By Jeremy B. White, Politico

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Democrats trying to slow the rollout of driverless trucks are facing a powerful opponent: Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The Democratic governor and longtime Silicon Valley evangelist has sided with a home-state industry over legislative Democrats — both in the state Legislature and in Congress — as powerful labor groups seize on road safety concerns to slow the rollout of autonomous cars and trucks that could push their members out of work. The issue has reverberated from San Francisco, where city authorities unsuccessfully fought a robotaxi rollout, to Sacramento, where a labor-championed bill would effectively ban driverless big rigs until the Legislature authorizes them.

Newsom’s administration has forcefully opposed the state trucking bill, a development first reported here. It is an unusual step for a governor who rarely weighs in on pending legislation, and a clear signal that Newsom prizes the state’s economic competitiveness over concerns about job losses and road safety voiced by unions, city officials and leading lawmakers.

“Our state is on the cusp of a new era and cannot risk stifling innovation at this critical juncture,” Dee Dee Myers, the administration’s top business official, wrote in a letter to legislators opposing the bill. She warned that other states “are actively positioning themselves to lure away California-based companies and the investments and jobs they bring.”

Self-driving cars have logged millions of miles in California, but the state has yet to allow for fully driverless trucks, even as Texas and Arizona let autonomous trucks cruise their roads without humans on board. California lawmakers have urged a more deliberate approach to technology that is poised to transform how people move through cities and upend industries from trucking to transit. The trucking bill has advanced by enormous bipartisan margins and won the support of the three House Democrats running to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The autonomous vehicle industry argues dissenters are stalling an innovation that has already arrived and will bolster public safety and efficiency — an argument Myers echoed in her letter, warning the bill “runs counter to our state’s business climate.”

More than a decade after California passed a law to test the technology on public roads, lawmakers are adopting a more cautious stance. They argue the advent of transformative technologies — from driverless vehicles to automation and artificial intelligence — require policymakers to be proactive on regulations.

“They think I’m not embracing the future,” said Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), who’s carrying the bill to prohibit autonomous trucks without humans onboard. “But I am, because I think if we don’t do it right, the first thing that’s going to happen is we’ll be on the front page of the paper for what we’ve done wrong.”

But the industry has an ally in Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor who has deep ties to tech, including longstanding relationships with industry figures like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the godfather of one of his children. Newsom was more amenable than union-aligned Democrats to negotiating a worker classification deal with ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber. And he has advocated for autonomous vehicles specifically: In 2015, as lieutenant governor, he enthusiastically rode an early AV model and warned the state against overregulating a “promising industry.”

“It’s consistent with where he’s been since he was in San Francisco,” said Lenny Mendonca, who preceded Myers as Newsom’s top economic adviser. “He obviously understands the importance of technology and innovation, to the economy, to the budget, to employment, to the creation of the next generation of things that California is good at.”

Driverless cars have gone from a curiosity to an unavoidable fixture of San Francisco’s streets. Conflict has followed. The California Public Utilities Commission voted last week to expand paid rides over the strenuous objections of city and public safety officials who warned cars were snarling traffic and blocking first responders. The city challenged the expansion — and days later, the California DMV directed Cruise to halve its fleet following a fresh wave of incidents.

State lawmakers and union allies who want to slow the rollout of autonomous trucks have pointed to San Francisco’s struggles as a cautionary tale. The Teamsters’ bill effectively circumvents a nascent state regulatory process, seeking to wrest authority back from regulators whom legislators accuse of dozing off at the wheel and becoming beholden to the industries they oversee. They warn that a 10,000 pound truck can cause far more damage than a passenger vehicle.

“I’m really hoping the robots take over sooner rather than later and give us increased safety,” Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who chairs the body’s transportation committee, said during floor debate. Despite documented issues like vehicles stopping unexpectedly and blocking fire trucks, Friedman said, “DMV continues to issue permits for them to keep operating — I believe for profit reasons rather than public safety reasons.”

The DMV rejected those “unfounded assertions” in a letter opposing the bill on the grounds it would “have a chilling effect” on safety improvements. The agency noted autonomous vehicles have driven more than 18 million miles on California roads with no collision fatalities and few injuries.

Tens of thousands of people die in vehicle crashes each year, including nearly 5,800 who died in truck accidents in 2021 — a substantial increase from 2020. While the autonomous vehicle industry often cites that toll, self-driving vehicles are not infallible: they were involved in roughly 150 crashes between September of 2022 and last month.

In recent months the vehicle companies have gone on the offensive, forming a group that has lobbied lawmakers and launched advertisements to block the trucking bill and support the San Francisco expansion. They say the vehicles can improve safety and reduce carbon emissions, and argue that California, by pursuing an effective ban on autonomous trucking, is already driving homegrown technology to other states.

“Only in California, which ironically is where a lot of these companies are based, has this legislation gone this far,” said Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association Executive Director Jeff Farrah. “You have companies that are largely based in California, because California has been a technology hotbed for four decades. Those companies are now spending their capital investment in places like Dallas, Texas.”

California’s formidable organized labor movement has been forcing the issue, arguing that companies are sacrificing safety to save labor costs to the detriment of displaced workers and the public, as unions go on offense in other capitals. Teamsters Western Region Vice President Peter Finn linked that fight to labor unrest in a very different industry this summer as striking actors and writers challenge the role of AI in reshaping their professional futures and livelihoods.

“This is not just another incremental iteration of technology development,” Finn said. “This has the chance to change everything and have such a dramatic impact on eliminating jobs.”

Driverless trucks would almost certainly displace some workers, particularly on long highway routes. They would be less likely to be used for last-mile deliveries to cities and warehouses. Industry advocates argue they would complement human workers, and point to a shortage of truckers and research saying autonomous trucks could generate economic activity.

Automation could replace up to 294,000 long-distance drivers and trade higher-paid jobs for more precarious work in an industry that has long grappled with misclassification, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Steve Viscelli found in research commissioned in 2018 by the labor-aligned UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. Viscelli said that ubiquitous autonomous trucks could squeeze unionized workforces like the United Parcel Service.

“The Teamsters and UPS need to be concerned about the competitive advantage these are going to give to Amazon and others,” Viscelli said. “Those impacts are going to be transformative.”

The labor-driven resistance has not been isolated to California. Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said the Teamsters have “moved aggressively to halt the rollout of autonomous vehicles” in other states, although bills similar to California’s have faltered in a half-dozen legislatures this year. Kovacevich argued California lawmakers cannot act objectively as autonomous vehicle gatekeepers.

“I don’t think that will be a rigorous safety analysis. It will be a political analysis,” Kovacevich said. “Movements to hit pause on progress rarely succeed.”

But California Labor Federation chief Lorena Gonzalez, who oversaw an effort to rally unions against the San Francisco expansion by warning of massive job threats, pointed to a “larger conversation we’re going to force” about how technology is shaping the workforce.

“The real problem in California has not been Democrats versus Republicans. The real problem has been these elite tech billionaire bros who have decided they’re going to implement their classist policies on California,” Gonzalez said. “All of this sounds really cool at a cocktail party, but I’m not interested in conversations at a cocktail party. I’m interested in real conversations about real workers.”

By Selika Josiah Talbott, Forbes

It’s time to create AV benchmarking and enable widespread deployment and use of autonomous vehicles.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), roadway crash deaths are increasing. Last year almost 43,000 people died in traffic related crashes in the United States, the most since 2005.

This seems astonishing given the increased usage of seatbelts, education on drunk driving and advancement of safety features in vehicles. But the leading causes of crash deaths are distracted driving, speeding or reckless driving and cell phone usage. The real issue in each of these instances is human behavior.

While some believe that autonomous vehicles have been an invention in search of a problem, those of us who deeply understand the technology and its benefits are clear-sighted and aware of a myriad of problems that autonomous vehicles can solve.

They can:

• Reduce the rise in crashes and fatalities

• Complement the diminishing workforce to move goods

• Address safety concerns in industries

• Improve stunted mobility where transportation is neither efficient nor accessible.

The industry has differing views as to the role of autonomous vehicles. Some look at autonomous vehicles as a toy – another status symbol for the very wealthy. Others focus on autonomous vehicles in the movement of freight and as an assist to fleets and yet others concentrate on the ability to address the need to provide efficient and affordable transportation.

No matter the use case, where is the synergy on non-differential hardware and software which would aid the widespread deployment and use of autonomous vehicles?

The autonomous vehicle industry would do well to take some lessons from the aviation industry. Airlines understand that where one fails in its safety technology or innovation everyone suffers. Deregulation rid the industry of administrative and judicial burdens, decreased costs and allowed more people to travel via plane. According to the international Air Transport Association, “Industry standards simplify common processes and reduce cost and complexity. They allow airlines to work seamlessly with each other and with other stakeholders such as travel agents, airports and governments. Standards encourage innovation and provide a better experience for passengers. Standards are developed and adopted under the IATA Conference structure, where all members are able to participate and vote…”

Airlines have long policed their activity by forming coalitions and determining standards of operations and benchmarking what is a necessity in order to ensure public trust and the safety of human life.

But what about autonomous innovation? We don’t have a federal regulatory standard on the autonomous movement of goods or people across the country. We have yet to agree upon a set of standards that ensures that one self-driving car meets the same rigorous analysis as the next. Without that, how is the public or legislators and lawmakers to opine and create a legal framework that will allow us to move into this future of mobility?

We don’t need know the secret sauce of each company’s vehicles. They can keep to themselves the things that make their technology unique in the autonomous vehicle space. But we certainly should be able to agree on standards that we will all live by in order to operate on the roadways, skyways and in all modes of autonomous transportation safely.

A standard would go a long way to reducing and preventing millions in traffic crashes anticipated between now and 2035. Self-driving cars have the potential to provide an 81% reduction in vehicle crashes in the United States.

Each year we delay having an agreed-upon standard means that more people will unnecessarily die on our roadways and that we will have fewer opportunities and options to eliminate traffic vehicle crashes. It’s time to step up as an industry, create benchmarking standards and enable widespread deployment and use of autonomous vehicles.

By Bradley Osborne, Truck & Bus Builder

When one talks about autonomous vehicles, it is all too easy to slip into science-fiction reveries of driverless vehicles everywhere, transporting people and goods without requiring any human input. However, that is a vision of the future which is not shared by Nick Elder of American tech firm Torc Robotics. Routes that take goods vehicles through busy urban environments, or to multiple pickup and drop-off locations, handling cargo that requires more active monitoring, create variables that become incredibly difficult for artificial intelligence to handle safely and effectively. As far as these last mile applications are concerned, Elder believes that human drivers will remain essential for many years to come: “arguably, I would say, indefinitely”.

Long haul is a different matter. A set route between A and B, along with extensive stretches of straight roads and fairly predictable traffic mean that long distance applications employing Class 8 trucks could be automated with relative ease. It is for this reason that Daimler Truck North America acquired a majority stake in Torc in 2019 and set the company to work on developing trucks with Level 4 autonomy.

Even so, automating Class 8 trucks is easier said than done, and self-driving vehicles will not be desirable for every long haul operation. Torc’s engineers do not pretend to know the exact wants and needs of operators: as such, in 2022 it established an advisory council, made up logistics firms providing a broad swathe of different services who regularly meet to provide feedback to Torc. Through this forum of potential end customers, Torc intends to learn how and where its technology could be put to commercial use in the heavy truck segment.

The company’s view is that autonomous vehicle development is a marathon, not a sprint. It explains Torc’s slow and steady approach, which Elder characterises as “practical” and “realistic”; an approach which takes its direction from the truck industry rather than blue sky thinking. Torc’s outlook for self-driving vehicles is based on deep expertise. Though the commercial vehicle industry first began to take notice of Torc only after the Daimler Truck acquisition, in fact the company’s experience with working on autonomous vehicle technology goes back to the mid-2000s. In that time, Elder said, the target dates for launching self-driving vehicles on the road for commercial use have been repeatedly pushed back, and some of the earliest contenders have had to drop out of the race. Elder therefore recognises “just how challenging” it will be to not only create a reliable autonomous truck, but to also scale up production and maintain self-driving fleets on the road.

I was surprised when Elder described the work culture of Torc as “blue collar”. On reflection, however, I see why that label might fit. The picture put across to me is of a company with a “can do” attitude, tempered by hardheaded common sense and a respect for limits. Torc has always been based in Blacksburg, a largeish town in mountainous southwest Virginia which is dominated by Virginia Tech (“Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University”), and Elder believes that this location has conferred some unique advantages. Being far away from Silicon Valley has, in Elder’s opinion, helped to keep Torc “humble”, fostering a work culture of “rolling up your sleeves, doing for the good of the team rather than looking for individual recognition”. Moreover, Blacksburg is much more the sort of place where somebody would want to settle down and raise a family than, say, San Francisco. Nevertheless, Torc recognised that the slower pace of Virginian life would not appeal to everybody, and hence it opened offices in Austin, Texas last year in a recruitment drive for more software developers.

From Virginia Tech to Daimler Truck

Torc traces its history back to the series of government funded competitions that are known collectively as the “DARPA Grand Challenge” – so called because its main sponsor is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. Elder told T&BB that excessive casualties suffered by the military due to roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) originally motivated DARPA’s decision to set up the first Grand Challenge in 2004. It was thought that encouraging the development of autonomous vehicle technology could lead to a usable fleet of unmanned military vehicles, meaning that humans could be taken entirely out of certain logistics operations that carry significant risks to life. However, with the third competition, the so-called “Urban Challenge”, DARPA switched the focus to vehicles that could obey traffic laws and avoid other road users. In this competition, held in 2007, a team called “VictorTango”, with a Ford SUV retrofitted with self-driving technology, came in third place out of 53.

It was a team made up of current students at Virginia Tech and graduates who had founded the “Torc Robotics” company in 2005. With the newfound recognition gained from success at the DARPA Urban Challenge, Torc went on to work with various branches of the defence department to explore the uses of vehicle autonomy. Torc also partnered with Caterpillar Inc, who wanted to take human drivers out of potentially dangerous situations in the construction and mining sectors. These projects occupied Torc for over a decade, until about 2017, when technological developments enabled the company to grasp new opportunities. Advancements in sensor technology, computer performance, and artificial intelligence encouraged Torc to look beyond the niche applications it had concerned itself with up until that date. Talks were begun with Daimler Truck, leading to the acquisition of a majority stake in Torc in 2019.

Today, Torc enjoys the backing of a multinational corporation which owns several truck brands in Europe, North America, and Asia. But Elder insisted that Torc fared well enough before the acquisition, making its living and slowly growing through its project involvements with the U.S. government and Caterpillar. Until 2019, Torc “had never taken any outside capital”, Elder said. And while he admits that the financial security is a huge boon to the company, Elder would not say that this was the main advantage of the relationship with Daimler Truck. Rather, he pointed to the German manufacturer’s extensive knowledge of and involvement in the truck segment as the primary reason for the relationship. In order to get to the “deep level of integration” with the chassis and the self-driving tech that Torc was aiming for, it was inevitable that the company would need a “strong partner” from the truck industry. Only by working closely with the OEM – in particular, with Daimler Truck’s ‘Freightliner’ brand – does Torc feel it can achieve a “viable, serviceable, scalable long term product”.

One might think that an AI-driver could be made to work in any type of vehicle. However, in Torc’s experience, developing a self-driving truck presents different challenges to those of an unmanned defence or mining vehicle. The principles are the same: the vehicle must be able to perceive its environment, identify obstacles and other road users, and take appropriate action to navigate safely. But the hardware and software requirements can change significantly, depending on the vehicle type, the application, and the environment. The viewing range and stopping distance required for a Class 8 truck travelling at highway speeds are different from those required for an urban robotaxi, for example. As such, the knowledge gained from working with Daimler Truck, together with the feedback from the advisory council have helped to flatten the learning curve for Torc.

The future of Torc and autonomous driving

When asked about the challenges which companies face in bringing a viable self-driving truck to market, Elder pointed to existing gaps in hardware technology and availability. In particular, off-the-shelf radar and lidar products that can meet the needs of autonomous vehicles are not yet available. Elder said that there are “ultra long range” lidar products that are currently in development, but it will be some time before these are available at scale. Not to mention, more time will be needed to integrate this hardware with Torc’s software.

An area of strength for Torc is vision-based perception, using cameras mounted all around the truck. This was bolstered by the recent acquisition of Algolux, a tech firm based in Montreal. Another area of expertise which Algolux is contributing is machine learning, helping Torc’s software to quickly identify and handle risky driving scenarios in real time. The cameras, however, will need to work in concert with radar and lidar to give the self-driving truck enough accurate information to make safe and intelligent choices. Putting together all the autonomous driving components into a single production package will be a collaborative effort between Torc and Daimler Truck.

When Torc started out in the mid-2000s, the motivation behind the development of autonomous vehicles was to save lives. In the truck sector, making safer vehicles is a worthy cause, and as such it is a priority of governments across the developed world. An unmanned truck which is not liable to human error – that is to say, the foibles of an inattentive or incautious driver – could dramatically reduce the risk of accident and therefore help to make the road safer for others. But Elder admits that the conversation has shifted in recent years. Promoters of self-driving trucks talk less about safety and more about total cost of ownership. Elder thinks this is “fair”: there are widespread shortages of human drivers, and in any case, a self-driving truck has the potential to overcome some of the obvious physical limitations which humans cannot. A self-driving truck does not need to sleep or take a toilet break. Theoretically, an operator could put one to use all hours, needing only to stop for maintenance or refuelling. The economic benefits of maximising the use of an expensive asset like this are apparent.

That is not to say that considerations of safety have fallen by the wayside. On the contrary, Elder insisted that Torc is committed to testing every component of its self-driving technology with “rigour” until it is assured that it has a product that it can release “out into the world” with confidence. The early days of the DARPA Grand Challenge and the hype over autonomous vehicles are in the past for Torc. Now the dust has settled somewhat following the first excitement, Elder feels that the autonomous vehicle sector is entering its maturation phase – during which, tech firms such as Torc will for the first time be able to offer commercially viable tools that are more than just demonstration vehicles. The word “tool” is key: the self-driving truck will be another instrument that will complement, not replace, the tools which are already at the operator’s disposal. Torc’s goal is not to “revolutionise” or “disrupt” long distance trucking, but to make a tool which is as reliable and as useful as possible to the industry. And so, we return to self-image of Torc as a tech firm with a blue collar ethic of diligence and common sense, so far removed from the visionary ideas of Silicon Valley. In the end, the slow and steady approach might put Torc in first place.

By Abhirup Roy and Akash Sriram, Reuters

Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) self-driving vehicle unit Zoox has grown its headcount by about 16% at a time when access to capital is tight and other large companies have exited the autonomous driving sector.

Amazon’s shares were 1.2% higher at $128.84 in early afternoon trading.

Based in California, Zoox, has ramped up its efforts to test its driverless robotaxi on public roads of Las Vegas since June 16, where the autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals has been driving itself around with the company’s employees.

Zoox’s headcount has grown to about 2,200, up from 1,900 at the beginning of the year, Chief Technology Officer Jesse Levinson told Reuters.

Levinson said that Zoox autonomous vehicle will not be driving on the Vegas strip yet but is being tested for handling traffic lights, intersections and drive at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour.

It follows approval from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles that authorizes Zoox to test drive its robotaxis on public roads in the state.

The company also intends to invest in its Vegas facilities, adding warehouse spaces to house its testing and robotaxi fleets.

“We are preparing for commercial launch and so it is important to beef up,” Levinson said, adding that the company expects to maintain a similar growth rate in headcount throughout the year.

This comes at a time when the sector has been struggling with the development of fully autonomous vehicles due to constrained access to funding and an uncertain economy.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) last fall announced that they would shut down their Argo AI self-driving unit and focus on driver-assistance technology that provided more immediate returns.

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) self-driving technology project Waymo laid off 137 employees in a second round of job cuts this year.