we’re falling asleep at the wheel. Most people in charge of shaping cities ...  haven’t realized what is about to hit them and the speed at which it is coming...The advent of autonomous vehicles couldn’t have happened at a better time. Or a worse one. Here’s how to steer towards the better outcome.

these vehicles will also collect reams of personal information about their passengers... topic came up last week at a Congressional hearing on driverless cars, and the companies potentially doing the data-collecting were, and this is putting it gently, evasive.

Google’s self-driving cars are logging some 15,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets...a fatal accident will eventually happen. And a fatal accident could doom the entire effort. How the public responds to the first human deaths caused by self-driving cars will ultimately determine the technology’s trajectory... self-driving cars end up…

the federal government hopes to unveil a "model state policy" on self-driving cars that would offer "a path to consistent national policy,"

carmakers must solve an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality.

competition in the ride-hailing market is really just the prelude to a much bigger fight over dominance of the self-driving car market over the next couple of decades... If cars are primarily rented, rather than owned, then they can be optimized for shorter trips ... Short-range, high-efficiency electric vehicles will become more practical. -…

it will be quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy – let say for new car production in the 15 to 20 years timeframe… for Tesla a lot sooner... at the point which cars are being made that have full autonomy, any cars that are being made that don’t have full autonomy will have negative value - Elon Musk says owning a non-autonomo…

each Model S owners as an “expert trainer” ... each driver will train the autonomous features of the system to feed the collective network intelligence of the fleet by simply driving the electric vehicle on Autopilot... Model S owners are already taking to the Tesla Motors Club forum to describe how the Autopilot is improving... - The Autopi…

each and every one of Google robot cars has experienced the totality of everything all its siblings have experienced. Google’s cars have driven a total of 1.2 million miles on the roads.... effectively every single car has driven that distance, has experienced it. [plus] ... 3 million miles every day running scenarios This is a machine that lea…

The four phases of self-driving car development suggest we’re 5-10 years out. - Self-Driving Cars Disrupt the Crowd | Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Digital Business

The subtext of Uber’s new products having the look and feel of a slightly shinier version of mass transit is, of course, that Uber wants to be privatized mass transit. In Uber’s grand vision, no one owns cars because nearly everyone is taken everywhere in a driverless, electric, omnisciently networked Uber conveyance that arrives precisely when it…

Cars are going to change a lot in the next few decades ... there are actually a number of separate things happening, which feed into each other and accelerate the pace of change.... it's now pretty easy to look at a car and say 'this should be a smartphone' ... To the extent that you add smart to a car, it should really be from the smartphone, …

By combining ride sharing with car sharing—particularly in a city such as New York—MIT research has shown that it would be possible to take every passenger to his or her destination at the time they need to be there, with 80 percent fewer cars. Clearing the roads of four out of five cars has momentous consequences for cities... - Full speed …

When cars come with an 'ethics module', will it be optional? Will there be choices? Will you have to get an upgrade if you change your religious beliefs? Fun cans of worms: "a professor of philosophy at Cal Poly is exploring the ethical dilemmas that may arise when vehicle self-driving is deployed in the real world." - Self-Driving Cars Get …

Spot the big IF*: "If a fleet of autonomous electric taxis were to replace everyone’s gas-powered, personal cars, we could see more than a 90 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions..." There is no specific reason why taxibots need to be electric. It would be great, but it may require regulation. Moreover, you could replace the current …

"Europe is currently a global leader in automated transport research" - Driverless taxis to become a major form of transport 'in 10 years' | Horizon Magazine - European Commission

"in a world dominated by self-steering taxis, each ride becomes cheaper if the vehicles are autonomous rather than owned and run by major corporations... We can program it to ... make it the most moral, socially minded capitalist possible...it would not be self-aware... But they would be programmed to seek self-improvement in order to avoid bec…

Surveys indicate ... most people also think they will be able to do things like watch videos, read, play  games, work, text, and browse the internet... content companies could be major beneficiaries from the self-driving car revolution... these types of activities are also the types of thing that increase the frequency and severity of motion si…

In addition to the piloted S2 and the newer four-seat S4, Joby has also started mapping out plans for its next-generation of unmanned, remotely controlled versions. In essence, drones for people.  - Forget Pizza: In The Future, Drones May Deliver You - ReadWrite

Cars will 'eliminate bad driving' and halve insurance costs, according to industry experts - Driverless cars will shave '£265' off insurance premiums in five years - Telegraph

"According to Morgan Stanley, self-driving cars will be commonplace in society by ~2025. This got me thinking about the ethics and philosophy behind these cars... can you imagine a world in which say Google or Apple places a value on each of our lives, which could be used at any moment of time to turn a car into us to save others?" - Self-dr…

Good analysis of the economic & social impact of taxitrucks is subtitled "The imminent need for basic income in recognition of our machine-driven future ... We are facing the decimation of entire small town economies, a disruption the likes of which we haven’t seen since the construction of the interstate highway system itself bypassed entire t…

"What’s important here is Google’s commitment to its all-or-nothing approach, which contrasts with the steady-as-she-goes approach favored by automakers ... One of the trickiest ... challenges facing automakers is how to handle the transition between computers and humans, particularly in an emergency. ... Audi’s testing has shown it takes an …

The impact autonomous cars will have on personal mobility and cities will dwarf the disruption Uber and AirBnB have wrought on their respective industries. Joined-up European policies seem in short supply

"self-driving, shared “taxibots” ... could eliminate 90% of cars on the roads, open up acres of land and slash commute times ... completely obviate the need for traditional public transport." - How Self-Driving Cars Could Radically Transform Cities - ReadWrite

"A Columbia University study suggested that with a fleet of just 9,000 autonomous cars, Uber could replace every taxi cab in New York City13 – passengers would wait an average of 36 seconds for a ride that costs about $0.50 per mile.14 Such convenience and low cost will make car ownership inconceivable, and autonomous, on-demand taxis – the ‘trans…

"... researchers in the field of human factors—experts on how people interact with machines—have shown that we shouldn’t ignore the human element of automated driving... When machines take over, the work required of the human is typically not remove... Rather, the job becomes different... require designing new, innovative ways to keep the drive…

"the “new mobility”... cities in which residents no longer rely on their cars but on public transport, shared cars and bikes and, above all, on real-time data on their smartphones. ... transform not just transport but the cities themselves ... rebalance the public space and create a city for people ... less pollution, less noise, less stress... a …

"In October 2010 ... Google's fleet of self-driving cars had already collectively traversed some 140,000 miles of California asphalt... Last year, a BMW drove itself down the Autobahn, from Munich to Ingolstadt ... Audi sent an autonomous vehicle up Pikes Peak...n November, Toyota unveiled its Prius AVOS (Automatic Vehicle Operation System), whi…

"Imagining a future without lights and stop signs.... driverless cars will make intersections much more efficient. Right now, you may wind up sitting at a red light for 45 seconds even though no one is passing through the green light in the opposite direction. But you don’t have to do that in a world where traffic flows according to computer comm…