improved the quality and reliability of its performance. The configuration and specifications of our LiDAR sensors are unique to Waymo. Misappropriating this technology is akin to stealing a secret recipe from a beverage company,” according to the post. “To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints,” according to Waymo.
http://bit.ly/2mfNBM7
– According to a report in the Financial Times, many are worried that US inflation is going to, “… accelerate, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at a faster pace than anyone has seen for almost a decade.” Could the widespread move to AVs spur a shift to car-sharing and a reduction in actual cars sales? If many fewer cars are being sold, there will be consequences according to the article. The story goes on to note that a study by Citigroup, “… argues that annual sales will decline to about 15m by 2030. It is based on the assumption of a large reduction in car ownership in the states of California, New York, Florida and Illinois even as the country’s population rises.”
That is, the rise of services such as Uber will reduce both the cost of transport to the consumer and the attractions of car ownership. That makes AVs a deflationary force in the modern economy. According to the story, ”… if US car sales are on the cusp of a structural decline, that will spell bad news for one of Mr. Trump’s key election pledges: bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. Plants will probably close as the sharing economy and technology reshape and reduce demand.” The article goes on to ask what the, “inevitable tectonic shifts in the car industry [would] mean for central bank officials and investors?” Interesting question.
– Here’s an interesting issue to keep in mind when it comes to buying a second hand “connected car.” According to a report, “Don’t buy it if you’re not hack-savvy. The first owner might still have access.” As more cars are built with sophisticated internet-based technologies it seems, “Cars are smart enough to remember an owner, but not smart enough to forget one – and that’s a problem if a smart car is sold second-hand.” The story goes on to report on an appearance by the global head of IBM’s “X-Force Red penetration-testing team, Charles Henderson,” who addressed a conference and related how, “… a connected car app could still access a car he traded in – two years after he’d sold it.” Henderson related how he was able to hack the “… geolocation of the car, climate control, navigation control, it allowed me to remotely honk the car horn … and finally ‘I could unlock the car’.” None of this should have been possible years after he disposed of the car, says Henderson. He had run a factory reset on the car before he sold it and had traded the car through a factory dealership. Even so, he was still able to access his car’s digital system. The situation is, Henderson says, a ‘catastrophic failure.’ Henderson went on to say that, “… everybody – the dealer, the seller, and the next buyer – needs an obvious way to confirm ‘access revocation.’”
– A Navigant report suggests that, “… vehicle-to-external communications (V2X) using dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) as well as 4G and 5G cellular data communications will expand rapidly in the next decade.” Connectivity is a key technology enabler for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), as it is needed to ensure that PEV drivers can access charging infrastructure, as well as plan routes or use smartphones. The first DSRC-based V2X systems were deployed in late 2015 and more will be coming over the next several years. In addition to embedded OEM systems on new vehicles, aftermarket retrofit systems and smartphones with DSRC capability are expected to be adopted. “By the early 2020s, some markets are expected to utilize 5G cellular technology as an alternative to DSRC,” according to the report. According to Navigant, “… global revenue from sales of OEM and aftermarket DSRC-based V2X systems is projected to reach more than $25.5 billion by 2020.”
– Advanced driver assist technology has come a long way. But one challenge programmers have yet to solve is how to manage a, “double lane merge.” Some countries have roads where two lanes of traffic merge into a large highway. “Because a double lane merge is not done by humans as a series of rules, but an interactive series of negotiations. Drivers must attempt to merge into a lane, essentially requesting that other drivers yield. Because this creates a multitude of variables that can differ in each attempt, programming strict if/then rules into a computer program will not work,” according to the report, but eventually networked cars will be able to figure out a way to merge the cars safely: “As autonomous driving rolls out, the AI will begin to identify non-connected cars as sources of uncertainty or at least variables. Cars that share a communications network and operate from it will have known tendencies and intentions. Therefore, the human driven cars will become a potential hazard that autonomously driven cars must identify and account for and responded to with increased vigilance.”
– Melissa Cefkin is Principal Scientist and Design Anthropologist at Nissan’s research centre in Silicon Valley. Her job is to ensure that humans still, “… take center stage despite extensive automation.” According to a Q&A, Cefkin believes, “It’ll still take many years before a vehicle’s electronics will be able to assume all driving duties at all times, under all conditions.” According to her, “An autonomous Nissan Leaf will not be able to communicate via hand gestures or eye contact like human drivers. This sounds trivial, but it isn’t. We need to find a ‘language’ that is as universal as possible … Take right-of-way rules at a crossroads, for instance. You can easily transfer them into an algorithm. But unlike an autopilot system, human beings do not follow the rules. There are countless situations that make it necessary to break the rules or at least interpret them flexibly. But robots can’t deal with that if they are based on rigid programs.”
– By 2030, traffic jams be a thing of the past. So says Cathis Elmsäter-Svärd, Chairwoman of Drive Sweden and a member of the Global Future Council on Mobility. In a recent interview she said that, “One of the biggest factors in determining whether we actively enjoy everyday life in a city, or merely have to live there because that’s where the work is, is how much time we spend in traffic jams or standing at bus stops … How different might urban mobility look by 2030? By then … I envisage that we will have fully automated transport systems where various forms of transport–self-driving cars, trains and buses, cycling, walking–are seamlessly integrated by technology … We’ll move goods differently, as well as people–perhaps we’ll have small robots making last-mile deliveries, or sophisticated networks of parcel drop-off points, for people to have their shopping delivered to a convenient location where they can collect at their leisure…All of this should make urban transport work more efficiently, giving us fewer vehicles on the roads, cleaner air and less noise pollution.”
– Just because a worker isn’t technically “alive” doesn’t mean it can make money for nothing, said Bill Gates this week. The billionaire philanthropist explained that, “… robot labor should get taxed just like human labor—primarily as a way to maintain funding for society’s many social services.” Gates was quote as saying, “You can’t just give up that income tax.” The story notes that an Oxford report from 2013 found robots could displace up to 50 percent of jobs between 2023 and 2033. A 2015 McKinsey report concluded that today’s technology could replace 45 percent of jobs right now.
“The bulk of those lost jobs will likely come, at least initially, in telemarketing, tax preparation, and many retail service jobs. In 2016, a PwC report found drones could replace $126 billion worth of labour in infrastructure and agriculture. And when that happens, Gates doesn’t believe the manufacturers of those robots should be able to reap the profits generated by the automated labor without paying some sort of tax. The system would be similar to how the government takes a portion of people’s wages to support social programs, such as healthcare, infrastructure, and law enforcement. Gates sees a robot tax as contributing to a portion of those programs whose workforces are in short supply.” The story notes that with the proper training and fulfillment, people who lose their jobs to robots could do “teaching, elder care, and helping kids with special needs… and have their salaries paid for by the tax.” At that point, Gates said, “you’re net ahead.”
