The FCC has finally declared it intends to take 45mhz of the DSRC spectrum and make it unlicenced instead, though they are still leaving 20mhz for C-V2X (Qualcomm's LTE based replacement for DSRC that is mostly similar with 10mhz still to be figured out. Getting rid of DSRC and the silly idea of vehicle to vehicle communications is a good idea, but they should go even further -- and solve the V2V problem far better -- but making it all unlicenced and doing V2V in phones, not cars.

A recently released tiny study from UC Berkeley gave 13 people personal chauffeurs for a week to see how their travel habits changed. They found their car miles going up 85%, but in most cases it was for silly reasons that would not actually happen. Still, miles will go up with robotaxis -- but congestion doesn't have to increase at all.

Daimler's CEO has said they plan to "scale back" and "rightsize" their robotaxi efforts and focus on Trucking. Trucking is a good field for them, but this is a big bet.

Bet right and the company avoids wasting some money on being too early to the self driving game. Bet wrong and there may be no Daimler.

Read about it at Daimler Makes Risky Bet Pulling Back From Robotaxi Business

Two articles this week from 3 conferences I attended.

First look at How Cities are Stuck in the "last mile" and other observations from a conferences on cities and new mobility. I examine how scooter companies are working with cities, and how self-driving car tech is mapping cities by keeping the infrastructure dumb.

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Lots of folks were forwarding a story about a battery lab at Penn State that has shown a battery that can be recharged in 10 minutes. This is good (and many other labs and companies have demonstrated other ways to do that. But my key reaction is that those who think it's a huge deal are still thinking of electric cars like gasoline cars that you fill up at filing stations. They aren't. With a recent EV, not on a road trip, you charge only at home while you sleep, which takes zero time. Fast charging is not of value there. An article about this can be found in

Elon has tweeted that the price to pay today to get future self-drive features will rise to $7,000 tomorrow. I write some more analysis of this offering and its price in light of this increase. If Tesla really pulls off a full self driving product ahead of everybody else, might it be better to just buy the stock and spend some of the profits on the higher price in the future?

Watching a 3rd party video of a Waymo minivan operating entirely vacant, I was a bit surprised (at 1:05 in the video) when the van did not pause after the video-shooting driver of the other car pulled up next to it by going into the oncoming lane, and then it cut left in front of that car. All very slow and not dangerous, but not what I expected. In the article in comment #1 I link in the video and muse on the issues of handling situations like this.

Tesla released their latest Autopilot safety numbers, and they show a good improvement over the previous quarter.

At the same time, they continue to use strange wording in the report and refuse to answer questions about what their wording means or give the clear statistics that would let us evaluate what the stats really mean.

I get into the numbers in my new article Tesla 3Q numbers are good but still have odd wording

I tried out smart summon on my Tesla yesterday. Both times it got confused and stuck for so long it blocked parking lot traffic and I had to run into it to move it. Videos have surfaced of the cars (gently) hitting things. Even if there it's working well for many people, these results erode confidence in the capability of Tesla's systems. Tesla has driven over its own foot releasing this product in this state, and for nothing, since it's not at all useful.

With a new California law threatening to classify Uber drivers as employees, I examine if a law like that could really work or Uber can get around it, and also what happens if this makes drivers cost more -- and leads them to a tougher battle against their real competitor, the robotaxi.

Read more in my Forbes.com article If Uber drivers become employees, can uber escape that, plus how they compete with robotaxis

With a new California law threatening to classify Uber drivers as employees, I examine if a law like that could really work or Uber can get around it, and also what happens if this makes drivers cost more -- and leads them to a tougher battle against their real competitor, the robotaxi.

Read more in my Forbes.com article If Uber drivers become employees, can uber escape that, plus how they compete with robotaxis

If you fall asleep while driving with Autopilot, it's not a good idea, but you're much safer than falling asleep in a car that doesn't have it. Since a lot of accidents are caused by falling asleep, could this be the reason for Tesla's claim that driving with Autopilot is much safer than not? Or is that claim itself even valid? I outline the logic and math in my new Forbes site article at:

Tesla's "battery guru" from Halifax, NS released a paper on some new battery cells they have been testing in his lab and getting 6,000 cycles from 0 to 100% on. That's a lot better than today's cells which offer 2000 cycles from 20% to 80% if you are lucky. This could be very big for electric cars, grid storage and it is suggested even robotaxis -- but their needs turn out to be more straightforward than originally thought. But it does bring down the cost.

Because Tesla Autopilot is driving tons of miles it's having accidents, and the NTSB in investigating them. That gives us a window we would not have into what's happening. The NTSB report on a non-injury Autopilot accident came out recently, and let's just learn what Tesla's autopilot didn't perceive.

A recent Ford article on how they clean bug splatter off their LIDAR prompted me to write about how you do redundancy in robocars to deal with the inevitable failure of sensors and other components. It's a software way of thinking, not a "make the hardware more reliable" approach.

Read it at Ford's sensor cleaner keeps it seeing, but how do we handle failures?

A recent Ford article on how they clean bug splatter off their LIDAR prompted me to write about how you do redundancy in robocars to deal with the inevitable failure of sensors and other components. It's a software way of thinking, not a "make the hardware more reliable" approach.

Read it at Ford's sensor cleaner keeps it seeing, but how do we handle failures?

As I've written earlier, Tesla has the ability to load special "search" neural networks into the cars to hunt for things they want to use to train with. In this article on Forbes, I hypothesize the day when there's an Amber Alert, and police ask to load networks to search for the car and people involved, and it quickly works. And then police get a taste for this, not just in the USA but China and other places. Where does it lead and can we stop it?