State Of Autonomy: May Recap

Every month, I recap the news articles I’ve consumed around autonomous vehicles, calling out the highlights and keeping track of market projections. This is also your chance, dear readers, to nominate a topic for discussion in the following month.

Slow news month here, dominated by the Waymo/Uber suit, in which the following has, for now, been solidified:

• Uber knew (or could provide no defense as to why they wouldn’t know) that Levandowski, the engineer they hired away from Google/Waymo via acquisition of his suspiciously short-lived startup Otto, had in his possession some sensitive material (contained among 14,000 downloaded files, alleged by Waymo) that had no business being shared with or applied to the Uber operation
• Uber has a month to locate, disclose, and return to Waymo the downloaded files Levandowski possessed
• Uber can continue to work on autonomous vehicles, but Levandowski must be removed from his area of expertise (LIDAR)

As far as next steps, the case has been referred to the Department Of Justice for further review, and Uber has fired Levandowski, who may face criminal charges in the future.

Hopefully that’s the last you’ll hear of it for a while. Can we all get back to building cool stuff now?

This Month’s Highlights:

• Waymo Vs. Uber Lawsuit Concludes In A Minor Victory For Waymo
• Go-Jek, Uber Of Indonesia, Raises $1.2B With TenCent As Lead Investor
• Delphi To Split Its Traditional Powertrain Operations And Autonomous Operations Into Separate Companies
• Infamous Car Hacking Experts Release Their Research Publicly
• Korea To Build A Mini-City Over Next 18 Months For AV Research
• Germany Approves Conservative Legislation To Put AVs On Public Roads
• Tesla Updates Data Sharing Policy To Enable Collection Of Video Footage
• Lyft And Waymo Are Latest To Form Loose Partnership On Self-Driving Car Development
• Yandex (Russia’s Google) Briefly Demos Its Self-Driving Car Project
• Toyota Exploring Potential Applications Of Blockchain Tech To Autonomous Transportation
• Google Maps Veterans Launch DeepMap Startup, Focus On 3D Mapping
• University Of Michigan Researchers Claim To Have Developed AV Testing Processes That Could Cut 99.9% Of Validation Costs

Market Predictions:

Zoox Added To Self-Piloted, 2020, Speculation: I may have missed a prior public statement by Zoox, as this month’s Stanford interview made their (loose) 2020 projection sound matter-of-fact. While it’s one of the least-concrete projections in this chart, I’ve wanted Zoox represented here simply because of the investment they’ve garnered in pursuing a total package solution.

Coming In June:

• These Laws Will End Driving In America Forever
• Your suggestion? Send a tweet to Mitch Turck

Reactions From The Public:

Re: The Fed’s Hearing On The Potential Of Autonomous Trucking

Re: Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek Releasing Their Hacking Research

Re: Levandowski’s Role In Uber/Waymo Lawsuit