the good word groundswell

Thursday, November 2, 2017

US Set to Drop Proposed Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Communications Mandate

Obama era plan would have created standards for vehicles to 'talk' to each other.

As reported by The Verge: The proposed mandate to add vehicle-to-vehicle communications to all new cars appears to have been killed by the Trump administration.

The White House and US Department of Transportation are not going to push forward with a mandate that would have required new cars to be equipped with dedicated short-range radios that allow vehicles to send some data — such as crashes, road hazards and weather conditions — to other vehicles, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

“The Department of Transportation and NHTSA have not made any final decision on the proposed rule-making concerning a V2V mandate,” the department said in a statement Wednesday. “Any reports to the contrary are mistaken. In all events, DOT hopes to use the dedicated spectrum for transportation lifesaving technologies. Safety is the Department’s number one priority.”

DOT added V2V was a significant part of its plan and is still reviewing more than 460 comments in response to the proposal.

Under the Obama administration, then-Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said V2V technology would greatly enhance autonomous driving technology to, “provide 360-degree situational awareness on the road,” and improve vehicle safety. The Trump administration’s decision comes at a time when traffic fatalities in recent years have jumped to levels not seen since the 1960s.

The Mercedes-Benz E-Class received V2V technology in 2016, and Mercedes added it to the 2018 S-Class this year. General Motors also introduced V2V early this year on the Cadillac CTS.

“We are happy to have customers experiencing V2V technology on the road today in our Cadillac CTS sedan,” Cadillac spokesperson Donny Nordlicht said in an email to The Verge. “While we don’t discuss future product plans, we are supportive of the mandate and open to sharing the 5.9 Ghz spectrum, as long as it can be established that there is no harmful interference with the live-saving DSRC technology.”

Mercedes-Benz USA Communications Manager Christian Bokich said the automaker was continuing to monitor the status of the V2V mandate.

“That said, as a leader in the pursuit of accident-free driving for the past few decades, we plan to continue to innovate new technologies that bring us closer to that goal,” Bokich said in an email. “It’s too early to speak to the what and when of V2V technology with respect to that goal, particularly as we await the details of 5G integration.”

The Transportation Department under current Secretary Elaine Chao has also been relaxed on rules self-driving vehicles. In September, the department decided to continue with the guidelines introduced under Foxx amid actions by the House of Representatives and Senate to adopt national regulations.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Waymo Cars Won't Ask for Human Help During Emergencies

Because tests proved that people tend to act like passengers inside
autonomous cars anyway.

As reported by Engadget: Waymo has begun testing truly autonomous vehicles that don't even need to hand off control to human drivers in dangerous situations. Alphabet's autonomous car development arm has shown off the latest version of its Chrysler Pacifica minivans at an event in California, where the vehicles drove people around without a person sitting in the driver's seat. According to Reuters, the company decided to drop the driver handoff feature after experiments conducted in Silicon Valley back in 2013 showed that users acted like full-on passengers inside the vehicle.

Testers napped, put on make-up and used their phones on the road. In other words, they'd lost context of where their car was going or how fast it was and would've been taken by surprise if they were suddenly given control of the vehicle in dangerous situations. Waymo has been working on ditching the handoff feature since then to allow "passengers to stay passengers."

The latest version of Waymo's minivans feature display screens mounted on the back of the front seats. They show messages explaining why the system just did what it did (say, if it stopped to let a pedestrian cross) as well as visualizations of the surroundings. More importantly, they have a new panel with buttons allowing passengers to start the ride, pull it over, call for help and unlock the doors.

While the buttons still give passengers some semblance of control, Waymo chief John Krafcik said his team is working on a technology that will make their ride-hailing dreams more feasible. That feature will give their vehicles the ability to recognize the person who hailed them even if they're not in the exact spot where they called for a ride.

If you're in Phoenix, Arizona, you might have already seen Waymo's new minivans driving people around. You might not have to wait for years on end to see one even if you're not in Phoenix, though: Krafcik said they're "really close" to unleashing their self-driving vehicles on public roads.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Tesla Supercharger’s Powerpacks Undaunted by Power Outage

As reported by Futurism: Tesla fans and pundits alike were pleasantly surprised when CEO Elon Musk announced the coming addition of Powerpacks to Tesla’s Supercharger network. Musk also announced his intention to bring charging stations to nearly all off-grid stations on the network.

Early deployments of the Powerpacks to a number of Superchargers have already demonstrated their usefulness during infrastructural hiccups. The Tesla Supercharger station in South Mimms near London, UK, is ostensibly no different than other Superchargers in the surrounding region. Located at the ‘Welcome Break Services’ installation, the South Mimms station also features petrol, an Ecotricity charging station, amid other necessary amenities.

However, when Waseem Mirza stopped by for a refill at the Supercharger station with his Model X last week, a power outage suddenly ripped through the whole service area, leaving the man what you might call up recharge creek with no current. Without amenities, little was left for customers and bystanders to do. As many began to reluctantly leave the site, Mirza realized that the Supercharger docks had remained powered.

Tesla confirmed Mirza’s observations: the Supercharger station had remained online thanks to its connection to a Powerpack battery system.

One of the first stations equipped with the cutting-edge system, the Powerpacks were not added to provide backup power. But this is nevertheless a noteworthy example of what high-standard engineering can do.

Infrastructural Metamorphosis
The Powerpacks’ primary purpose was to reduce peak power demand when multiple vehicles charge simultaneously. According to Tesla, this allowed them to increase the number of Superchargers at the station from two to 12 bays last year.

Despite Tesla’s headway on fulfilling its promise to provide both solar power and energy storage systems at its Supercharger stations, Tesla currently operates just a handful of stations running on solar panels or Powerpacks.

Above all, this dispels the notion that electric cars are not useless when electric grids go down. Since we’re not living in a dieselpunk novella, gas pumps can’t power themselves with gasoline; they need electricity, too.

While the Tesla Superpack-equipped stations can’t stay online for long at the moment, it’s expected the proliferation of Powerpacks, combined with renewable solar power, will allow the energy supply service to go completely off-grid, according to Musk.

We shouldn’t be surprised if Supercharger and solar power systems see increased deployment as Tesla expands their network of service toward their goal of 10,000 Superchargers by the end of the year.

At the moment, the automaker runs more than 7,300 Superchargers at more than 1,000 stations. So once solar power is conjoined to the network, the sky’s the limit.

Monday, October 30, 2017

SpaceX Aces Another Rocket Landing After Launching Korean Satellite

As reported by Space.com: Another day, another rocket launch and landing for SpaceX.

A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Koreasat-5A communications satellite lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today (Oct. 30) at 3:34 p.m. EDT (1934 GMT).

About 8.5 minutes after launch, the rocket's first stage came down for a pinpoint landing on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles off the Florida coast. A fire smoldered at the booster's base shortly after the landing, but SpaceX quickly put it out. [In Photos: SpaceX's Koreasat-5A Launch & Rocket Landing]

"A little toasty, but stage one is certainly still intact on the drone ship," SpaceX lead mechanical engineer John Federspiel said during launch commentary today.

The Falcon 9 second stage, meanwhile, continued powering Koreasat-5A to a distant geostationary transfer orbit, eventually deploying the satellite 35.5 minutes after liftoff.

The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 sits on the deck of the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" shortly
after launching the Koreasat-5A satellite on Oct. 30,2017. Credit: SpaceX

The rocket landing was the 19th that SpaceX has pulled off during orbital launches. These dramatic events are part of the company's plan to develop completely reusable rockets and space vehicles, a breakthrough that SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said will slash the cost of spaceflight.

To date, SpaceX has re-flown three of these landed Falcon 9 first stages, as well as one Dragon cargo capsule. In addition, the company's next resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA will feature a pre-flown Dragon. (The Falcon 9 that launched today was a brand-new vehicle.)

South Korean company KT Sat will use the 8,160-lb. (3,700 kilograms) Koreasat-5A to provide direct-to-home broadcast and broadband services to customers in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, among other nations. The newly launched satellite will take over for Koreasat-5, which launched in 2006.

"As a replacement for Koreasat-5, Koreasat-5A will expand KT Sat's coverage across Asia and the Middle East," SpaceX representatives wrote in a mission overview. "Unlike other satellites in the Koreasat fleet, Koreasat-5A will provide maritime coverage of the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, South China Sea and East China Sea."

Today's launch was the 16th of the year for SpaceX, one more than the company pulled off in 2015 and 2016 combined.

The Falcon 9 lifted off today from KSC's Launch Complex 39A, which previously hosted Apollo moon mission and space shuttle liftoffs. In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease to use the pad.

Elon Musk Shares First Look at Boring Company’s Tunnel Under L.A.

The Boring Company and Elon Musk have completed about 152 meters of their tunnel project
under the city of Los Angeles. Musk posted a photo of the tunnel's progress on his Instagram
on Saturday.

As reported by Futurism: After almost five months, Elon Musk’s Boring Company has finally finished a portion of the tunnel they’re digging under Los Angeles. Musk proudly posted a photo of the tunnel on his Instagram, simply captioned with “The Boring Company tunnel under LA.” The tunnel is a clear demonstration of how Musk’s tunnel-digging venture has evolved from the initial idea first floated on Twitter to reality.

The Boring Company started with a 49-m (160-ft) tunnel test path under SpaceX’s Hawthorne headquarters earlier this summer. In August, the company sought permission from the city government to expand the tunnel for 3.2 km (2 miles), a path that would travel to the local airport. Musk’s photo shows a portion of this 3.2-km tunnel, which he said is some 152 m (500 ft) long.

“Should be 2 miles long in three or four months and hopefully stretch the whole 405 [north to south] corridor from [Los Angeles International Airport] to the 101 in a year or so,” Musk added in a tweet, confirming a previously laid out plan.

Not Your Average Tunnel
While the photo doesn’t really distinguish it from other similar infrastructures, the Boring Company’s tunnel will ultimately be quite different in function. As Musk previously revealed, cars and people would be ferried under the Boring Company’s network of tunnels using an electric skate or sled. These sleds come from above ground, through special platforms located along the route of the tunnels. Using a special elevator, cars and “people pods” are brought down into the tunnel, where the sleds can travel up to 242 k/h (150 mph).

The fairly futuristic concept could certainly disrupt city transportation, but perhaps even more interesting is the potential of these tunnels to become tubes designed for a Hyperloop — Musk’s concept for a super-fast future train pods which the CEO first spoke about back in 2012.

At any rate, the Boring Company is building tunnels designed to bypass heavy traffic in congested urban areas, such as L.A., and provide faster access to the city’s airport. And L.A. isn’t the only one — other municipal governments have expressed interest in having a similar tunnel network under their cities.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Alphabet’s Waymo Will Test Self-Driving Cars in Snowy Detroit - But Colorado Would be a Better Location

Based on reporting from BloombergTechnology: The self-driving cars Google designed are going to the snow -- and the seat of the car industry.

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the vehicle arm of Google’s parent, announced on Thursday that it will start testing its autonomous Chrysler minivans on roads in the greater Detroit area. Michigan will be the sixth state where Waymo has run its vehicles on public roads. But the region is the first with a winter dominated by snow and ice, the kind of inclement conditions that pose hurdles for vehicle sensors.

“Having lived through fourteen Michigan winters, I’m confident that there are few better places that will prepare our self-driving cars for winter conditions,” John Krafcik, Waymo’s chief executive officer and a former Ford Motor Co. executive, said in a statement. Waymo opened a testing facility in suburban Detroit last year.

The hometown automakers are already there. Ford has tested self-driving cars in the state (including some for pizza delivery). General Motors Co.’s Cruise Automation is experimenting there as well.

Waymo has compiled 3.5 million miles of public road testing since 2009. It’s widely seen as the front-runner in driverless car technology, which could upend the auto market if and when it arrives. Yet Waymo has sworn off manufacturing its own vehicles, and hasn’t disclosed how it plans to spread its package of self-driving sensors and software to a commercial fleet.

Starting in April, Waymo began testing a free service with select passengers in Phoenix, using some of its 600 minivans from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. A Waymo spokesman declined to specify how many vehicles would be used in Detroit.

However, Colorado is also the home of several car testing locations - including Pike's Peak for brake systems, and uphill racing for a range of vehicles including EVs. There are also natural canyons, large swaths of area with no wireless communications, and tunnels where GPS signals are blocked. Successfully navigating snowy conditions on steep treacherous mountain roads, while avoiding snow and rock falls, as well as other drivers on I70 to Breckenridge may be the final authoritative test for some self-driving car systems.