Self-Driving Cars Are Out. Micromobility Is In.
By: Paris Marx
Tags: Technology, Self Driving Cars, Cities, Future, Transportation

Waymo, a division of Alphabet, has long been a leader in autonomous vehicle technology. Based on the limited data released on the company, its vehicles have driven the most miles in self-driving mode and have the lowest rate of disengagement (moments when humans have to take over).

Waymo CEO John Krafcik. Source: Waymo

But Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journal’s D.Live conference, Krafcik said that “autonomy will always have constraints.” It will take decades for self-driving cars to become common on roads. Even then, they will not be able to drive at certain times of the year or in all weather conditions. In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in snow or rain—and that may never change.

Such a statement from someone leading a self-driving vehicle company seems surprising. But given what’s happened throughout 2018, it shouldn’t be. A number of negative stories about self-driving cars permeated the year’s coverage, including the deaths of those using Tesla’s Autopilot technology. The effect of an Uber self-driving car killing a woman in Tempe, Arizona, cannot be understated. That singular event broke through the largely uncritical mainstream coverage of autonomous vehicles; it showed us how far the technology really had to go before it could be safe.

No longer does anyone credibly claim that self-driving cars are the future of transportation.

The initial event was bad enough: A self-driving car failed to slow down to avoid hitting a person and a safety driver was too distracted to notice. But as the National Transportation Safety Board investigated the incident, we learned that the autonomous driving system was unable to determine that the object in front of it was a person at all. When it finally did correctly determine that it had to stop—just 1.3 seconds before impact—it couldn’t because emergency braking had been disabled, and there was no way to alert the safety driver.

Leaked information showed that Uber safety drivers had to intervene in their self-driving vehicles every 13 miles (21 km) compared to every 5,600 miles (9,000 km) on average for Waymo’s vehicles, and the team was putting their test vehicles in unsafe situations to try to hit impossible deadlines. It was a complete mess, and eventually blew up future plans among ride-sharing apps that depended, in part, on autonomous vehicles to reduce labor costs.

Source: Navigant Research

Uber had to completely halt its autonomous vehicle testing, and it was already far behind its competitors. It pulled out of Arizona completely, laid off most of its safety drivers, and only reapplied to resume testing in Pittsburgh near the end of 2018—almost eight months after the fatal crash.

But between March and November, everything changed. No longer does anyone credibly claim that self-driving cars are the future of transportation, and Uber has even shifted its focus to scooters, e-bikes, and turning its app into the “Amazon for transportation.”

At the beginning of 2018, it would have been unimaginable for the CEO of Waymo to publicly acknowledge that self-driving cars will never work in all conditions. Now, it’s a statement of fact that anyone familiar with the industry already knows. But while the hype about self-driving cars is over, there’s a new vision for urban transportation that’s much more inspiring—and everyone seems to want in on it.