Tag Archives: Ride-Sharing

GM’s Ultra Cruise Will Leapfrog Tesla Autopilot, Offer Full Hands-Free Driving Virtually Everywhere

In the race to put self-driving vehicles on the road, General Motors may be ready to take the lead with the new Ultra Cruise system it plans to put on the road by 2023.

Cadillac plans to expand the rollout of Super CruiseTM, the world’s first true hands-free driver assistance feature for the freeway. Super Cruise will be available on all Cadillac models, with the rollout beginning in 2020. After 2020, Super Cruise will make its introduction in other General Motors brands.
GM is currently rolling out its original Super Cruise system on a wide range of products, including Chevy and GMC models, as well as those from Cadillac.

The new system will increase by tenfold the number of miles of roads GM’s Super Cruise system can operate on – and where the current system only can operate on limited-access roadways, Ultra Cruise will cover “every road including city streets, subdivision streets and paved rural roads, in addition to highways,” GM said in a statement announcing the new technology. At launch, Ultra Cruise will operate on 2 million miles of roads, said GM, with a goal of increasing that to 3.4 million.

With Ultra Cruise, GM seems positioned to leapfrog Tesla, the EV automaker that marketed the first “self-driving” system, Autopilot. Despite releasing a new update it refers to as “Full Self-Driving,” Tesla’s technology still requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times.

“Ultra Cruise is not just a game changer in terms of what it enables ­− a door-to-door hands-free driving experience − but a technological one as well,” said Doug Parks, GM’s executive vice president of Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain.

The race for autonomy

The auto industry is in a race to develop autonomous vehicle technology – with the eventual goal of having vehicles operate without the assistance of a human driver. GM’s San Francisco-based Cruise subsidiary recently won approval from the State of California to test prototype vehicles that don’t even have a steering wheel or other driver controls. But most experts believe that it will be late in the decade before such systems are ready for widespread use.

(Click to expand.)

In the meantime, the focus is on more limited systems that can reduce the role of the driver – though a motorist would still need to be ready to take control in an emergency, or if the vehicle were to travel outside a “geofenced” area.

A number of manufacturers are developing these systems – known in industry parlance as “Level 2 autonomy.” Tesla was first to market with the original Autopilot, GM following with Super Cruise which it is now rolling out on a wide range of vehicle lines.

Both have significant limitations and make various trade-offs. Tesla has dubbed the latest version of Autopilot “Full Self-Driving,” and many owners have been using the system hands-free. Some have been recorded going so far as to jump into the back seat while the vehicle is moving. But the automaker actually stresses that motorists need to maintain at least a loose grip on the wheel.

Tesla v GM

GM claims drivers actually can take hands off the wheel using Super Cruise. But the system is restricted to about 200,000 miles of U.S. and Canadian roads. And the GM system uses a camera to ensure that the driver remains alert and in position to take over quickly, if necessary.

Tesla FSD Simulation

A digital simulation of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system.

Tesla has, until recently, not monitored the driver. But it plans to do so after coming under fire for the lax way in which many drivers use Super Cruise. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is conducting a probe of Autopilot in the wake of several dozen crashes, a number of those involving Tesla vehicles impacting stationary emergency vehicles.

“The way Tesla is doing it, there always will be error problems,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal auto analyst with Guidehouse Insights.

Tesla relies on the data gathered by a network of cameras to operate Autopilot. GM, on the other hand, uses radar, as well as ultra high-definition street maps, with Super Cruise. And the Ultra Cruise system will add LIDAR, a 3D laser technology.

“This is a more robust solution,” said Abuelsamid. “They’ve taken a safer approach (even as they) expand tenfold the number of roads they can use Ultra Cruise on.”

No rollout roadmap – yet

The GM system will be able to recognize street signs and traffic signals, as well as pedestrians, bicyclists and animals. And it will be able to handle pretty much any sort of situation that a human driver would normally be required to negotiate, according to GM.

The automaker hasn’t provided a specific roadmap for rolling out Ultra Cruise but it’s expected to follow the same model used for the original Super Cruise system. That would begin with the flagship Cadillac brand and then expand to other GM brands.

Motorists pay additional fees for vehicles equipped with the basic Super Cruise hardware and GM recently announced that it will charge a monthly usage fee, as well. Tesla, Ford and other manufacturers are adopting similar pricing models.

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Lyft Sells Self-Driving Business Unit to Toyota for $500 Million

Lyft has been using the autonomous prototypes in the Las Vegas market.

Lyft Inc. sold its autonomous vehicle technology unit, Level 5, to Toyota Motor Co. for $550 million, following the lead of its rival, Uber Inc.

The company launched Level 5 in 2017 to build a self-driving system for its network of vehicles. The goal, ultimately, was to eliminate the need for drivers. The company grew to nearly 400 employees, but as Lyft continues to lose money overall, it needed to find ways to end its string of quarterly losses.

Not only will it get $550 million from Toyota, it will also stop funneling multiple millions of dollars into a development project with no finish line in sight for a payoff. Lyft gets $200 million immediately and the remaining $350 million will be paid in installments during the next five years.

Uber finalized a similar deal last fall, selling its autonomous vehicle unit called Advanced Technology Group to Aurora led by former Waymo chief Chris Urmson for $400 million.

Immediate financial relief

Lyft has provided 100,000 self-driving rides as part of its autonomous technology development.

The ride-hailing company said selling its Level 5 subsidiary puts it back on the path to profitability. First and foremost, it cuts $100 million of annualized non-GAAP operating expenses on a net basis, Co-founder and President John Zimmer noted in the announcement.

“Assuming the transaction closes within the expected timeframe and the COVID recovery continues, we are confident that we can achieve Adjusted EBITDA profitability in the third quarter of this year,” Zimmer said in a statement.

The company isn’t getting out of the robotaxi business. It’s already partnered with Motional and Waymo to develop self-driving tech and now it will just rely on that partnership to move toward autonomous vehicles. Working with the pair, Lyft’s already provided more than 100,000 self-driving rides in its vehicles in the last three years.

However, Lyft can now focus on what it can do best with autonomous vehicles by offering services such as routing, consumer interface and managing, and maintaining and cleaning partners’ autonomous vehicle fleets, which could mean added revenue, it said.

Uber made a similar choice

Lyft’s deal is similar to Uber’s move last December to sell its Advanced Technology Group, or ATG, to Aurora, the autonomous vehicle technology company founded by Google and Waymo veteran Chris Urmson. The deal came in at $400 million.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noted after the sale of its ATG unit the company’s path to profitability had been shortened.

AVs were a critical component of the path to profitability by Uber, which now relies on part-time drivers or gig workers to ferry passengers, using its celebrated phone app. Uber invested huge sums in its internal AV project; however, was crippled in 2018 when one of its test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. It never really recovered.

Uber also ended up with a 26% ownership interest in Aurora on a fully diluted basis, the company said in a filing.

Aurora and Uber agreed to collaborate to launch self-driving vehicles on its ride-hailing and food delivery network. Uber is also working on building out its freight logistics platform but is not operating its own trucks at present.

The completion of the deal caused Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to utter a familiar refrain to Reuters: “This essentially advances our path to profitability.” He said the deal should put the company on track for profitability by the end of this year, largely due to the fact Uber would no longer be investing vast sums of cash into ATG.

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Auto Sales Gain Traction as Americans Avoid Mass Transit

Fewer and fewer people are relying on taxis to get them around town due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taxi business in New York City has dropped by 90% since the start of the pandemic, even as mass transit ridership has fallen precipitously.

The situation, repeated across the country, reflects a variety of factors, including a huge increase among those working from home and a sharp decline in business travel. But even among those who must commute, there’s been a sizable shift away from mass transit and ride-hailing services to the use of personal vehicles. And that is leading not only to a surge in car sales, both new and used, but also in the type of vehicles American motorists are purchasing.

Among new car buyers, in particular, motorists are ordering vehicles loaded with the latest in high-tech features, from smart safety devices to infotainment systems, as well as in-car WiFi and other technology, members of an expert panel agreed during a session at the virtual CES 2021.

(Pandemic may not have changed car buying habits of consumers.)

Workers who had previously taken public transportation are now shifting to driving themselves in large numbers.

“COVID is probably going to change commuting patterns permanently,” said Carla Bailo, the CEO of the Center for Automotive Research, noting research that finds only 20% of Americans expect to go back to their offices full-time, while 90% expect to go to an office less frequently. Americans “won’t revert back,” stressed Bailo, “even when we get through the COVID pandemic.”

It’s not just the way Americans travel for work that’s changing, added Bailo. Though tens of millions wound up traveling during the Christmas and New Year holidays, AAA found a significantly higher percentage took the family car, rather than flying or traveling by train, compared to pre-pandemic holidays.

“We’ll see for some time people reverting back to their cars for social holidays,” said Bailo.

The pandemic has not only made people more reliant on their cars for traveling, but seen people use their vehicles as places to work and even to get a break from family members after extensive isolation, said Christiane Zorn, a senior marketing executive with Audi. And the pattern is playing out in other global markets, as well, she added.

The car, suggested Zorn, is becoming “a personal device,” one increasingly loaded up with even more technology than the typical home or office, echoed Andrew Poliak, an executive with Panasonic Automotive.

Due to the pandemic, travel during the holidays was be down slightly, but most of those trekking to see friends and family were driving.

“We’re coming to this point of convergence,” Poliak said, where many of the things a person could do at home or office can be done in the car. Indeed, he added, it’s becoming increasingly common to have a better audio system in the family vehicle than in the typical living room.

(Auto industry “in much better place,” but price surge likely to continue.)

“Technology will play a big part in the design of the automotive interior in the future,” according to Poliak, and that’s reflected by some of the latest automobiles, such as the Cadillac Escalade, with its 39 inches of video screens. The new Mercedes-Benz EQS due out next year will have a “pillar-to-pillar” Hyperscreen display, the automaker announced during a separate CES event.

Tellingly, when Ford redesigned its F-150 for the 2021 model year it developed a retractable gearshift lever that opens up a large workspace that can be used for a motorist’s laptop computer.

While much of the new wave of technology is designed for passenger comfort and convenience, there’s also been significant growth in the use of advanced driver assistance systems, such as forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking. Some new models offers dozens of these smart safety features.

New and used car sales are on the rise as people move away from public transportation and back into personal vehicles for their commute.

And the first semi-autonomous driving systems, such as Tesla’s Autopilot and General Motors’ Super Cruise, are receiving warm public receptions. Stefan Buerkle, a senior vice president at mega-supplier Robert Bosch, expects to see the growth of auto-parking technologies that could allow a motorist to exit at their destination and then send their vehicle off to find a parking spot on its own. A press of a keyfob or a tap on a smartphone app would summon the vehicle later.

“You won’t have to park your car anymore, or go looking for a spot,” something that adds to urban congestion, said Buerkle. But there’s another advantage, he added. “That will also make much better use of the infrastructure, especially in cities, where space is at a premium.”

Self-parking technology could allow cities to shift to remote parking locations and reduce the need for lots to be set up in dense urban centers, the CES panelists agreed.

While such technology is likely still a few years from production, it will simply add to the trend that has seen new car prices rise rapidly in the last several years. At a separate conference last week, analysts from Cox Automotive noted that the typical new vehicle sold in the U.S. is now rolling off the dealer lot for a record price of around $40,000.

(Commuting may have changed forever, finds new study.)

But the new technologies showing up in the latest vehicles also seem likely to change the basic business model of the auto industry, Bailo and her fellow panelists said. The push to add 4G and even 5G connectivity will allow automakers to not only sell new vehicles but also develop new revenue streams. That will include providing in-vehicle entertainment and using smartphone-style over-the-air updates to add additional features, said Zorn, much as Tesla plans to do with the next major update of Autopilot.


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