Self-driving car companies zoom ahead, leaving U.S. regulators behind

By David Shepardson, Hyunjoo Jin and Joseph White

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Self-driving car companies, from Tesla Inc to General Motors Co’s Cruise, are racing to monetize their technology, surpassing the efforts of regulators and Congress to write traffic regulations for robotic vehicles.

Cruise said Tuesday that SoftBank Group Corp. will invest an additional $1.35 billion pending Cruise’s launch of commercial robotics business.

Cruise requires one permit, from California’s Public Utilities Commission, to charge for rides through San Francisco in vehicles without a human driver. https://www.reuters.com/technology/gms-cruise-gets-permit-give-driverless-rides-passengers-san-francisco-2021-09-30

Cruise, Tesla, Waymo of Alphabet Inc and Aurora Innovation Inc are among the many companies that aim to deploy fully autonomous vehicle technology in the United States within the next two to three years, regardless of whether federal regulators give them a clear legal framework to do this. Autonomous auto startups and automakers are under pressure to generate revenue from billions of dollars in tech investments over the past decade.

Proposed legislation to create a national framework of rules for driving autonomous vehicles continues to stall in Congress, despite industry lobbying. That has given autonomous vehicle companies the freedom to deploy robotic axis or self-driving trucks in some states, such as Arizona and Texas, but not others. Waymo has provided thousands of rides in driverless robot taxis in Phoenix https://www.reuters.com/article/alphabet-waymo-idCNL1N2R80CD, although service remains limited.

“It’s helpful to provide guardrails at the federal level,” said Chris Urmson, chief executive of Aurora Innovation, an automated vehicle technology company. “Today we have different rules in the 50 states.”

Aurora tests its Aurora Driver in Class 8 trucks https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/self-driving-truck-company-aurora-launches-pilot-with-uber-freight-2021-12-15, but until now, those trucks in California can’t be operated without human drivers. That caps off a potentially rich market for autonomous trucking companies transporting loads from Southern California to distribution centers in the east.

“We’re looking at the Port of Los Angeles…and the supply chain challenges we see. There is a real urgency for this technology” to address the truck driver shortage, Urmson told an audience at the Washington Auto Show last month.

AV industry lobbyist Ariel Wolf told a US House of Representatives panel on Tuesday that autonomous trucks “will not lead to mass layoffs.” Instead, he said, autonomous trucks driving long-haul routes will allow human drivers to “spend more nights in their own beds rather than in a truck’s bunk.”

PROTECT JOBS

Unions, however, urged Congress to be skeptical.

“We risk… losing hundreds of thousands of manufacturing and frontline transportation jobs if Congress doesn’t act decisively and the AV industry remains completely unregulated,” John Samuelsen, chairman of the Transport Workers Union, told the panel of experts on Tuesday. the House.

Unions and litigators also want autonomous vehicle companies to disclose more data about accidents and other aspects of their systems.

“All employees deserve to know that an autonomous vehicle or bot driving alongside them is safe enough to share the same road or job site,” said Teamsters official Doug Bloch.

In the absence of new laws targeting automated vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which oversees vehicle safety in the United States, issued voluntary guidelines and last year required companies to report accidents involving automated driving systems.

But the agency has not issued comprehensive standards for robotic cars or trucks. The US Federal Aviation Administration has the authority to review new technology before it is used on aircraft. But automakers are free to certify to themselves that a feature is safe. The NHTSA intervenes if new features prove to be a security risk.

NHTSA officials have intensified scrutiny of Tesla’s automated driving systems over the past year. The agency said Tuesday it had urged Tesla to change a feature of its Full Self Driving, or FSD, automated driving system that would allow vehicles to continue driving through stop signs rather than coming to a complete stop. So-called rolling stops are illegal.

In December, the NHTSA opened a review of a feature that would allow Tesla models to play videos through dashboard screens, and last August opened a formal investigation into the Autopilot driver assistance systems in 765,000 U.S. vehicles after a series of incidents involving Teslas colliding with each other https:/ /www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-identified-12th-tesla-assisted-systems-car-crash-involving-emergency-vehicle-2021-09-01 with emergency vehicles.

Still, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made no mention of regulatory concerns during a call with investors on Jan. 26, when he said the company could soon use an over-the-air software download to enable its vehicles to operate on their own. to drive and to be used to provide autonomous ride services.

“I would be shocked if we can’t drive fully self-driving this year, safer than a human,” Musk said. When Tesla enables its vehicles to drive autonomously via an over-the-air software download, Musk said, vehicle owners could offer rides that “would cost less than the subsidized value of a bus ticket.”

One possible avenue for industry and safety advocates is voluntary agreements on standards, said David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a vehicle safety research organization supported by the insurance industry. Harkey said the IIHS could be part of such an effort.

“We have to get to the point where it’s not the Wild West,” he said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington, Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco, and Joseph White in Detroit; Written by Joseph White; Edited by Matthew Lewis)

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