fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
What’s My Prompt? Day 1: Bodega Cat
By: Jeff J.
Tags: Bodegas, Prompt, Creative Writing

As a creative challenge to myself to close out 2020 with inspiration, I decided to do What’s My Prompt. Encouraged by brainstorms at work and inventive spirits like my friend Bianca and the Mo Betta Live crew, I’ll take creative prompts I come up with, along with prompts from others.

I won’t go over 10 minutes of thinking and typing either. The constraint applies the pressure to accelerate my ideation and make something.

This unrefined work of Jeff will either show me an ingenious side of my mind or serve as a reflective reminder that my creative spirit is still a work in progress. Most likely it will demonstrate both sides of that coin. I did something similar on a blog long forgotten where I would write nonstop about whatever and wouldn’t spellcheck. I think it was called “Spellcheck Not Included” or some shit. Needless to say, this new challenge is a long time coming. I plan to do this all December. The best time to start is now, right? Cool. Let’s set it off with Bodega talk

What’s My Prompt?

Write a 1 paragraph narrative from the perspective of a Bodega Cat
31 Creative-Activities Done Under 10 Minutes To Make Your Year Remarkable
Tags: 2020, Self, Prompt, Self Love, Year In Review

31 Creative-Activities Done Under 10 Minutes To Make Your Year Remarkable

girl in white dress sitting on a couch
On The Ground Looking Up
By: Gurpreet Dhariwal
Tags: God Is Great, Prompt, Blessings And Prayers, Scrittura, Poetry

On The Ground Looking Up

Picture by Author, Oregon Albany

I look up to see the beauty of stars and the universe

I look up to see how angels are blessing me with their love

I look up to thank the Lord for keeping me alive and intact

I look up to see my silver lining with blurry eyes

I look up to see how the world has been shaped?

I look up to see how magical God is creating pictures of my favorite animals

I look up when I cry to let God wipe my tears

I look up at the sky to tell lord —

Here I am thanking you with all my heart.
Be ready. Excellent essay Daniele Ihns.
By: William J Spirdione
Tags: Writer, Future, Prompt, Artificial Intelligence, Writing

What is GPT-3 and What Does it Mean for Writers?

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Anger And Love
By: Anthi Psomiadou
Tags: Self, Prompt, Behavior, Anger, Love

Love, oh Love!

You and anger have many things

in common.

You can be unsatisfied

and unsatisfying,

asking for more and more external “nutrients”,

being the clothing of many things,

provoking illusions and unfreedom.

All these, only when you are used

as a substitute;

only when your name is stolen

and transformed into a cloak

that covers something else.

That imitation of yours

pushes to a searching

for things, words, and actions

to fill a gap,

turning to others for finding fullness.

It is accompanied by possessiveness,

controlling behaviors,

thirst for domination,

and dependence.

You can be expressed

by parents to kids

by adults to parents,

by friends to friends,

between lovers.

They don’t have bad intentions,

they usually choose you unconsciously,

and because of their unexplored

inner black holes.

If they dig in there,

and face themselves with courage

and responsibility,

they will experience your true …version.

And, that real “You”…

Oh, that authentic “You”!

What a great means

of metamorphosis it is!

The more you are offered

the more nourished

the one who offers you feel.

You satisfy

by just being experienced.

Whatever you create inside,

doesn’t wait for a reaction

or something in return;

It is nourished by itself.

There is no gap to be filled.

Where you are,

lack of lack there is.

The sense of fullness

is your source.

You turn the sense of seeing

into envisioning.

You live in complete liberation,

where there is neither fear

nor expectation.

You are offering humans

the chance to expand their radius

to their divinity,

which is forgotten.
The Little Bud
By: Somsubhra Banerjee
Tags: Thoughts, Flowers, Poetry, Prompt, Sun

On the ground, looking up was this tiny bud,

looking up to the darkness of a multitude,

of leaves and bushes that engulfed it,

alas.

Born in damp ground, besides a flowing rivulet,

it tried to get a grip of the surrounding,

surrounded by many, many forest bushes,

it wondered if it could grow out, of the,

tentacles that crowded around its sight,

the sight of that golden, glazed sun ray,

that caressed each of the branches, the leaves,

of so many other plants, their head high up,

getting to feel the warmth, enabling photosynthesis,

and the bud wished, wished hard for a tinge of light,

to befall on him.

An old tree branch, unable to hold itself to the parent tree,

fell, fell to the ground, on top of a few forest bushes,

bending them by a fraction, by just a little bit,

scaring the little bud, but wait, the very next day,

the first rays of the sun, pierced through, falling,

falling directly on its gloomy lap, caressing the little structure,

devoid of sunlight, for such a long time,

the little bud smiled, the brightest smile, it can produce,

looking up, on the ground, looking up to the mighty sun,

which too seemingly smiled back at him.
A 25-Year-Old Man Became the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire
By: Novica Gijevski
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Austin Russell, Billionairelifesyle, Billionaires

You may not know the name Austin Russell, but it is better to remember it. At just 25 years old, the Californian is the youngest new billionaire in the world thanks to his company Luminar Technologies, and a startup focused on creating and commercializing autonomous vehicle technology.

The founder and CEO of Luminar is one of the few who managed to amass a fortune in the world of self-driving cars. Furthermore, he is the youngest self-taught billionaire in the world.

Austin owns 104.7 million shares of Luminar, about one-third of its outstanding capital. At the end of trading with Nasdaq on Thursday, they were worth $ 2.4 billion. Its investors include billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, known for offering $ 100,000 in scholarships to outstanding young people to leave college and pursue their dreams.

He helped Russell start his own company and was his mentor after leaving Stanford and founded Luminar in 2012.

How did Austin Russell make his fortune?

Russell, who appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2018, is perfecting Lidar, sensors that help self-driving cars “see” their surroundings by refracting a laser beam from objects in their path.

The fundamental technology for self-driving vehicles has won over customers such as Volvo Kars, Daimler, and Intel Mobile. A report by the US Securities and Exchange Commission estimates that although Luminar is likely to announce sales of just $ 15 million this year, it could generate at least $ 1.3 billion by 2026.

Before becoming a billionaire, Russell already had several notable achievements. According to a profile made by Forbes, he memorizes the periodic table of elements every 2 years.

When he was in sixth grade, he reconnected his Nintendo DS game console to a cell phone after his parents forbade him to have one.

At the age of 13, he filed his first patent: a groundwater recycling system that collects water from sprinklers and saves it to reduce wastewater. Instead of going to high school, he spent his teens at the University of California, Irvine Beckman’s Laser Institute.

He was later admitted to Stanford to study physics but dropped out in the middle of his first year after winning the $100,000 Thiel Scholarship, founding Luminar shortly after obtaining his driver’s license. Excluding inherited fortunes, Russell is one of the few people on the planet who made $ 1 billion before turning 30.



The future of Russell and Luminar technologies

As well as being a big business, the young visionary is convinced that his Lidar has the potential to save lives, both as part of self-driving cars and as part of advanced driver assistance systems used by Volvo and other car manufacturers, a market in the next two or three years.

As a teenager, he saw Velodyne and other companies making laser sensors but found that they needed to make them more accessible to be ubiquitous. “We could have accelerated this because no one has done it before,” Russell said.
Welcome Ike!. Two and a half years ago, JZ and I met…
By: Dave Ferguson
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Self Driving

Two and a half years ago, JZ and I met with Ike’s co-founders Nancy, Alden, and Jur to discuss our shared vision around realizing the potential of self-driving technology in years rather than decades. There was an instant connection around first moving goods rather than people and the importance of investing in culture and building the right team. It was this connection that led us to do something rather unusual in the AV industry: we licensed our SW stack in exchange for an equity stake in Ike.

We have maintained a close relationship ever since — sharing a slack channel and serving as advisors to one another. This relationship has grown into a shared affinity between our teams that goes beyond technology and ownership. In fact, my personal connection with Jur dates back over 15 years to when we were PhD students writing research papers together. This bond is what makes today’s news that Nuro is acquiring Ike so exciting for all of us at Nuro.

Having Ike join us in accelerating our progress is a truly special moment that feels a bit like a homecoming. When Ike first started, they did so inside our office. We shared a common space and a common goal, with lots of excitement and too few conference rooms.

Ever since then, we have watched as Ike developed not just one of the most rigorous safety-first and systems-based approaches to self-driving development, but also a team that is widely regarded as one of the brightest in our field. The combination of the two, along with the ability to readily integrate some of their core technology (like their world-class virtual simulation tool), is what made the opportunity to have them join us a natural fit.

We look forward to all we’ll be able to accomplish together, knowing that our horizon of possible applications has been expanded with the addition of the Ike team and their expertise. And we are thrilled to have them join us in our collective mission.

To the Ike team: we are humbled that you have chosen to be a part of Nuro. Having you join us as colleagues will not only improve our technical and commercial progress, it will enrich our culture and make us all the better for it. JZ and I have consistently told our team that the thing we are the most proud of building these past 4 years is our team of passionate people. This sense of pride is being reaffirmed today.

Welcome aboard Ike!
群衆密度予測に関する論文がIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) に採録されました
By: Ryo Yonetani
Tags: Ja, Forecasting, Autonomous Cars, Computer Vision

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Part 1. Human vs AV
By: Solji Lee
Tags: Design Theses, Autonomous Cars, Interface Design, UX Design, Car Design

In the last post, I told about what causes fatal accidents in self-driving cars. In short, cognitive differences and communication failure between humans and machine drivers cause accidents. Today, I would like to talk about the situation and details of the two entities.

1. Cognitive Differences

First, the process of mechanical and human drivers making decisions in the car is not so different. The control loop, called OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act), shows a cyclical process of control machine which was first devised by the United States Air Force.

OODA, devised by a U.S. Air Force colonel

When you imagine the human driver driving the car following the loop, the driver sees the surrounding environment with his eyes, applies and judges the situation with the vision data, and drives the car with his hands and feet. The human is in the car and has done everything himself. In other words, he is in the loop.

However, with the increasing technology in driving autonomation systems, humans are becoming supervisors above the control loop (on-the-loop), and machines control a vehicle in the loop instead of humans. Also, the control loop of the machine has more branches than humans, as shown in the table below.

VEHICLE SYSTEM DYNAMICS 2020, VOL. 58, NO. 5, 672–704

Look around with multiple sensors. Localize themselves in the situation with a computer and cloud networking in the vehicle. Based on data from all sensors and the cloud, judge the next action. Operating the vehicle.

Vision is the first step in the control loop and is currently the most controversial stage in AV.

Self-driving cars use three major sensors to obtain the same visual information as humans. Camera, Radar, and LiDAR. (Exceptionally, Tesla was chosen to remove LiDAR and measure depth and distance only with the camera and Radar.) In addition, a machine driver receives traffic information, such as signal systems and construction roads, thanks to GPS and HD maps.

The reason why the three sensors are combined is that each sensor has different characteristics, such as range of vision and resolution, as shown in the table below.
Intro: Self-driving Cars and Designs
By: Solji Lee
Tags: Autonomous Cars, UX Design, Design, Design Theses

First of all, I analyzed the fatalities of self-driving cars to find out the main cause of accidents in self-driving cars. It has been difficult to find the accurate cause of the accident. Because there are not yet enough policy or law on AV(autonomous vehicle) accident, accident data recorded in the black box were frequently damaged by the crash, and self-driving car companies didn’t like to announce the failure of AV to the public. However, the data collected from various media were able to divide the cause of the accident into two main causes.

Re-analyze Wikipedia autonomous vehicle mortality chart with causes

1 ) Automotive vision sensor failure

The second case among the five cases in the above table is a relatively well-known accident. It caused by the failure of vision sensors to distinguish the white side of a trailer from the bright sky behind the car. Other accidents have also been caused by the vision sensors’ failure to achieve the recognition of accurate objects with a sense of distance/depth. The car combines three to four different vision sensors to obtain a similar level of visual information that the human eye gets. (The next post will cover this topic in more detail.)

2) Driver’s carelessness while driving

As above, the level of automation of self-driving cars is at the level of driving assistance systems, but the level of automation we expect from the word “semi-autonomous driving” is more than that. That cognitive difference causes the driver to lose engagement in driving and leads to a very ridiculous accident. Contrary to our expectations, AV experts expected to take at least 25 years to complete self-driving.

To sum up, the machine driver is not yet sufficiently delicate in the sensing surrounding environment.

Human drivers do not fully understand the limitations of self-driving cars and become careless in driving by that over-reliance.

The goal of my design thesis is to find a design solution that will bridge the gap between humans and self-driving cars.
7 Fantastic Exterior Upgrades for Model 3
By: Matthew Cheung
Tags: Cars, Automotive, Autonomous Cars, Technology, Tesla

There are a ton of Teslas on the coasts of the US. And because they all look the same, Tesla owners love customizing their cars.

Here are some aesthetic and functional accessories to make your Model 3 your own.

Efficiency

EV owners are obsessed with efficiency. A spoiler reduces drag by “smoothing” the air behind the car. Less drag means higher efficiency.

This is one of the reasons why the Model 3 Performance has a carbon fiber spoiler on top of the trunk! For other trims, a spoiler can be easily added.

When I added my spoiler to my car, I saw a 3.96% in efficiency. In other words, installing my spoiler added 10 miles of range to my car.

My experimental result is inline with Unplugged Performance’s independent aerodynamic study’s results.

Spoiler on/off testing results by the author. 90+% of the driving was between 40 to 60 mph, in relatively consistent California weather. Climate control was never turned on.

The carbon fiber spoiler from TOPlight¹ looks really nice and is extremely simple to install. The tool-less installation takes less than 10 minutes.

Carbon fiber spoiler¹ installed on the car. Photo by TOPlight.

Chrome Delete

I personally like the look of a “chrome delete” on modern cars. This satin black chrome delete kit¹ looks great. It covers all of the chrome trim around the windows, the side mirrors, side repeater cameras, door handles, and Tesla T logos.

I love this kit because it comes with everything that you need to do the install. They have amazing step by step video instructions, and just in case you make a mistake, they give you TWO FULL SETS of trim pieces. (Read as: if you have a friend with a Model 3, you can split the cost of the chrome delete kit).

Chrome delete¹ on a Model 3. Photos by Nikola Pro.

Mud Flaps

Tesla’s paint is relatively soft when compared to other automakers. So it seems to scratch easier.

Because the sides of the car wrap “underneath” the car, a lot of dirt and mud gets kicked up onto the doors by the tires. These mud flaps¹ help a lot with this. They also won’t scrape on the ground like the mud flaps directly from Tesla. I like that they’re discreet and don’t impact the visuals of the car.

Mud flaps¹ installed on the car. Photo by Tepeng.

Making Model 3 Quieter

EV drivers hate noise. Wind noise is air howling at you. And tire/road noise is an equally annoying hum. Check out my other article, where I deep dive into how noise is generated and how to mitigate that sound.

Summary/TL;DR

Carbon fiber spoiler ¹ that increases efficiency & range and also looks really great.

¹ that increases efficiency & range and also looks really great. Satin black chrome delete kit ¹ to remove the chrome around the windows.

¹ to remove the chrome around the windows. Mud flaps¹ to keep your car cleaner and to help protect the fragile paint.

Reducing Noise
Li Auto
By: Stefano Osellame
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Technology, Electric Car, Tesla, Innovation

The Founder

Li Xiang, founder of Li Auto

Li Xiang was born in 1981. He is one of China’s “Born after the 1980s” group. Dating back to the early 2000s, this group consisted of four young Chinese entrepreneurs who showed extraordinary promise, including additionally:

Mao Kankan, founder of digital game firm MaJoy, who sadly suicide in 2018

Gao Ran, founding partner of Fengyun Capital

Dai Zhikang, founder of Discuz, one of China’s most popular Internet forums

He established his first business, Pcpop.com, in 2000, at only 18 years of age right after dropping out of school. The company, specialized in IT products, started to generate good earnings. But his inexperience with managing a growing company ultimately led to reaching a bottleneck in growth.

In 2005, he then proceeded to found Autohome, an online platform for automobile-related sales that provides professionally produced and user-generated content, a comprehensive library and extensive listing information to automobile consumers, covering the entire car purchase and ownership cycle. By 2009 Autohome was the market leader in China, but Li lost control of the firm during the financial crisis of 2008, selling 55% of shares to the Australian telecom company Telstra

In 2014 “William” Li Bin contacted Li Xiang and proposed him to become the co-founder of Nio. He refused, probably due to conflicting ideas on the EV market, but anyway invested 15 Millions USD into Nio as one of the first investors.

In 2015 he resigned from Autohome and created the car company Chehejia, later on renamed to Li (Xiang) Auto.
Autotech Co Hong Kong Limited completes two-year autonomous research project
By: Autotech Co Hong Kong Limited
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autotech Co Hong Kong, Autonomous Vehicles

Autotech Co Hong Kong Limited completes two-year autonomous research project

Autotech Co Hong Kong Limited has concluded a two-year research project exploring how autonomous cars handle rural roads.

The ‘Theia AI’ project, which started in October 2018 in the eastern region of Hong Kong, tested how autonomous vehicles could deal with less inhabited suburban and rural areas.

The project involved two key trials. The first trial saw Autotech create an on-demand and shared car service using autonomous Theia AI electric cars which would provide a link between Lohas Park train station and Kowloon Bay east of the city. The autonomous cars were tested in several different situations.

The second trial was a shuttle service which stopped at predetermined stops around the region in order to see how autonomous cars could be used to provide accurate and efficient transport.

“Rural and more remote areas have previously posed a challenge to autonomous cars as roads often lack markings and road signs, while narrow streets, roundabouts and tunnels can make things tougher for the car. Also, these challenges are not consistent as they are in urban environments,” said Cheng Jun, Chief Executive Officer at Autotech Co Hong Kong Limited.

The ultimate goal for Autotech was for an autonomous car to drive the ten-kilometre journey from the train station to the suburban area, following a route which had all of these obstacles.

Autotech engineers were also able to track and control the autonomous cars with 100mm precision to ensure that it continued on the right route, handling restricted roads and remaining on course including through roads without painted road markings.

“We have now completed the research project which has allowed our engineers to further enhance our Theia AI autonomous cars with even more ability to view the areas surrounding the vehicle in its 360-degree field. It now means our cars can observe more objects and obstacles in real-time,” said Yuan Wuhan, Chief Technology Officer at Autotech Co Hong Kong Limited.

The autonomous cars were also able to handle occasional loss of the GPS signal during testing and operated at speeds which are ‘considered safe by regular drivers’, according to Autotech.

The team at Autotech also evaluated featured infrastructure components such as linked traffic signals and road cameras, which connected to the autonomous cars and allowed them to view obstacles beyond their regular field of vision.
Occupancy Grid Mapping
By: Sampath Kumaran Ganesan
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Robotics

Constructing maps for robots using which robot can localize
Moback and Toyota Research Institute — Car Crash recreated in a Toyota Guardian VR Simulator
By: Rachael Hill
Tags: Autonomous Cars, VR, Simulation

In the summer of 2018, a Toyota Research Institute autonomous vehicle got into a 3-way car crash on the interstate. The sensors on the car captured every detail about the accident. Moback engineers used this data to recreate the car crash in TRI’s Guardian VR Simulator, a mix of Unity, HTC Vive and a series of undisclosed development tools and plug-ins which our engineers helped build back starting mid-2016.The recreation was featured in TRI’s press conference at CES 2019.

At the time of the crash, the autonomy systems were disabled but the perception system was active to gather and map data of the Bay Area’s roads. Using this data, Moback created 3D artwork for the highway and other vehicles involved that was used to create a render of the simulation to illustrate what would have happened if the car sped up.

They found that if the TRI vehicle’s autonomous Guardian vehicle had sped up that the crash would have been prevented completely. The render created by Moback engineers accomplished the recreation of the accident in a real life test track.
Nuro’s New Funding Round
By: Jiajun Zhu
Tags: Robotics, Autonomous Cars, Automation, Self Driving Cars, Fundraising

Nuro’s R2 vehicle

Nuro was founded a little over 4 years ago with the mission of accelerating the benefits of robotics for everyday life.

Today, we are excited to announce a new $500 million Series C funding round, led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., with participation from new investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC. and Baillie Gifford. Existing investors SoftBank Vision Fund 1 and Greylock are also investing in the round.

When we started Nuro, my co-founder Dave and I set out to build a team that would apply its core expertise in robotics to develop products that can free us to use our own time on the things and people we value most. For our first product, we decided to focus on building an all-new electric self-driving vehicle to transport goods instead of people. Something that could dramatically reduce the time we spend in cars picking things up from stores. It turns out that we all spend so much time doing this that it’s roughly equivalent to a month’s worth of unpaid work every year for each American.

We have now developed two generations of our lightweight autonomous delivery vehicle. R2, our second generation vehicle, received the first and only federal exemption for an autonomous vehicle granted by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). R2 was also the first vehicle to operate fully autonomously on public roads in three different states — California, Texas, and Arizona — with no drivers, no occupants, and no chase cars.

We now know that our industry, self-driving local delivery, will not only make it easier to buy groceries, hot food, prescription drugs, and other products, but will also positively impact local economies, and serve low-income communities living in food deserts. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned that contactless delivery of goods — the service R2 provides — can help reduce the spread. The underlying need and excitement for a better way of moving local goods is shared by our growing list of partners, including Domino’s, Walmart, Kroger, and CVS.

With this latest round of funding securing a long runway of future technology development and commercialization, we at Nuro could not be more excited about what the next 4 years will bring.

Join us.
NIO advances smoothly according to Q3’20 report
By: Tech In China
Tags: Autonomous, Nio, Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles

On November 18, NIO released its financial report for Q3’20.

According to the report, NIO’s total revenue in the third quarter was $688.1 million USD, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 150%. In the third quarter, NIO’s gross profit was $88.1 million USD, the gross profit margin of automobile sales was 14.5%, and the comprehensive gross profit margin was 12.9%. In 2020, it is estimated to further increase by over 20%.

Regarding the significant improvement in gross profit margin, NIO said that it benefited from the higher average selling price of the new ES8, the reduction of material costs, the reduction of battery subsidies, and the scale effect brought by the increase in production capacity.

Bin Li, the founder of NIO, predicts that in the fourth quarter NIO will deliver 16,500 to 17,000 vehicles and revenue will reach $951.6 to $978.5 million USD, achieving a positive operating cash flow throughout the year.

At the same time, Bin Li revealed that the next-generation autonomous driving platform NT2.0 developed by the company will announce the chip details on “NIO DAY” this year.

In next January, the production capacity of NIO will increase to 7,500 vehicles per month.

A Bain study pointed out that the cost of electric vehicle battery packs will drop to US$100/kWh by 2025, and the overall cost of ownership will be the same as that of gasoline and fuel vehicles. It is also foreseeable that by the year 2025, the electric vehicle market will increase to roughly 12% of the global new-vehicle market, following through with this trend, this proportion may be as high as 50% by the year 2040.

Source: https://36kr.com/p/973681166610690
Introducing Marker’s New Blog on the Future of Batteries, Electric Cars, and Driverless Vehicles
By: Marker Editors
Tags: Battery, Future, Autonomous Cars, Electric Car, Tech

Dear Readers,

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that the Marker family is growing with the addition of a new blog, The Mobilist, about the future of batteries, electric cars, and driverless vehicles. Every so often, we write about something that our readers clearly have an insatiable appetite for. That’s exactly what happened recently, when Medium editor-at-large Steve LeVine wrote a series of stories chronicling the fast-moving, ever-changing, high-stakes mobility industry unfolding before our eyes.

More than a year ago, Steve began writing for Marker about Tesla’s million-mile electric car battery and the EV industry’s woman problem. More recently, he wrote about stealth startup QuantumScape, its claim of a battery breakthrough, and the skepticism around whether there was any leap at all. He chronicled the apparent EV ambivalence of incumbents like GM and the opposite, headlong approach of daredevils like Nikola.

Steve’s able to parse through hype versus actual progress because he’s not just an enthusiast on this subject — he’s also an expert. To write his third book, The Powerhouse: America, China, and the Great Battery War, he got permission to embed for two years at the federal government’s secretive Argonne National Laboratory, where a team of electrochemical geniuses were squirreled away, trying to build the world’s first super-battery.

Every week on The Mobilist, Steve will report on the business, science, technology, and geopolitics of advanced batteries, electric vehicles, and driverless mobility. The blog will be a space where inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, policy hands, and anyone interested in understanding the future of electric and automated vehicles can track developments large and small, meet the people responsible for this new age, and learn about the changes it will bring.

For those of you who already enjoy Steve’s wonderful in-depth features that appear all over Medium — whether he’s writing about the radical plan to save a sinking city at GEN, alien geopolitics at OneZero, or anything related to economics or business at his primary home, Marker — not to worry, he’ll continue taking these big swings. Just make sure you don’t miss any of them by following Steve LeVine on Medium and following the blog, The Mobilist.

Marker is in the fortunate position of serving Medium subscribers. We believe in the unique value of our platform and the journalism we can deliver. We’re excited to be able to bring you The Mobilist.

Danielle Sacks

Editor-in-chief, Marker
DeepMap’s Erwin Frei Discusses Mapping, AI, and more at GeoBuiz Engage Americas
By: Deepmap
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Geospatial

Dr. Erwin A. Frei, VP of Corporate Development, DeepMap

DeepMap’s VP of Corporate Development, Dr. Erwin Frei, participated in a roundtable last week hosted by Girish Joshi, Director Americas, Geospatial Media & Communications.

The conversation covered topics such as:

Critical role of location, maps, and AI in autonomy

Sensor fusion and sensor advancements

What is missing today, tech or regulations? Or both?

In his intro, Erwin showed a video highlighting DeepMap mapping technology in a variety of situations, including highways, sparse environments, and tunnels.

Erwin then discussed the critical “drivers” for automated and autonomous driving: safety, comfort, and efficiency. From a mapping perspective, he said, this will be achieved through a focus on accuracy, reliability, freshness, scalability, and flexibility.

Erwin emphasized the critical roles that crowdsourcing, AI, and cloud computing will play in the automation of high-fidelity HD map creation and updating.

He said: “Accuracy and reliability for geometrical elements, as well as for semantic elements, in the HD map are mission critical not only for map interoperability, updating efficiency, and effectivity, but also for enabling HD maps as a platform for location-based services. These services are employing AI as a key driver to make autonomous driving safer, more comfortable, and much more efficient.”

The roundtable discussion demonstrated that there are tangible and significant collaboration and partnering opportunities for providers of high-fidelity HD maps and service providers in the geospatial industry.

We appreciated the opportunity to participate in the GeoBuiz series. Girish noted that “the knowledge derived from the discussions at the GeoBuiz Engage series will be presented in the form of the annual GeoBuiz Report on Geospatial Industry Outlook.”

If you would like to learn more about partnering with DeepMap, contact us at info@deepmap.ai.

About DeepMap: DeepMap is accelerating safe autonomy by providing the world’s best autonomous mapping and localization solutions. DeepMap delivers the technology necessary for self-driving vehicles to navigate in a complex and unpredictable environment. The company addresses three important elements: precise high-definition (HD) mapping, ultra-accurate real-time localization, and the server-side infrastructure to support massive global scaling. DeepMap was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., with offices in Beijing and Guangzhou, China. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, GSR Ventures, Generation, Goldman Sachs, NVIDIA, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. For more information, see www.deepmap.ai.
Biggest Mergers & Acquisitions in the AV Industry During Pandemic
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Mergers And Acquisitions, Self Driving Cars, Pandemic, Covid 19

Unlike the year 2019, this year has recorded a dramatic slowdown in the strategic mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the AV industry. The global automotive industry was already under the recession wave since mid-2018 and have witnessed a decline in the vehicle sales of major economies. The COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated the situation which is expected to take quite a significant time for recovery.

The $1.2 billion acquisition of the California based robotaxi player Zoox, Inc. by Amazon.com Inc. announced in the month of June, touted all over the industry as Amazon’s great move towards accelerating its entry in robotaxis and shared mobility industry. However, post the announcement, the top engineers from Zoox were poached by AV tech companies such as Cruise and Waymo causing a great impact to the Amazon’s plans. If this loss of expertise is further continued, it could possibly force the company to walk away from its planned acquisition.

Moovit is the second Israeli mobility company acquired by Intel Corporation, after Mobileye. This strategic move is considered as the most crucial step of Intel towards becoming a full stack mobility provider. This $900 million acquisition was one of the great deals for Intel, as it will certainly accelerate the company’s timeline to launch a complete autonomous mobility solution. GM’s Cruise is aiming to deliver the improved and advanced autonomous driving solution at scale by less relying on the third party for sensors and technology.

To move ahead with this goal, the company has acquired a German high-resolution radar manufacturer Astyx GmbH in June 2020 for an undisclosed amount. On 5th March, the German based data annotation company (having ~750 employees) CMore Automotive was acquired by a software engineering firm Luxoft. TTTech Auto, the Austrian provider of safety software platforms for AVs has acquired Turkish software company Red Pine Software in January.

Velodyne LiDAR Inc. has announced a merger on 2nd of July with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company called Graf Industrial Corp. Around $150 million were raised by both the companies in equity from a group of institutional investors.

On 7th, LeddarTech, the Canada based solid-state LiDAR and perception technology company has acquired an Israeli company Vayavision to develop and deliver an open sensor fusion & perception platform for autonomous vehicles. A real time software development specialist Intempora was acquired by dSpace in the same month.

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Helm.ai named “Autonomous Driving Solution of the Year”
Tags: Autonomous Cars, AI, Machine Learning, Self Driving Cars, Awards

Helm.ai named “Autonomous Driving Solution of the Year”

Some exciting news!

Today we’re honored to announce Helm.ai has been named the ‘Autonomous Driving Solution of the Year’ by the inaugural AutoTech Breakthrough Awards program conducted by the Tech Breakthrough organization, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for the most innovative technology companies in the world.

“Our Deep Teaching technology addresses core difficulties impacting the autonomous driving industry, quickly resolving corner cases at the tail end and accelerating the roadmap to advanced L2/L3 production systems and L4 full autonomy.” said Vladislav Voroninski, CEO, Helm.ai. “Using our approach, we have topped out public computer vision benchmarks and surpassed state of the art production systems with minimal engineering effort. We have applied Deep Teaching across the perception and intent prediction parts of the autonomy stack and are providing validated full reference stacks powered by our AI software toward L2/L3 and L4 production programs.”

The mission of the AutoTech Breakthrough Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work and success in a range of transportation technology categories, including Connected Car, Electric Vehicles, Engine Tech, Automotive CyberSecurity, Sensor Technology, Traffic Tech, Vehicle Telematics and more. This year’s inaugural program considered more than 1,250 companies nominated from over 12 different countries throughout the world.

“Artificial Intelligence is certainly one of the most exciting and promising technologies driving the auto and transportation industry forward, and Helm.ai’s Deep Teaching solution offers far-reaching implications for the future of computer vision and autonomous driving,” said Bryan Vaughn, Managing Director, AutoTech Breakthrough. “We are honored to award their team with our Autonomous Driving Solution of the Year’ award for their groundbreaking work.”

For more information on Helm.ai, Deep Teaching and our autonomous driving technologies, be sure to subscribe to the Helm.ai YouTube channel, follow us on Twitter and visit the Helm.ai website.
China smart vehicle industry report 2020
By: Tech In China
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Smart Vehicle, Autonomous Driving

On the afternoon of November 6, “Fourth Industrial Revolution and Smart Travel Forum” was held at CIIE, on the forum, industry experts from Ford, Baidu, BMW, Qualcomm, and Pony.ai focused on the field of travels and imagined what the future would hold.

According to the research and analysis of JP Morgan Chase, from 2019 to 2025, China’s L1 to L5 assisted driving and the autonomous driving market will achieve an average annual growth rate of 33% and reach approximately $7.1 billion USD by 2025.

The four elements of intelligent networked vehicles, namely sensors, algorithms, high-precision maps, and three-electric systems, are trendy investment directions for the future.

Haojun Wang, Pony.ai VP and general manager of its Shanghai company, believes that in terms of L4 and L5 autonomous driving, Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure System(CVIS), and Single Agent needs to advance hand in hand to achieve a large-scale operation. As far as vehicle iterations are concerned, there are still at least 2–3 foreseeable generations of iterations, and the development cycle for each generation is 3–4 years.

Currently, the Chinese government plans to target 2025 as the year to achieve their goal of conditional autonomous vehicles to account for half of the new car sales. Not only is it significantly increased on their original goal of 25%, but they also expect to promote the formulation of relevant laws to go with this ambitious change. By proposing active plans led by the state, encouraging relevant enterprises to accelerate their pace of development.

The United States has always been regarded as the leader in the field of autonomous driving, now China, with the world’s largest market within its grasp, has begun to catch up.

Basically, functional “Level 4” self-driving cars that do not need manual operation will reach practical levels by 2025, with a foreseeable sales ratio increase to 20% by 2030.

By the year 2035, China will expand the operation of advanced level 4 and other advanced autonomous vehicles nationwide to achieve integration with smart cities (environmental protecting cities).

Source: https://36kr.com/newsflashes/960177895340424
자율주행, 카메라 vs 라이다 (Camera vs LiDAR)
Tags: Automotive, Vehicles, Autonomous Cars, Lidar, Self Driving Cars

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3 Shifts Edition (Nov 13 2020): China reins in big tech, Honda will mass-produce L3 autonomous cars by March, The smartphone leaderboard reshuffles
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Smartphones, 5g, China

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Sign up to get free summaries of our briefs about market shifts and what they mean. You can also follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn for our curated feed of signals.

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자율주행 시대는 어떻게 다가올까
Tags: Cars, Automotive, Vehicles, Autonomous Cars, Self Driving Cars

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
You Placed the Wrong Bet on Nikola, So What’s Next? — Part II
By: Diana Yao
Tags: Electric Vehicles, Autonomous Cars, Technology, Venture Capital, Renewable Energy

QuantumScape Corporation

Founded: 2010, San Jose, CA

Business Description: QuantumScape is a solid-state battery provider for electric vehicles. Its Lithium-metal-based battery uses solid ceramic electrolytes compared to conventional Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery with liquid electrolytes. It also eliminates the need for an anode, allowing the battery to charge more quickly — up to 80% capacity in just 15 minutes. Also, its energy density is higher, exceeding 400 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), which far surpasses 250 Wh/kg for the best current Li-ion batteries.

Development of next-gen battery for EVs is very capital-extensive, and there are very few players leading this market. However, the performance of traditional Li-ion batteries is plateauing in the areas of safety, energy density and deep charge and life cycle; and breakthroughs in emerging technologies are being called for. In the long term, significant market opportunities will open for next-gen battery technologies as they are nearing commercial readiness.

Latest Status: announced on Sep 3, 2020, QuantumScape will go through a reverse merger with Kensington to make a public debut; after approved by shareholders, the company will be publicly traded on Nasdaq under the ticker QS (estimated to close by end of 2020)

Transaction Structure: $230M from SPAC Kensington and $500M of PIPE from Fidelity Management & Research and Janus Henderson Investors

Valuation: $3,321M EV; for comparison, the company also shows a valuation range of $8,985–16,173M, based on 5.0–9.0x 2028E Revenue discounted back 7 years at 20%, offering investors a view of the upside potential to the current post-money EV

Benchmarking: Tesla, CATL, Nio

Stage of Development:

Joint venture development with Volkswagen for mass production of solid-state battery for the automaker

1GWh factory production validation and SOP in 2024

20GWh factory production validation and SOP in 2026

Romeo Systems, Inc.

Founded: 2016, Vernon, CA

Business Description: Romeo designs and makes energy-dense, commercially available Li-ion battery modules and packs for electric vehicles. They mainly supply to commercial truck manufacturers in North America and Europe. With energy density 20–30% higher than the rest, the batteries can support a longer range for the vehicles. The products come with a built-in battery management system, and are designed to be chemistry-agnostic and support both air-cooled and liquid-cooled.

Latest Status: announced on Oct 2, 2020, Romeo will go through a reverse merger with RMG to make a public debut; after approved by shareholders, the company will be publicly traded on NYSE under the ticker RMO (estimated to close by end of 2020)

Transaction Structure: $234M from SPAC RMG and $150M of PIPE from The Heritage Group (Indiana) and Republic Services

Valuation: $993M EV; 1.3x 2023E Revenue EV

Benchmarking: Nikola, Tesla, Hyliion, Lordstown, Canoo, QuantumScape

Stage of Development:
Tech Exceptions is Going Live
By: Adi Polak
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, News, Startup, Tech

Today, I’m excited to share a project I’ve worked on for the last couple of months. An interview-based video series: “Tech Exceptions”, highlighting Startups technical stories.

In the first episode, we interview Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve, a startup that develops artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles capable of driving in any urban environment, anywhere in the world. Alex shares his personal journey and what lead him to start Wayve, how Wayve is building the largest autonomous driving academy in the world, their challenges with processing huge amounts of data, and how it all connected to video and VR games.

Background on Wayve technology:

Wayve is building the world’s largest fleet learning/academy system. Their system learns how to drive in any urban environment with one giant neural network.

This requires the process of training very large deep learning models over petabytes of video driving data. For enabling this huge and complex neural network ML model, they use Azure services.

High level of their fleet learning lifecycle:

Ingest -> train -> simulate -> deploy-> on road testing

Wayve is a graduate of the Microsoft for Startups Autonomous Driving program and works closely with Microsoft.

Here is a sneak peek:

Tech Exceptions — Wayve episode Promo

Tune in on November 11th, 2020 for the 1st episode to be launched on Channel 9.

Don’t miss out! Make sure to follow Adi Polak and Tech Exceptions on social media for more information and updates!

Make sure to subscribe to the Tech Exceptions Show for lots more exciting episodes coming up!