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By Andrew Boada, Editor at Large Sometimes, we get overcome with excitement when it appears that the high-tech future we have been dreaming of has finally arrived. It looks like 2019 is going to be one of those times, for that is when, after years of breathless anticipation, one OEM – in this case, GM – says its fully autonomous, self-driving car, will finally, actually and, by many accounts, well ahead of schedule, will be here. But I have one balloon-popping, rain-on- the- parade question to pose: Will you – Mr. or Ms. fleet manager – be ponying up to buy an autonomous vehicle (AV) next year? I think not. In fact, I think no fleet manager will be seriously considering making a self-driving vehicle their go-to acquisition for many years to come. READ MORE |
The Verge Hertz announced that it is going to lean on facial recognition and fingerprint verification technology to speed up the rental process at airports. The rental car giant struck a deal with biometric airport security company Clear to provide the technology. The Clear biometric checkouts will allow renters to take off with their cars in just “30 seconds or less – a time savings of at least 75 percent,” according to Hertz. That means we’re not talking about an enormous amount of time savings. By that math, the current process takes two minutes. Read the article at The Verge. |
The Detroit News Nearly 10 years after its taxpayer-financed bankruptcy, General Motors Co. has moved on. But the rest of America, and members of Congress, haven’t. The president of the United States uses Twitter to demand new product for plants expected to be idled next year. An Ohio Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, reminds GM CEO Mary Barra just how much GM owes U.S. taxpayers. And U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, the Dearborn Democrat, tells whoever would listen that her former employer, GM, is the “most disliked company in Washington.” Read the article at The Detroit News. |
The Drive Startup MWI Micro Wave Ignition AG of Germany is developing a potential replacement for spark plugs: microwave pulse ignition. The company claims that its ignition system can be used in both gasoline and diesel engines, reducing fuel consumption by as much as 30 percent. Additionally, lower combustion temperatures are said to reduce nitrous oxide emissions—normally caused by high combustion temperatures—by as much as 80 percent. MWI even says that engines don’t need to be redesigned to accommodate the technology, which can be retrofitted to existing production engines. Read the article at The Drive. |
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 The New York Times When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them. But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation’s oil industry. In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards,a New York Times investigation has found. Read the article at The New York Times. |
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 Forbes The promise of convenient, lower cost and safer mobility has excited many. It’s not about what the future will look like, which will be a highly automated mobility system, but about the timeframe to get there. There are major steps forward in transforming our mobility system from one that relies entirely on drivers, to a system dominated by riders. Limitations of the technology, risks inherent in removing drivers’ moment-to-moment touch from the steering wheel, cost implications of subsidizing automated mobility, and the need for a demonstrated safety benefit are among the concerns. Read the article at Forbes. |
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 The New York Times Automakers and utilities are working together to ensure a good supply of clean, inexpensive electricity, while developing strategies for charging that don’t overload circuits at peak periods. “Done right, E.V.s present an enormous load growth opportunity for utilities,” said Britta Gross, director of advanced vehicle commercialization policy at G.M. “Charging can be managed in such a way that it is advantageous to the grid, such as when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, and it can be done without building new power plants.” Read the article at The New York Times. |
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