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Tuesday, March 2, 2021
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Self-driving Technology in Taxis by 2017

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"Lift and GM plan to launch self-driving taxis as soon as 2017"

How hot would Lyft’s self-driving taxis be if they’d look like KITT?

There is a big chance we will see self-driving technology available for our taxis as soon as this next year. A lot of fuss has been made around the autonomous technology in general and a lot more around self-driving cars.

Partnering up, General Motors and Lyft announced they plan to test the self-driving technology with regular passengers on public roads as soon as this next year.

General Motors acquired a $1 billion autonomous car maker company called Cruise Automation and invested another $500 in Lyft’s plan to launch self-driving taxis.

The self-driving taxis will be hailed through the app, and the passenger will have the option to opt out of the driverless ride and ask for a driver. GM and Lyft will, in fact, begin providing free rental cabs for the Chicago drivers if they work enough trips.

Early tests will be ran with an engineer monitoring the self-driving taxi’s activity, so the self-driving taxis won’t have an empty driver’s seat when the technology will be launched.

Lyft’s director, Taggard Matthiesen, declared himself very satisfied with the partnership because it gives him the possibility to focus on one important aspect of the problem while GM is dealing with another one. So with their efforts and attention divided equally, they feel strong and confident.

The self-driving taxis they’ll launch will be Bolt EVs, Chevrolet.

The battle to make the most profit from the self-driving technology has another strong opponent: ride-hailing Uber, which opened a center to test their self-driving technology in Pittsburg, little over a year ago. They hoped to launch their fleet of driverless taxis in 2020, but GM and Lyft’s announcement might make them change gears.

Also, Ford with Pivotal and Google with Fiat are also hogging up the market.

Google will start testing their self-driving technology in the Chrysler Pacifica minivans this year, and Ford has invested $182.2 million in Pivotal’s tech.

These are exciting times we live in as we enter a new era of technological development and achievement. The internet is producing more and more videos with the tests of self-driving cars that avoid collisions so we wonder: what percentage of accidents will this technology actually eliminate for us? How much will our lives change with this self-driving technology?

Let’s just wait and see. The self-driving technology in taxis is just across the road, this 2017.

Image source: Wikimedia

Continental Hires Seval Oz as Head of Intelligent Transportation Unit

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There are various chips being implanted in numerous devices in the last period to offer them increased functionality. But one category that will never have enough of them is the transport industry. The advent of the Internet of Things is the motor industry can only be welcomed. The main advantage of having sensors recording the states of the vehicle and communicating with other systems is the increased safety for all traffic members. This is why Continental hires Seval Oz from Google’s driverless car project in the company’s new business unit.

Recently, SKully Systems released the Skully AR-1 smart helmet for motorcyclists. The helmet will provide futuristic information on the visor, but without disturbing the normal view. As such, the driver will have both increased safety due to the live images provided by the rear-view camera, and other benefits as GPS routes.

On Monday, the Obama administration announced that it will provide regulation according to which cars will have to be equipped with basic communication systems. The administration hopes rightfully, we may add, that deadly accidents, as well as repair and hospitalization costs will be avoided as soon as the system is widely adopted. Each car will have to get a standard system installed. The government thinks that initial costs will be around $300 per car, but will decrease rapidly.

There are already a couple of companies working on similar systems. Perhaps Google is the most widely known company, but others are involved in the domain as well. Among them, Continental attempts to be one of the early adopters of the new technology.

Continental hires Seval Oz to implement the ‘Internet of Everything’

Continental decided to assemble an international team which will focus on the newly established division called Continental Intelligent Transportation Systems, based in Silicon Valley. To get a good start, Continental decided to lure a Google employee into the new project. Seval Oz worked for Google in the driverless car project. The 53 years old expert in vehicle networking and automation will head the new Continental team.

Continental hires Seval Oz from Google to teach Continental the ways of the internet of things

“This step is an excellent example of our strategy to make the car an integral part of the ‘Internet of Everything.’ Our key objectives include eliminating road accidents, minimizing energy consumption, maximizing comfort and usability of vehicles, and enabling them to exchange information with each other in real-time,” said Dr. Elmar Degenhart, CEO of Continental. Continental hires Seval Oz from Google to gain a competitive advantage ahead of similar companies such as Bosch and Delphi.