I'm at the Pod Car City conference, taking place today and tomorrow in San Jose for PRT developers and customers. Some news tidbits from the conference:

• There were interesting presentations with videos from the three main vendors of working systems: ULTra (Heathrow), 2GetThere (Masdar) and Vectus (Swedish test track and some more.) Some were new videos showing the systems in action at a level not seen before.
• Sebastian Thrun of the Google robocar team gave his first outside talk on that project, with some great videos (not released to public, unfortunately.) Quite impressive to see the vehicle handling all sorts of traffic, even deciding when to cross over the solid line in the middle when it's clear to avoid getting too close to parked cars, just as human drivers do.
• Sadly, during the public session (before Thrun's talk) when several audience members sent in questions about the Google cars, both the host from San Jose and the leaders of the 3 PRT companies all punted saying they knew little about them.
• In spite of that there was intense interest in Thrun's talk, with lots of questions and not nearly as much negativity as is sometimes directed at robocars from the PRT community.
• All vendors punted on my question about the current cost of pods (which external estimates suggest is around $100K since they are made in small quantities.)
• Lots of action in Sweden. Soon, a city will be chosen for a trial PRT system, probably either Stockholm or Uppsala. Then, a company will be picked -- most people think it will be Vectus.
• Vectus, which makes a rail-based PRT, will be installing a system in Suncheon City, South Korea, which will be a people mover into the wetlands park there. Vectus showed many films of how well their system handles bad weather, though they are the only ones to use rails.
• In Masdar, one of the biggest challenges has been the oppressive heat, and the power for air conditioning. To make the PRT work, stations must be close as people will simply not walk long distances outside when it's 40 degrees and humid.
• Interesting note about the rationale that helped sell ULTra at Heathrow: The big advantage is the predictable time of a PRT trip, which normally involves a pod already waiting and a direct trip. Even if that trip is no faster than a parking shuttle, not knowing when the parking shuttle bus will come is a major negative for those going to flights.
• Ron Diridon of the California High Speed Rail board declares that HSR will be a complete failure if there isn't something like PRT around the HSR stations to disperse people into the towns. He's half right -- HSR is likely to be a big failure, PRT or not, though the PRT would help.
• San Jose is doing intensive study of a PRT to serve the airport, the nearby Caltrain and Light Rail stations, along with parking lots, rental cars and a couple hotels. This might well be useful but still is just a parking shuttle mostly. Few people take Caltrain or light rail to the airport (in spite of the existing free bus) and I doubt a lot more will.
• At the same time, thanks to ULTra, San Jose and other towns are starting to accept PRT as something costing 10-15 million per mile. That's a lot cheaper than light rail, and in the bay area, hugely cheaper than the 50-year old BART system which people think of as modern.
• Attended a session on lessons from air traffic management for pod management. Interesting stuff but I don't think that useful for the problem. Planes get spaced by 5 miles and 2,000 feet. Cars and pods will be spaced by tens of feet.
• Attended another session on trying to model passenger loads. This session was much more concerned about surge loads in many markets, where a class might let out and suddenly 100 people are at the PRT station trying to use it, removing the no-wait benefit (and the associated high predictability benefit.) One thing Robocars will probably do better since they have no concept of stations and you can get as many cars into an area as you can fit on the road and take out via it. Planners predict that if PRT waits are long in a campus situation, people will walk instead, but you would never have to walk instead with a robocar -- just walk away from the crowd to get one.
• Still too much "transit" oriented thinking in the PRT crowd, I think. In fact, many are hoping to pitch PRT as a feeder which will increase usage of other transit lines. I think transit will fade away in about 25 years.

Vislab completes their autonomous drive to Shanghai

The team from the Vislab autonomous challenge made it to Shanghai, and their cars are now in the Italian pavilion at the World's Fair. Congratulations to them. They sent me a nice PDF press release. It details elements from their blog about how they almost got a ticket, gave up driving at night, blew through toll booths, picked up hitchhikers, and could not handle crazy drivers.