Brad Ideas

Robocars & More

I made a video version of my 2024 countdown of self-driving stories...

It was a year of tumult, with success and major failures. Let's count down the top self-driving stories of 2024

New safety data on Waymos, made by the insurer SwissRe, shore up claims of Waymos reducing risk on the road.

GM has killed Cruise's robotaxi project. In this article, I muse about some consequences, including why Tesla should buy it, what it means for global competition and what role the DMV played in the death of Cruise and what it should think about that. Link to the article in the comments.

Read my Forbes site story at Tesla should buy Cruise

Waymo in year one made a fixed-stop campus robotaxi service with cheap parts, 15 years before Tesla's demonstration of a similar concept. Robotaxi history began here.

Instead of Uber, a Nigeria based ride-hail finance enabler will run the depots and charging. Florida has a special history with robocars, but also presents challenges.

Stuck in a Thanksgiving line? Turns out the TSA knows a lot of things that can fix that, but we won't get them anytime soon. They can start with remote X-ray screeners.

People who don't drive EVs don't understand them well, but there are some myths even the owners of EVs don't fully understand. You might believe some of them!

Speaker Associates is a speaking agency which has me in their catalog, and they asked me to record short videos answering a series of big questions. Here they are:

What are the most promising applications of augmented reality and virtual reality technology in fields like education, training, and entertainment?

When you have solar, you still pick a pricing plan for your electric utility. Here's some hints about how to do that. In California, it's less complex than expected.

Waymo's service area is still 80 square miles (LA to Santa Monica) but now anybody can ride. It's another milestone.

Musk won big (though thanks to Twitter it may have been no gamble.) But now will urban, blue riders avoid his robotaxis? What happens when the government flips again?

Waymo also just announced they are doing 150,000 rides/week. This internal research projects shows off some interesting abilities of LLMs and a different approach.

Waymo just closed a $5.6B funding round. Some of that will be used to grow the fleet, but is there a way to grow fleets with debt rather than equity finanancing?

Robotaxis have different charging needs than regular cars. Will they want Tesla's new promised wireless charging, or is battery swap made for them>

Ok, No, the Republicans certain take first blame for not standing up to Trump when he took over their party. They have been cowards. But because of that failure, it fell to the Democrats to do what it takes to stop him returning to the White House, and the election remains a dead heat, which it shouldn't be, and only they could have stopped that. I hope they don't fail, but it shouldn't even be close.

How do all the robotaxi contenders compare with Waymo the leader? See it all in one graphic

Tesla has said their Oct 10 "We Robot" day will be one for the history books. But they are very far from having a working robotaxi you can bet your life on. So just what can they show off to live up to the hype? I've collected various speculations on what they might show off at Warner Brothers, in hopes of not disappointing.

Read it at Forbes.com in Since Tesla has no Robotaxi, just what will they show on Robotaxi day?

The electric car revolution is well underway, but soon we ll also see the rise of the electric RV. There's a lot you can do to make trailers better