Archinect - News

Driverless taxis are about to hit Los Angeles. How will Waymo's impact affect the city's changing streetscape?

2022-10-25T13:55:00-04:00

The company has been mapping Los Angeles using human drivers since 2019. Next, a spokesman said, trained drivers will test out Waymo’s robot taxi service on L.A.-area highways and neighborhood thoroughfares, with runs downtown, along the Miracle Mile and in Koreatown, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.

Waymo has already eked out footholds in Phoenix and San Francisco and will need a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its West Coast operations into what it says is a now $2 billion market.

The Public Utilities hurdle and technically complicated mapping process aside, Waymo’s eventually-expanded commercial fleet could arrive in line with a host of other transportation changes that LA is enacting ahead of the 2028 Olympics, especially near Downtown. The question of whether potentially adding thousands of EVs to its clogged roads and freeways remains the ever-larger existential factor, and opponents argue their presence undermines efforts at pedestrianization and funding for micromobility alternatives central to state and city plans despite demographic factors that are also in the company's favor.

Earlier on Archinect: What it means to add 20,000 Waymo self-driving robot taxis to America's roads

"If we want to change the car culture in Los Angeles, we need ...

Autonomous vehicles in urgent need of regulation, says urban research group

2022-10-11T11:50:00-04:00

The Urban Institute has warned that the proliferation of autonomous vehicles in the United States needs to be met by regulations at the federal, state, and local level to ensure equity and environmental sustainability. The non-profit group, which describes its role as inspiring “effective decisions that advance fairness and enhance the well-being of people and places,” set out their position in a 78-page report published this week.

“The mobility system in the United States is unsafe, inequitable, and environmentally destructive,” the report says. “Autonomous vehicles (AVs) — self-driving cars that can travel along publicly accessible streets some or all of the time without human involvement — could help mitigate these problems, if they are implemented in a thoughtful, well-regulated manner.”

Archinect Feature: Smog City: The Fight Against Urban Air Pollution

According to the group, fully autonomous vehicles would “in theory” offer a positive step for the future of transportation, poi...

Waymo partners with Chinese automaker Geely to develop fleet of autonomous, electric taxis

2021-12-30T09:00:00-05:00

Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo is partnering with Chinese automaker Geely to create a fleet of all-electric, self-driving robotaxis.

The cars will be designed in Sweden, where Geely owns Swedish car manufacturer Volvo. Waymo will integrate the Waymo Driver, their autonomous driving technology, into Geely's electric, transportation-as-a-service (Taas)-optimized Zeekr vehicle. Waymo plans to deploy the vehicles in the US within their existing fleet of autonomous taxis "in the years to come."

Waymo's self-driving cars have started 3D-mapping Los Angeles

2019-10-17T06:00:00-04:00

Currently, Waymo has started undertaking an extensive mapping activity of having a few of their specially outfitted data-collecting vehicles crisscross the Los Angeles area. These vehicles contain a state-of-the-art barrage of sensory equipment, the idea is to first map out the area and then use those maps to get the self-driving cars ready for hitting our streets.

"The conventional mapping did not go as in-depth as does this specially performed new mapping," writes AI and Autonomous Vehicles expert Lance Eliot for Forbes. "Tons of added data of a 3D nature and including subtle but significant aspects like where the curbs are, and the locations of intersection traffic signals are considered a savvy aspect to have in-hand for their driverless car efforts."

Waymo, the Mountain View-based Google sister company, hasn't unveiled yet if and when it will launch its fleet of driverless robotaxis in LA, but the current mapping efforts signal a strong intent to win early market dominance in the nation's second largest, and likely most sprawling car-centric, metro area.

Should New York's subway rails be paved over for driverless cars?

2018-07-24T19:03:00-04:00

Visions of the future [autonomous vehicles] will bring have already crept into City Council meetings, political campaigns, state legislation and decisions about what cities should build today. That unnerves some transportation planners and transit advocates, who fear unrealistic hopes for driverless cars — and how soon they’ll get here — could lead cities to mortgage the present for something better they haven’t seen.

With new technologies emerging, cities are debating the most effective transportation systems to fund. Caught in the midst of this struggle is the proposition of paving over the New York subway in order to create an underground highway for autonomous vehicles. Those championing the idea believe this system would move the most people using the least amount of space, when theoretically services like Lyft and Uber no longer have to pay drivers.

Many, however, believe this is an unrealistic faith in new technology to solve all of our cities transportation problems. If everyone uses their own private, self-driving car this could create enormous amounts of traffic. Not to mention the belief that there is something inherently better about everyone traveling together on public transit rather than in their own isolated vehicles. Should cities invest in these new transit models replacing public infrastructure with private systems? Or hold out for unknown future technologies?

What it means to add 20,000 Waymo self-driving robot taxis to America's roads

2018-04-03T18:19:00-04:00

On Tuesday, Waymo announced they’d purchase 20,000 sporty, electric self-driving vehicles from Jaguar for the company’s forthcoming ride-hailing service. [...] They estimate that the Jaguar fleet alone will be capable of doing a million trips each day in 2020. [...] if Waymo is even within 50 percent of that number in two years, the United States will have entered an entirely new phase in robotics and technology.

In his piece for The Atlantic, Alexis C. Madrigal looks beyond the technological and economic implications of Waymo's latest announcement to add 20,000 electric self-driving Jaguar I-Pace SUVs to its rapidly growing ride-hailing fleet by 2020 and instead think about the social (how comfortable/uncomfortable will we be around so many robots?), legal (what if a city wants to declare itself a "robocar-free zone"?), and urban planning effects (how will infrastructure redevelopment change our existing cities in the 21st century?).

Driverless technology is about to reshape the real estate industry

2018-02-16T18:06:00-05:00

The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human history. Since the ancients, few things have delivered higher land values with more certainty than advances in transport, from roads to canals, railways to highways. [...] But now, the dawn of the driverless car—promising a utopia of stress-free commutes, urban playgrounds and the end of parking hassles—threatens to complicate the calculus for anyone buying property.

Bloomberg Technology explains how the real estate industry is already preparing for all that sweet, sweet valuable space to open up for development once the widespread arrival of driverless vehicles makes parked cars — and the blocked square footage they occupy — a thing of the past.

How should cities prepare for a driverless car future? Here are six tips

2017-03-14T20:47:00-04:00

The days of driving your own car are coming to a close: as many as seven million driverless cars could be making their self-directed way around major urban hubs across the U.S. within the next few decades. So what should cities do to keep up with these changes? This white paper by Arcadis gives six tips for city planners to prepare for the automated onslaught:

A study by transportation, economics and urban planning experts has found that ridesharing and ridesourcing services using autonomous vehicles (AV) could shift millions of drivers away from personal cars in major U.S. cities.

“Driverless Future: A Policy Roadmap for City Leaders,” the study prepared by Arcadis, HR&A Advisors and Sam Schwartz Consulting, shows that the move to ridesharing and ridesourcing services that don’t have a driver could cause a shift of up to 60 percent (3.6 million cars) from traditional to autonomous vehicles in the New York metro area alone over the next 15-20 years.

The Los Angeles metro area could see...

DRIVERLESS FUTURE: A challenge to shape the impact of autonomous transportation

2017-02-23T17:33:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by Blank Space.

The Driverless Future challenge seeks proposals that actively shape NYC’s response to driverless technology - will offer resources to help finalists transform their proposals into real companies and products.

Blank Space is proud to announce the Driverless Future challenge, a global competition to shape the impact of autonomous transportation in NYC, with a prize purse worth over $60,000 for the 4 top teams. The focus of the challenge is not on the cars themselves, but everything else: from parking solutions, to mass transit, accessibility, shipping, logistics, software, services, and new uses of roadways, intersections, and sidewalks. The primary goal is to create a launchpad for entrepreneurs, innovators, designers, engineers, architects and futurists to enact real change in New York City.

Blank Space is proud to partner with the NYC Mayor’s Office, New Lab, Fast Company, and AIA New York to host the challenge and support winning entries b...

Driverless cars hit the streets of Milton Keynes

2016-10-11T20:49:00-04:00

Driverless cars will trundle around the UK in their first public trials today. The demonstration of the autonomous electric vehicles is going to take place on the pavements of Milton Keynes. These tests will be the culmination of an 18-month research project which involved virtually mapping the town and updating regulations for driverless vehicles.

For the latest on advances in self-driving cars:

The view from inside a self-driving Uber: "the technology is not quite ready"

2016-09-15T13:06:00-04:00

During my ride, along a few miles of road near Uber’s testing facility in an old industrial neighborhood, the car performed admirably in many difficult situations...and I mostly felt pretty safe. However, several times the person behind the wheel needed to take control [...] it will take time for Uber and others to perfect fully automated driving. In fact, it remains unclear what needs to be done before it can be considered safe to remove humans from the driver’s seat.

How autonomous vehicles will accelerate suburban sprawl

2016-06-21T13:21:00-04:00

If Mr. Ratti’s projections are correct, and self-driving cars can radically reduce traffic without cannibalizing existing mass transit—the hypotheticals pile up—it is possible that self-driving cars will make many cities livable in a way they aren’t now. Imagine if every U.S. city had a hybrid public-private mass-transit system on par with those in New York City or Washington, D.C., comprised entirely of self-driving vehicles.

Germany's railway sees future in harmony with driverless cars

2016-05-13T12:46:00-04:00

Deutsche Bahn, a German-based railway and logistics company that transports about seven million train passengers every day ... plans to operate fleets of autonomous vehicles that could be ordered via an app, much people already do when they order a ride-hailing service like Uber. These driverless cars would be used to pick people up and bring them to public transit stations, solving the so-called “last mile” problem.

More news on automated vehicles and public transit:

Brute Force: Atlanta's endangered Breuer, Ban's disaster relief efforts, and a honking huge lobby for driverless vehicles on Archinect Sessions #63

2016-05-05T14:31:00-04:00

This week on the podcast, Donna, Ken and I discuss the uncertain future of downtown Atlanta's brutalist Public Library (the last building Marcel Breuer designed), how Shigeru Ban's relief efforts in Ecuador relate to his celebrity, and the emergence of a heavy-hitting lobbyist group for driverless cars in the US.

Listen to episode 63 of Archinect Sessions, "Brute Force":

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The campaign to save Marcel Breuer...

Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehicles

2016-04-28T12:51:00-04:00

Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a lobbying group with the express purpose of advocating autonomous driving. [...] "Self-driving vehicle technology will make America's roadways safer and less congested," [David Strickland, a former administrator of the NHTSA] said [...] "The best path for this innovation is to have one clear set of federal standards, and the Coalition will work with policymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitate the deployment of self-driving vehicles."

Lyft has also been in talks with General Motors (which is not a part of the Self-Driving Coalition) to put out its own group of autonomous for-hire vehicles. Models for Google's vehicles include both bespoke prototypes and Lexus SUVs, and Uber is developing its own testing grounds for self-driving cars in Pittsburgh.

Related on Archinect:

Beverly Hills wants to provide driverless cars as public transit

2016-04-19T13:15:00-04:00

the city's council voted unanimously to create a program to "develop autonomous vehicles as public transportation." The council's vision is for self-driving vehicles to provide "on-demand, point-to-point transportation," with citizens "requesting a ride using their smartphone." The shuttles wouldn't replace public transportation, but augment it [...] Phase one of the city council's program includes reaching out to companies like Tesla and Google to explore "potential partnerships."

Beverly Hills isn't the only city considering adding on-demand driverless vehicles to its transportation offerings – but given its small size, affluence, and well-maintained road infrastructure, it could be a prime zone for testing municipal adoption of autonomous vehicles.

As an on-demand public transit option, driverless vehicles could also be based on a different fare structure than the surrounding region's bus and train options, which use a fixed rate-per-ride fare, regardless of how far the trip. Theoretically, passenger rates for driverless car transit could be more directly proportional to the length of the trip, as they are for Uber and Lyft currently (although without the surge pricing).

Related on Archinect:

How prepared are American cities for the new reality of self-driving cars?

2016-04-07T19:51:00-04:00

Everything from sidewalks and curbs to streets, building designs, urban layouts, and living patterns will change as computers take the wheel. “We’re looking at the broader urban effects—and urban opportunities—of this technology,” says Illinois Tech architect Marshall Brown, one of the team members in the Chicago school’s Driverless Cities Project. “It’s in the news a lot, but nobody’s been discussing what it will actually do to cities.”

World's first fully autonomous taxi service will arrive in Singapore later this year

2016-04-06T12:58:00-04:00

[nuTonomy's] Level 4 autonomous vehicle "is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip;" all you have to do is provide a destination and (possibly) open and shut the doors. Google's autonomous cars, in contrast, are currently at Level 3, with limited self-driving automation [...] [nuTonomy] is building into [its] decision-making engine the ability for cars to actually violate the rules of the road when it's necessary to do so

"The Trumpeteers" – LACMA gets Lautner, AIA gets Spacey on Archinect Sessions #53

2016-02-18T18:27:00-05:00

We swear, no BIG or Trump on this episode. We discuss the donation of Lautner's breathtaking Sheats-Goldstein house, complete with jungle, nightclub and infinity tennis court, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to become the museum's first acquired piece of architecture (along with a sizable endowment for maintenance). The U.S. saw a major step forward into the realm of driverless cars, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google that its computers in autonomous vehicles could legally be counted as drivers, while the internet ogled Nissan's self-parking office chairs.

It's also that time of year again, when the AIA announces the keynote speakers for its National Convention (check out our podcast on last year's convention in Atlanta), and this year's threw us for a loop – first, actor Kevin Spacey was named as Day 1 speaker, and praised for his "disruption" of "appointment television". Neri Oxman will give the Day 2 keynote, a very solid choice if not somew...

U.S. says computers qualify as drivers in Google's autonomous vehicles; won't even have to go to the DMV

2016-02-11T12:54:00-05:00

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law [...] "NHTSA will interpret 'driver' in the context of Google's described motor vehicle design as referring to the (self-driving system), and not to any of the vehicle occupants" [...] Google told NHTSA that the real danger is having auto safety features that could tempt humans to try to take control.

The technological and legal impediments to making self-driving cars a reality on U.S. roads seem to be falling away – and as the regulatory market opens for business, so may more competition, with Google and California (which legalized self-driving cars in 2012) leading the way.

More on the development of autonomous vehicles:

The U.S. just got $4 billion to spend on self-driving cars

2016-01-15T12:47:00-05:00

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the government would remove hurdles to developing autonomous vehicles and set further guidelines for them within six months. [...] The government’s new support includes a request in President Obama’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year for $4 billion, to be spent over 10 years, to finance research projects and infrastructure improvements tied to driverless cars.

This is the first time the federal government has actively engaged in the regulation and implementation of driverless vehicles. State governments had previously been putting forth their own standards – see this handy wiki from Gabriel Weiner and Bryant Walker Smith at Stanford University, "Automated Driving: Legislative and Regulatory Action".

More on the road (ahem) to driverless vehicles:

Think driverless cars will reduce traffic? Not so fast.

2015-11-20T12:52:00-05:00

between population gains and the popularity of fully self-driving mobility services, we’ll see the total number of vehicle miles grow by 1 trillion. (Half of the 1 trillion it attributes to population growth.) For perspective, U.S. residents drove 3.1 trillion miles in 2014. KPMG expects this growth to come from trips taken by the very young and very old, who can be immobile only due to their inability to drive. By having access to a self-driving shuttle, a world of opportunity would open up.

We discuss the implications of autonomous vehicles in the built environment with Geoff Manaugh on our latest podcast episode, "In LiDAR We Trust".

For more on self-driving vehicles:

"In LiDAR We Trust" – Poking the subconscious of autonomous vehicles with special guest Geoff Manaugh, on Archinect Sessions #43

2015-11-19T17:34:00-05:00

Long-time Archinector and BLDGBLOG-runner Geoff Manaugh joins us on the podcast this week to discuss his piece on "The Dream Life of Driverless Cars" for the New York Times Magazine. Referencing work like that of London-based design studio, ScanLAB Projects, who use LiDAR (light + radar) technology to map how autonomous vehicles see and understand the built environment, Manaugh spoke with us about how these vehicles could potentially change the structures and sensations of our cities – and all the unknowns that accompany such speculation.

We also briefly touch on the recent news of Philadelphia becoming an UNESCO World Heritage site; the first city in the U.S. to receive such status. This episode is sponsored by BQE's ArchiOffice.

Listen to episode 43 of Archinect Sessions, "In LiDAR We Trust":

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Apple Podcast App (iOS): click here to subscribe
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The "algorithmic dreams" of driverless cars, and how they might affect real-world urban design

2015-11-12T15:43:00-05:00

The sensory limitations of these vehicles must be accounted for, Nourbakhsh explained, especially in an urban world filled with complex architectural forms, reflective surfaces, unpredictable weather and temporary construction sites. This means that cities may have to be redesigned, or may simply mutate over time, to accommodate a car’s peculiar way of experiencing the built environment...

"...The flip side of this example is that, in these brief moments of misinterpretation, a different version of the urban world exists...If we can learn from human misperception, perhaps we can also learn something from the delusions and hallucinations of sensing machines. But what?"

As self-driving cars gradually integrate themselves into urban society, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG spotlights emerging lidar (light + radar) scanning technologies that the cars use to navigate. He weighs the possible advantages and risks that these technologies — which still have their vulnerabilities — can pose on the built environment.

More recent news about driverless cars on Archinect:

Tokyo's 2020 Olympics won't have Zaha, but it's looking like there will be "Robot Taxi"

Dawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot function

Milton Keynes invests in driverless cars over public transit infrastructure

Can a loss of driver autonomy save lives?

Tokyo's 2020 Olympics won't have Zaha, but it's looking like there will be "Robot Taxi"

2015-11-02T19:24:00-05:00

Tokyo-based Robot Taxi ... is still on track to start field tests of its driverless taxi service in one region of Japan by the end of next March [...] The company, a joint venture between DeNA (one of Japan’s mobile internet pioneers) and ZMP (a robotics firm; tagline “Robot of Everything”) is not building its own cars from scratch. Instead, it’s focusing on adding driverless capabilities to existing cars and designing, creating, and marketing the taxi service.

More on the lead-up to Toky's 2020 Olympic Games:

Milton Keynes invests in driverless cars over public transit infrastructure

2015-10-10T05:03:00-04:00

Milton Keynes is currently the host city for a set of driverless car trials funded indirectly by the U.K. government — the most ambitious testing yet staged in the world. If all goes as planned, by 2018, Milton Keynes’ downtown will be served by an on-demand, publicly run system of 30 to 40 driverless two-seater pod cars, which will allow residents to travel between any two points in the city’s downtown without navigating or reacting to obstacles themselves.

For a glimpse of the LUTZ Pathfinder autonomous vehicles in action, check out the video below:

Self-driving trucks may hit UK roads next year (truckers included)

2014-08-19T13:33:00-04:00

Fleets of self-driving lorries could be tested on UK roads as soon as next year, according to reports. [...] The initiative would cut fuel consumption, backers said. However, the plan has been criticised by motoring groups which said such a fleet would be "intimidating" to other road users.

Driven Away: The Role of Urban Planning in a Car-Dependent Society

2013-07-26T17:46:00-04:00

“Ultimately people can’t get around conveniently because they are far away from everything.” And it is this observation that for me epitomizes the problem of the driverless car — it’s the worst kind of solutionism. By becoming so enamored with how technology might transform the car, we’ve neglected to adequately explore how getting rid of cars might transform how and where we live. We’d do well to heed Gorz’s exhortation to “never make transportation an issue by itself.”

It's a given that America continues to be a car-obsessed society despite the more painstaking reality of driving a car in many major cities of today. In The New York Times, editor Allison Arieff of SPUR points out that the U.S. is still fixated on selling, using and enhancing the car when commuters are carpooling more and buying fewer cars.

Furthermore, Arieff gets to the root of the problem by pointing out the negative impacts that a car-dependent culture has on public transportation and the even more complex issue of urban sprawl--both which are in need of more attention and innovation. As Arieff mentions in her article, cars aren't what make up the city--it's the city itself. Taking that into account, urban planners have a crucial role in making the Land of the Free less dependent on the car.

Do you agree with Arieff? What's your take on the issue? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments below.

California Legalizes Driverless Cars

2012-09-25T20:34:00-04:00

On Tuesday at Google’s headquarters, the governor of California, Jerry Brown, signed into law a bill to legalize driverless cars. The bill had overwhelmingly passed the State Legislature. Google, which has been building the cars, says they are safer because they nearly eliminate human error. They could also be more fuel-efficient, the company says, and place California and the United States at the forefront of automobile innovation.