Self-driving truck maker Otto will conduct tests in Ohio this week, on Ohio route 33 and the Ohio turnpike.
Next year, the route 33 corridor is scheduled for fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems to aid autonomous driving.
Please consider Self-Driving Trucks Will Hit the Road in Ohio.
A self-driving truck will begin traveling on two Ohio roads next week after state officials announce details of new investments to support innovative transportation technology.
A vehicle from self-driving truck maker Otto will travel a 35-mile stretch of U.S. Route 33 on Monday in central Ohio between Dublin and East Liberty, home to the Transportation Research Center, an independent testing facility. It will travel in regular traffic, and a driver in the truck will be positioned to intervene should anything go awry, Department of Transportation spokesman Matt Bruning said Friday, adding that “safety is obviously No. 1.”
Officials say that section of Route 33 – a four-lane, divided road – is an important piece of autonomous vehicle research in the state and will become a corridor where new technologies can be safely tested in real-life traffic, aided by a fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems slated for installation next year. Gov. John Kasich is scheduled to discuss details of that investment and other efforts to support autonomous vehicle research on Monday before the truck hits the road.
“Certainly we think it’s going to be one of the foremost automotive research corridors in the world,” Bruning said.
The self-driving truck is also expected to travel next week on part of the Ohio Turnpike, though Bruning said he couldn’t yet detail when or where.
The turnpike’s executive director said in August that officials were moving toward allowing testing of self-driving vehicles on the 241-mile toll road, a heavily traveled connector between the East Coast and Chicago.
Kasich has pushed for Ohio to be a leader in the fast-advancing testing and research of autonomous vehicles. State officials say Ohio is well-positioned for such a role for many reasons, including a significant presence from the automotive industry in the state, partnerships with university researchers, and the seasonal weather changes that enable testing a variety of driving conditions in one place.
Competition
Once again competition is the driving force that will guarantee success no later than a 2022-2024 time frame. By the end of that period, if not much sooner, long-haul truck jobs will vanish.
States will want to catch up with Ohio. Fiber optic solutions used in Ohio are just one possibility for solving snow and ice problems.
Substrate plotting and analysis is another possibility. Possibly both will be used. Sensors will become smaller and much cheaper.
Perhaps drivers will be needed for final delivery in cities and remote locations, but the need for long-haul interstate and major state highway drivers will vanish.
How Many Jobs Lost?
My statement that “millions of long haul truck driving jobs will vanish in the 2022-2024 time frame” is likely way off on the low side if one counts Uber, taxi, and chauffeur driven vehicles.
Take a look at Uber’s goal once again: “replace Uber’s more than 1 million human drivers with robot drivers—as quickly as possible.”
That’s just Uber. And those jobs will vanish. All of them. What about Lyft? Taxis?
Related Articles
- September 20: DOT Embraces Self Driving Vehicles: “Rise of New Technology is Inevitable, Unknowns Today Become Knowns Tomorrow”
- August 24: New Lidar Chips for Self-Driving Vehicles are Smaller Than a Dime, Cost $10 to Manufacture
- July 26: What a City With Driverless Cars Will Look Like (In 10 Years or Less)
- May 17: Ex-Google Engineers Launch “Otto”: Completely Driverless Truck Testing Underway
For further discussion, including a rebuttal to the often stated claim that driverless vehicles cannot work in snow, please see Uber Offers Driverless Rides This Month! What About Snow, Rain, Pigeons, 80-Year-Olds on Roller Skates?
My long-stated timeframe for millions of long-haul trucking jobs to vanish by the 2022-2024 is likely too distant.
The components are all in place. Regulation has five years to catch up, and it will. Competition ensures success and DOT is already on board.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Thanks for the warning.
I’ll stay off the Ohio roads this week.
The roads are already as dangerous as they can possibly be, what with all the distracted and impaired and unskilled and indecisive primates behind steering wheels. You should probably stay off the roads for good, at least until the all clear sounds when autonomous driving fully replaces the present murderous system.
This is just another government ploy to take more control away from the serfs.
It won’t work. The average consumer won’t be able to afford a self-driving car. The costs required to change the infrastructure to adapt self-driving cars would be enormous and untenable. The money would be much better spent on renovations to our crumbling buildings and bridges. Even if the nutty politicians approved the expenditures the self-driving vehicle phenomenon could not possibly get rolled out on large scale until mid-century through the century when many of us will be dead.
Yes, it sounds like the taxpayers (also known as “suckers”) are going to be on the hook for a lot of “infrastructure” spending that will benefit private companies only….Is Elon Musk involved here, LOL?
So what’s next on the government agenda?
Mandated bidet sprayers on all US toilets? lol.
When it costs $100,000/yr. to insure a human-driven car versus $100/yr. to insure an automated car, people will make the sensible economic decision. But more to the point, when automated cars take over, you* will just hire one. Ownership will be unnecessary.
* By “you” I of course don’t mean YOU LF, but rather those who will embrace the new technology as the greatest life-saving and time-saving innovation of our lifetimes. You LF will be free to maintain the old ways, just make sure you start saving up for the insurance premiums.
You can’t look into the future and know what it will cost to insure an automated vehicle. It’s nothing but pure conjecture on your part. So I discount it.
So the plan is to take auto ownership away from John Q. Citizen? That only bolsters my claim that this is a government ploy to gain more control over the serfs.
Like I previously stated – there is no way on God’s green earth that automated vehicles could be rolled out as our primary means of transportation until mid century. Common sense. By that time I’ll be on the other side so you can travel the roads in any way you see fit.
In the meantime I’ll continue to stick the key in the ignition, twist it and shove it into drive. Just like I’ve been doing for many decades. And I refuse to relinquish that means of control that I have over my existence.
If self driving tech actually makes the roads safer, insurance rates will go DOWN, not up. The last human drivers will get all the cost saving benefit without having to pay for a new car.
When you don’t understand how something like insurance works, you should just shut up and let the grown ups talk.
This is the problem with the tax system. The tax codes subsidizes automation by allowing companies to rapidly depreciate equipment well before the end of its useful life, then taxes the heck out them when they hire people.
Why not put an asset tax on equipment and let companies write off labor costs?
BAIDU
” Making autonomous cars a reality cannot be done by any single organization. It will require a public-private partnership, and a community of legislators and researchers and engineers and technology companies and automobile manufacturers. ”
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/self-driving-cars-wont-work-change-roads-attitudes/
So shall it be a war – big corporations putting money in the political tin
for [bribery] legislation and taxpayer subsidy
verse the Truckers Union —– As I have written repeatedly
this is the future.
————————————-
>> I also see the author has changed his tune on snow or at least
the car companies show still unresolved:
” the route 33 corridor is scheduled for fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems to aid autonomous driving. “
Today’s autonomous cars are inferior to human drivers in important ways:
If a construction worker uses hand gestures to tell a car to either go or to stop, no autonomous car today can reliably make the right decision.
When the sun is immediately behind a traffic light, most cameras won’t be able to recognize the color of the signal through the glare.
If we see a truck with a “Makes Wide Turns” sign, we know how to adjust our driving accordingly. If we see children distracted by the ice cream truck across the street, we know to slow down, as they may dash toward it. Today’s computers aren’t nearly as skilled at interpreting complex situations like these.
WHAT IS THE PLAN — WHERE WILL THE MONEY COME FROM
Rather than having construction workers guide traffic with hand signals, we could give them wireless beacons or apps, telling cars what to do via electronic signals.
Construction plans could be filed in advance, to give autonomous car operators time to plan around those complex situations.
Emergency service vehicles will also need a way to communicate clearly, since their sirens and flashing lights are designed for human drivers.
We might also build several traffic signals at problematic intersections, so at least one is always clearly visible to the car’s cameras, regardless of the sun’s position.
Or we could develop more sensitive cameras.
OUR ROADS ARE IN TERRIBLE SHAPE FOR THE MOST PART
WHO WILL CONSTANTLY REPAINT THEM ?
WE CANNOT AFFORD IT NOW – WHOSE IS PAYING
Well-maintained roads are also critical for predictability. With clear lane markings, both humans and computers can safely drive between the painted lines. The problem with poorly maintained roads is not only that they’re harder to navigate, but that computers and humans are no longer able to accurately anticipate where others will drive, thus reducing predictability.
++++++++++++++ REMINDS ME OF THE GREAT HIGH SPEED
BILLION DOLLAR TRAIN ——- Works Great Except NO ONE
accounted for SAND ====
https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=nw#hl=en&q=high+speed+train+sand+spain
.
.
.
WHO IS PAYING
YOU THINK CALIFORNIA WILL ??
What About Municipalities going BUST ???
Groups representing municipal governments in California warn that some cities could be forced to make layoffs and major cuts in city services as well as face the risk of bankruptcy if they have to absorb the decline through higher contributions to CalPERS.”
I also noticed the statement about installing sensors. I have been saying this for years. Automated driving will never work reliably unless sensors are installed in the roads. Not only is the mapping too unreliable, but the cost of having every car fully equipped with every kind of radar will be too high.
Until that happens, they will be used only under perfect conditions. Limited access freeways, repetitive/set routes (like a bus route), good weather, etc. Most likely, humans will have be be walled off from self driving enabled roads. No pedestrians, jay walkers, kids playing or pet walking.
There will have to be some standardized device police use to stop traffic. They won’t be able to just hold up a hand or wave.
” Automated driving will never work reliably unless sensors are installed in the roads. ”
This may be quite true – so what about CONSTRUCTION
I drove in the City last weekend and was reminded
THE CONSTRUCTION HAD BEEN GOING ON FOR YEARS
YES YEARS – what shall they do, constantly move the sensors ?
What about Construction that goes on for months and months ?
Are they going to run out and reprogram every time the lanes
are changed,
what about simple and seasonal flag persons that are out cutting trees
out of telephone lines,
THE COSTS ARE INSANE
Mish apparently overlooks in every article the COSTS
The LIDAR single Lidar unit COST right now is approx. $ 80,000.00
just for the LIDAR unit – the typical car COST $ 250,000.00.
But Mish implies that car costs will come down from $ 250,000 to $ 30,000 magically over the next 5 years allowing fleets of these vehicles.
And NOT TO MENTION THE BILLIONS of dollars that will be required
from municipalities for road maintenance. Taxpayers will love this too !
.
.
.
Bankers are making people unaffordable, by printing outrageous service inflation.
Lovely, the taxpayers of Ohio will probably be coughing up billions of dollars so that a few tech companies can get their self-driving trucks to work there.
I said I could design one that would work, but it would be too expensive to be economical (more expensive than a driver overall). But, like Tesla and Elon Musk and his electric nonsense, I forgot that it will be Taxpayers which will make it all possible since cost is no object to states and the feds that can be lobbied.
Solyndra’s technology did work too.
But without subsidies Tesla cars would not be viable.
Glad to know that the whole “self driving truck” business will just be another crony capitalist boondoggle and that free markets are dead in the USA. Cronyism is the only viable business model.
Self-driving trucks, 90% financed by the taxpayers, 10% by the actual tech companies.
Lets have more Ethanol while we’re at it. It is very successful, at least for the farmers and those who process the crops into Ethanol.
Since the USA hit peak oil in 1971, gasoline has been by far the federal government’s largest subsidy.
I will note the Ohio Turnpike (and I’d add the entire IN/OH/PA set) due to the controlled access is one area where you could have self-driving trucks across the whole thing and would be viable without subsidy.
And long term how are these trucks going to get from route 33 to the turnpike? Maybe they will use SR 4 and pick up the turnpike south Sandusky. They can navigate this very busy two lane road (that hasn’t been widened due to the prohibitive cost) with it’s 12 ft deep ditches on each side. Accident waiting to happen.
Here’s an idea… Trump can make a deal with Ford, to test self driving trucks from Ohio to the Rio Grande where some boat manufacturer tests his self driving boat across to the Mexican side and allow them to share cost with the US Immigration Service. Win-Win.
I approve of self-driving double-decker busses to deport illegals back across the border. And if they can design a self-driving triple-decker ICE bus bring it on. The more decks the better. And I would vote for a tax increase to specifically fund it too.
With lower labour utilisation I can imagine multiple developed countries winding back on immigration. They will already find themselves with pools of liberated labour needing occupation.
Skilled immigrants welcome but not the mass of unskilled adding to the pool.
I don’t know about the swamp but the pools will need draining.
Maybe these to be unemployed truck drivers and Uber drivers can get jobs in all the new manufacturing plants that Trump is going to bring back to USA soil?
Trump isn’t even President yet and has already convinced Ford to keep it’s manufacturing plant in Kentucky and is working on Carrier.
How many US manufacturing plants has Obama saved in his 8 years in office?
He didn’t convince anyone. Take your head out from between your legs. Ford is still going to send the work from that plant to Mexico but they are also going to build a new car line in the old building. So Trump did nothing.
As for Obama, I seem to recall back around 2008 that we gave GM and Chrysler special loans from the government to keep both of them alive. Chrysler got brought by FIAT and GM appears to be doing OK at the moment (but you never know with GM).
The world is moving too fast (in some places) these days.
Told my wife the other day that I was patiently awaiting the day when all new cars on the road are fully autonomous. That way I can drive my old Jeep in any way I want without fear because every other car on the road will avoid me no matter what I do,
LOL
The jobs will vanish – but the people won’t. Do you see the problem there, Mish?
I asked this before and I ask again – when will they start fitting these trucks with weapons systems?
Otto’s on the road. Hide your women and daughters.
So how are they going to police vehicles?
Are the police going to have remotes?
This looks like a good book.
==========
Our Driverless Future
Sue Halpern
November 24, 2016 Issue
Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead
by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman
MIT Press, 312 pp., $29.95
This September, Uber, the app-summoned taxi service, launched a fleet of driverless Volvos and Fords in the city of Pittsburgh. While Google has had its own autonomous vehicles on the roads of Mountain View, California, Austin, Texas, Kirkland, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, for a few years, gathering data and refining its technology, Uber’s Pittsburgh venture marks the first time such cars will be available to be hailed by the American public. (The world’s first autonomous taxi service began offering rides in Singapore at the end of August, edging out Uber by a few weeks.)
Pittsburgh, with its hills, narrow side streets, snow, and many bridges, may not seem like the ideal venue to deploy cars that can have difficulty navigating hills, narrow streets, snow, and bridges. But the city is home to Carnegie Mellon’s renowned National Robotics Engineering Center, and in the winter of 2015, Uber lured away forty of its researchers and engineers for its new Advanced Technologies Center, also in Pittsburgh, to jump-start the company’s entry into the driverless car business.
Uber’s autonomous vehicles have already begun picking up passengers, but they still have someone behind the wheel in the event the car hits a snag. It seems overstated to call this person a driver since much of the time the car will be driving itself. Uber’s ultimate goal, and the goal of Google and Lyft and Daimler and Ford and GM and Baidu and Delphi and Mobileye and Volvo and every other company vying to bring autonomous vehicles to market, is to make that person redundant. As Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman make clear in Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead, the question is not if this can happen, but when and under what circumstances.
The timeline is a bit fuzzy. According to a remarkably bullish report issued by Morgan Stanley in 2013, sometime between 2018 and 2022 cars will have “complete autonomous capability”; by 2026, “100% autonomous penetration” of the market will be achieved. A study by the market research firm IHS Automotive predicts that by 2050, nearly all vehicles will be self-driving; a University of Michigan study says 2030. Chris Urmson, who until recently was project manager of Google’s autonomous car division, is more circumspect.
….
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/24/driverless-intelligent-cars-road-ahead/
agree with DGB…the human driver will have
the advantage over the always-obey-the-law robot.
“if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.”
Miller: A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?
Ultimately technological advance is deflationary. We used to work seven days a week, then at the turn of the 20th century it went to six days, then after the great depression five. Now the average work week is 4 days a week. Look for it to settle between 2-3 over the next couple decades. If they simply let asset prices deflate the transition would be even faster.
I welcome the 2-3 day work week. As long as I don’t have to take a pay cut.
Intel to Team With Delphi and Mobileye for Self-Driving Cars
By NEAL E. BOUDETTE
NOV. 29, 2016
Today’s automobiles are often described as computers on wheels, for the scores of processors and chips they use to control everything, including the transmission, brakes, power windows and navigation system.
The advent of self-driving cars may require the equivalent of a supercomputer on wheels. Which is why three technology companies in the field — Intel, Delphi Automotive and Mobileye — plan to collaborate in an alliance to be announced Tuesday.
For Intel, especially, it will be an effort to catch up in autonomous vehicles, a field where some chip makers have made deeper inroads.
The processing power required to scan the road, identify pedestrians and fuse images from radar, cameras and other sensors — all in real time — is spurring a race to provide increasingly complex computer brains that will dwarf those found in cars today.
….
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/intel-to-team-with-delphi-and-mobileye-for-self-driving-cars.html
One thing I have never seen discussed, or even mentioned, in connection with driverless technology is the matter of national strategic security. Which is, do we as a nation think it is a good idea to invest trillions of dollars over the next 10 to 30 years in a transport system made up of not-driver-capable vehicles heavily dependent on the electrical grid and computer chips?
The biggest threat to us would no longer be a massive nuclear attack immolating hundreds of cities. Just a few well-placed EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) bombs, which are not that destructive, relatively speaking, would fry our electrical grid as well as the chips controlling most of our vehicles. Even surviving vehicles would be inoperable by humans due to lack of steering wheels and pedals. Starvation and societal collapse would follow within a few weeks as food transport becomes impossible, followed by surrender.
Note, 1950’s America would not have been as vulnerable as we are today. For that matter, neither are lower-tech countries like Iran or Russia today.
While this technology push might be economically efficient, it leaves us highly vulnerable.
Currently cars depend on ICs to work properly. An EMP will disable 99% of vehicles regardless if they have a gas pedal or not.
Seems to me the high tech people will eventually work them selves out off a job once these robots start thinking for there selves
Who’s going to pay taxes if we’re all out of jobs sitting at home doing drugs because we don’t have the satisfaction of a job well done. We’re not going to be able to sleep at night.Because God created us to work a hard day’s so we need rest at the end of the day and we aren’t going to replace that. That is why we have all the crime today don’t teach our children work ethic things will only get worse. God’s way is the only way. You can kill me for telling you this but will not chang a thing. We may be killed by driver error or by a hard core criminal that is using his talent to kill because he didn’t have to use it to work
The purpose of Life….is purpose, not just work. To think otherwise is actually very Marxist thinking. Employment is likely to be around for quite a while yet, although with competition wed to profit making systems and artificial intelligence increasingly becoming an economically disruptive force, less and less so. Therefore the logical and third alternative thing to do is let the process free us from ENFORCED work in order to survive and have the helping professions and perhaps, like with the campaign to reduce smoking, have public service announcements to help people find the myriad positive and constructive purposes they could pursue in addition to employment.
It is great to be free of work. There is only the small problem of how you get money to pay the mortgage/rent or buy food.
Elon Musk and others say this will require a government backed guaranteed “Universal Income” for everyone. Guess who is going to have to pay for that? The wealthy, of course. And if there aren’t enough wealthy, then may have to try a sleight of hand, such that the robots/automation get taxed to provide the unworkers with money to pay bills and buy things. Ponder that for a while!
Driver less vehicles are inevitable. As are automated fast food robots. Whenever there’s a chance to replace a person with a robot at a reasonable cost, it gets done. Many professions have disappeared. Blacksmiths, TV repair men, and secretaries have gone away. Soon it will be cashiers and truck drivers. 150 years ago, most people worked on farms. Now 1% of the population does.
Islamic self driving cars anyone. Sounds like a 360 win for Allah!
All of the mayhem None of the virgins
Doofus.
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