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Smart Driving Cars episode 398-Musk changes Tesla narrative
Smart Driving Cars episode 398-Musk changes Tesla narrative
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About this episode
Elon Musk's recent shift in Tesla's narrative sparked a deep discussion on the podcast, comparing it to Jack Nassar's controversial tenure at Ford. Guests Michael Senna and Alan Kornhauser dissect the implications of Musk's focus on AI and robotics over traditional car manufacturing. They explore the challenges of making autonomous vehicles safe and the public's perception of driverless technology. The episode also touches on the affordability of mobility and the historical context of transportation evolution, making for a thought-provoking conversation about the future of driving.
Topics:
elon musk
tesla narrative
jack nassar
autonomous vehicles
public perception
affordability of mobility
transportation evolution
driverless technology
safety concerns
Elon Musk changes Tesla narrative. And it isn't a first in the automotive world according to Michael Sena. The consultant and co-author of The Real Case for Driverless Mobility joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for episode 398 of Smart Driving Cars. Plus ..Tesla's latest master plan, Zoox in Las Vegas, the humans vs. self driving safety debate and more. Tune in and subscribe.
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Welcome back to another edition of Smart Driving Cars.
We're glad you're here.
I'm Fred Fishkin, along with the faculty chair of autonomous vehicle engineering at Princeton
University.
Alan Kornhouser.
Hi, Alan.
Hey.
Good afternoon, Fred.
You're into year 54, did you say the, 54 there?
54 at Princeton.
This is actually 56.
Never mind.
And with us once again from Sweden is consultant and co-author of the real case for driverless
mobility, Michael Senna.
Hi, Michael.
Great to be with you.
Good evening.
Good evening from Stockholm.
And Michael, your latest musings on mobility is out with the headline Elon Musk Changes
Tesla's Narrative.
Jeff Nasser of Ford tried this 25 years ago, something along those lines.
Give us the overview here.
Well, we know Jeff Nasser was the CEO of Ford Motor Company for just a little over two
years.
He started his career with Ford in Australia.
He had moved there with his family from Lebanon when he was a little kid and grew
up in Australia.
He went to a technical college and had a stint with Ford before he came out.
Ford at one point had a pretty major operation in Australia.
He started his career with them when he was 21 years old.
And by the time he was in his early fifties, he was CEO.
He wasn't chairman of the board and CEO that the chairman of the board continued
to be with William Clay Ford Jr.
He decided that Ford was going to change its direction, that it was no longer going
to make cars, it was going to make computers on wheels.
And this became a signature event in the history of Ford and it became his contribution
to the world of automobiles.
At the turn of the millennium, it came in in 1999.
At that point in time, the mobile network operators were kings of the road.
They showed up at all of the automotive events and essentially walked around saying,
well, eventually we're going to own these cars, we're going to own these companies
because we're making so much money, we're so big and really people are only going
to be driving the cars in order to be able to use their mobile phones while they're in
the car.
So we're going to take over the automotive world.
I was there, I'm not making this up, this is real.
And most of the automotive companies said, well, that's interesting that you're saying
that but we think people actually drive cars because they like cars, not because they
want to be on the telephone while they're in there.
Jack Nassar took this more seriously.
He was an automotive guy.
He got to where he was because he was very much of an automotive person.
And when he became the CEO, he changed his tune.
He said, look, we've made automobiles but the world is changing and we have to change
with it and our cars in the future are going to be mobile phones on wheels.
And he walked the talk.
He made major investments in telematics.
He developed groups primarily in Great Britain.
John Archer, there are a number of people working with the communications,
mobile communications in cars.
And he also developed a joint venture with Qualcomm, which is based in California and San Diego.
And he was following through with this.
And I was working very closely with Volvo at the time.
We had started something called Wireless Car, which began with the people that I was working with
in the department that I work with.
That was the interface between the mobile networks and the vehicles.
And this was incorporated into the work that Ford was doing.
They set up the Premier Automotive Group and all of this communications was funneled into that group.
But Ford had a problem.
And the problem was that their explorer was having difficulty staying on the road.
And Ford, particularly Jack Nasser, decided that the problem was the tires.
And the tires were delivered by their longtime supplier, Firestone.
And he essentially threw Firestone under the bus.
Fortunately for him, somebody must have told him, but maybe he just wasn't listening.
That Bill Ford's mother was a Firestone.
And the Firestone family was very much a part of Ford.
And this didn't really sit very well.
So when criticism turned into real problems financially,
Jack Nasser just got thrown out, essentially thrown out.
And that was the end of the story that Ford was now going to change.
It's essence from being an automotive company to being a mobile phone on wheels company.
And I made this comparison for the specific reason.
25 years later, Elon Musk, in a talk with investors, principally investors, says,
we're not in the car business anymore or car business is really secondary.
We're in the AI and robotics business.
So that's where we're going to be.
And that's what we're going to do.
And all of our focus is going to be on this area.
And essentially, what I'm saying here in the musings is that it sounds good.
I mean, it's a nice story.
If you want people to believe that you're going to move from one trillion
and now in order for him to get a salary that he's been promised
to an eight trillion dollar company by 2030, you need to have a story
that's a little bit better than what Ford has as a 40 billion dollar company
that sells for three times as many cars as Tesla.
So it sounds like a good story, but someone's going to have to make the cars.
And I believe that Tesla will continue making cars.
Whether Elon can hold his attention.
And this article, by the way, came before the trillion dollar story
where he's going to make a trillion dollar in salad, trillion dollars in salaries.
Salary, if he meets certain goals and one of those goals is that it becomes
an eight trillion dollar company from being a two trillion dollar company today.
You know, the musings, the previous musings was Elon Musk compared to Ford.
The man, Henry Ford, not Ford, the company.
And this one took another little detour into the into the world of automotive.
Comparing, not really comparing Jack Nassar to Elon Musk,
because I don't think that's a fair comparison.
They're two very different people.
But the idea of changing a direction of a company from what made it what it is
to having another story and hoping that that story turns into
what the person who's giving that story or relating that story thinks it will be.
I don't think that's going to happen, you know.
Tesla's in the business of making cars.
It's not in the business of making robots that dance like like Elon Musk dances.
If you've ever seen one of those robots dancing, you know what I'm talking about.
Or if you've ever seen Elon Musk dancing, whenever he's doing one of his routines,
you know what I'm talking about.
So that's that's what musings is about this this time around.
It's a great read.
We encourage people to take a look at Michael L.
Santa dot com and along these lines, I suppose, to some extent, Tesla is out
with its updated master plan.
And some key phrases were highlighted, Alan, in a note that you had sent along.
Autonomy autonomy must benefit all of humanity that
and everyone deserves access to these opportunities and technological growth.
And and the key phrase for me that's in there is the affordability phrase,
because I guess that's sort of the
for some reason, if I look at what the opportunity really is of of automation
or even the whole industrial revolution.
You know, it's been to do things that were unaffordable and turn them into affordable
things. And you know, transformation from unaffordable to affordable
is one that that that at least in some instances, if not in many instances,
leads to enormous increase in scale.
And with the increase in scale, then tends to imply that
that the more people are benefiting, more entities are benefiting.
And and I think to me, one of the real fundamental struggles of mobility
is is is to try to make it a level playing field.
And and what's happened over the past
hundred or so years in pride and possibly even before that, you know,
previous 200 years or 500 years or thousands of years.
I mean, you know, you didn't have much mobility if you didn't have a horse.
And, you know, maybe a horse isn't all that I don't know.
I haven't really looked at it, but it must have been a burden
on some family incomes in the 1750, 1700s, 1500s.
And unless you had that, you know, you were walking
and then, you know, some folks put some things together in cities
to allow some things to happen.
But, you know, a large portion of that was to make it affordable.
You know, trolley rides were a nickel, then a dime.
In fact, you know, some of the interesting things when one looks
at the evolution of electric traction, trolleys
is is is, in fact, you know, at the at the times,
those that were doing the the investment, the deployments
were looking to create legislation
to ensure that the fares remained a nickel or a dime
and weren't reduced by society for that,
simply because if you look at the economics of the darn things,
the opportunities of affordability
was that the demand was essentially
infinite or really big
at the at the low price.
And because it the the implied operation
was that you would have shared vehicles
that, in fact, the productivity of those vehicles
in terms of carrying more and more people was
was a real opportunity.
So that, in fact, you know, your revenue goes up
at the fixed rate as a function of of number of customers you have.
But because you pack the people into the same
number of vehicles operating, the operating costs
were really pretty flat.
There was a fixed one, but then it remained flat.
So I mean, you really like that
because when those two suckers cross, the money flows
as you get further and further down there.
Whom? OK.
Now, the unfortunate part that happened to to the electric
traction folks or the subway folks or all the people that build
all the subways in New York City, they were competing companies.
You know, I mean,
well, the way they increased the volume was was they sold land along the way.
It was actually it was actually a land deal.
And they generated they generated the demand out of that.
And that if the demand continues up and your costs are flat,
but your revenue is fixed per unit.
Woo, I mean, I mean, that's that's like the best business
business plan you could ever think of.
But unfortunately, after World War One, there was inflation.
Yipes.
In dollar terms, you know, not
correct for inflation, because if you now have a constant fare
because you've been beating on on on your representatives,
that put laws in there, don't raise the fare.
Don't raise the.
Yeah, don't don't lower the fare.
Keep the fare the same.
Don't lower the fare because if we have greater productivity,
the fair should go lower.
Don't keep it there so we can move on.
Inflation hits.
Who? Yipes.
I need some help.
The bucks that I'm getting don't go far enough
because not my costs and those dollar terms that are going up
because of inflation.
You know, once that curve goes up faster than what the
the productivity curves comes in there in terms of revenue,
then now you're losing money again.
And then you have to have the public jump in there and say,
well, OK, I'll take this bank one,
when that bankrupt one put it together and that that deed.
This is what we went through it, you know,
for the freight railroad industries.
Fifty years ago.
Mournful, you know, 1975, when I got into it.
That's creation of Conrail, April 1st.
And I guess, I guess 1976, when it finally got done,
what that's taken seven bankrupt railroads,
putting them into one and fusing it with government money
and then hoping for the best.
You know, I testified, I did have more upside potential
than downside risk.
I was optimistic at the time.
And in fact, we pegged it in the summer of 1975 as required.
And I think it was six billion instead of the one billion
that the U.S. put in.
I think when everybody did the adding up of what it finally
took them to make Conrail profitable was six billion.
So count one for me.
But that's when we had a lot of fun with that one.
And we thought it was good as we talked about, I think,
and another one of these things,
we thought it was going to become the first
transcontinental railroad, which we came within two weeks
of that thing, making it into a NAFTA road,
not only transcontinental, but in North-South of boom,
it was going to be great.
We argued it was going to be great
for shippers in Northeast.
Now you have a real partner to be able to do
your logistics as opposed to having one fight against the other
to nickel and dime them into the lowest price.
I mean, it just depends how you want to run your businesses.
But I guess we're not going to have that with the Union
Pacific and the North folks Southern and probably CSX.
And I don't know, Burlington, Northern or who knows,
whatever will watch it evolve.
How did we get there?
Huh?
How did we get there?
How do we get there?
No, how did we get to see access from where we were?
Oh, I'm discussing because because it all has to do with,
you know, the evolution of transportation companies
as to whether or not what they're doing.
And I guess part of the affordability
of the transportation companies.
I mean, what made what made electric traction
was the affordability.
What allowed that?
What allowed the dispersion
was the affordability of mobility.
When that happened, you would have stayed concentrated.
You know, you wouldn't have built that.
You wouldn't have built the amusement parks
at the end of the lines
so that you can get the people traveling out there
during on Sundays
while people were hawking land along the way.
And, you know, I don't know, at least some people
have suggested that that caused the dispersion,
the suburbs of dispersion.
And then, of course, then the automobile comes in
and really allows that for the Levitons of this world.
And the Levitons get replicated here, here, and here.
And we're still replicating Levitons, I guess,
or, you know, the equivalent thereof sort of.
But it's the important thing to counter
this continuous argument
that says the cars that caused sprawl
is cars did not cause sprawl.
Enabled sprawl.
It didn't even enable sprawl.
Sprawl was enabled by, as you said,
sprawl initially was enabled by trains.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Creating suburbs.
The suburbs didn't just happen
because people wanted to enjoy the greenery.
They happened because the cities were such crap,
living in the cities where the streets were filled
with urine and, you know, the dead people matter.
They sold to New Jersey that we then grew great tomatoes
and corn from.
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know.
The first suburb was Brooklyn.
And that was before the bridge was built.
They left, they left New York
because New York was such a shithole.
Poophole, we have to say, Poophole.
Yeah, okay, you can.
That's a four letter word too, you know, so.
You can blip that out, but it was.
I mean, you know, apparently there are things
that are happening in today's politics
that are making our cities poopholes again,
but that's another story.
So, I mean, people left the rich left
because it's stunk in Chicago,
the middle class left because it was fever,
yellow fever in downtown New York or Manhattan
where people were living.
And they moved out to places
where they could live and breathe.
And then it gradually happened, you know,
the enabled fairies first, train second,
nobody drove cars over to,
well, maybe they did initially over to Brooklyn
and back into Manhattan,
but there were enough trains
and other things to allow that.
So, you know, this idea that cars enabled movement,
people didn't need to go anywhere
until the Industrial Revolution.
They worked on a farm, they lived it,
they worked where they were
and they didn't have to go any place.
Yeah.
So...
Yeah, the Industrial Revolution really required,
I mean, it did a lot of automation,
but it required the bringing together
of people to collaborate in the production
of large volumes of goods, okay?
I mean, that's really, I mean, that's to me
what that did and have to bring them together
then you either create the company co-towns
of Pennsylvania, RevLock and RevLock and Locke,
RevLock, Culver.
One is an Anthem, is the whatever the other one,
you know, there are two little towns in Pennsylvania
that are both, you know, Anthrocyte co-towns,
like the Anthrocyte co-town you grew up in,
I mean, it was like...
From Scranton down to Mott Town.
Yeah.
Yeah, and...
Yeah, the whole works.
But the other thing is that
there's another little piece in there as well.
The Industrial Revolution began with factories
that were driven by natural, natural power,
primary water power.
Water, you sure?
And the change from water power to electricity was major
and many from water power to steam to then electricity
was a major change.
Yeah.
Which had enormous impact on the way that
where factories could be,
they didn't have to be next to water anymore.
They didn't have to be...
Falling water, you needed falling water,
not just, you know, you needed to hire the better, you know.
Created by dams, you know.
Well, some of them, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, here in Sweden, most of the,
our power until the 50s and 60s
was principally hydroelectric power.
Yeah.
And then Sweden became a major nuclear power.
So by the time the 80s came along,
we had 50, 50, 100 hydroelectric, 50% nuclear power
and no coal, absolutely no coal whatsoever.
Until the environmental parties decided
that nuclear power was bad
and we have to close the nuclear plants
and like Germany, for example,
ended up buying most of its power
from the form of gas from Russia.
And now, you know, we're living with the impact of that.
Yeah, so if we look at the Lawrence Livermore energy charts,
which I love greatly,
and maybe Fred will put one up to show people,
almost show people what it looks like for Sweden
or the United States.
I mean, or you look at those energy flow,
which is from how, what the source of the energy
is on one side and the flow to the consumption
of the energy on the other side.
I just think that probably some of the best graphics
made simply because you just look at that
and really see what it is,
the balance in balance from various sources
to do the various things that one has to do in society,
move people, produce stuff for people,
keep their homes air conditioned and heated
and I don't know what the other one is,
but they're sort of another one.
To me, when one looks at that,
maybe we should have one to show.
Really, to me, interesting thing about that
is how much of the energy we consume
goes into doing the things that we wanna do,
which is make aluminum cans,
move from A to B and then airplane to that D
and all the heat our homes
and what is lost in inefficiency?
I mean, it shows that in gray.
And the gray stuff,
some of the gray.
Yeah, we have a chapter in our book on that
because we really want people who sort of have
the, who wanna look at electricity
as a way to propel vehicles.
You're converting the energy first of all
into electricity, so you have more than 50% losses
of the energy right there,
then you take the electricity
and you put it in the vehicle,
which of course isn't anywhere near perfectly efficient
and you have enormous losses there.
So you have losses in the generation of electricity,
the losses in the,
and you say to yourself,
is electricity really a good idea here?
And we just throw that out
so people can put it in their own brains
and think about this problem.
It is not as clear cut
as some would have suggested it is.
That's all we were saying in book one, right?
I think, I mean, if I recall.
One of the things that must concluded
in his latest master plan was the energy business
at Tesla along with the taxis and things.
Yeah, he's working on it
and it's good that people work on that thing
because of course, if we can get to a point
at which one has free energy,
I mean, I guess Caveman must have been out there
and saying, man, I want free energy.
We're still wanting free energy.
I mean, it's sort of a constant of life.
The cheaper you can make that thing,
the better off you're gonna be.
And I guess this is how we got into this thing.
To me, what the vision for it, what I think,
well, what sort of Tesla's been,
but sort of either certainly our point
is that the affordability of this thing
is the thing we're trying to look at
and take advantage of.
And of course, I think as they spell out
in their fourth generation view
is how affordability can improve the quality of life
of many people.
And if we look at some of the people on this planet,
in this country, in this community,
they could use some improvement in their quality of life
and the way to do that is at least we think
is through affordability and affordability of mobility
because mobility does provide opportunity.
We only go to places, I'll say,
we only go to places where we think
we're gonna improve our location, time, utility.
That's benefit to us.
That's why we go to get benefit
and we're not gonna be there.
You went to the opera today, Michael,
because you thought, I hope you thought
you'd be a happier camper.
Okay, now I might say opera, man, that's boring,
holy hell, I'm never gonna show up there.
I mean, I wouldn't be, we're different.
I mean, it's great.
I do like opera sort of a little bit.
But most people don't like it because they never.
But he likes the stillers more.
I like the stillers.
I'm going to go to the stiller home opener tomorrow.
I'm gonna get on a road of 530
and hopefully show up there at about 11 o'clock
and walk across the bridge
and go to the stiller home opener and get a suntan.
It is going to be like, wow,
instead of minus 900 degrees.
Oh, you know, it's only time to go.
For your listeners who didn't grow up in Pittsburgh,
the stillers is the stealers.
But we say we call them stillers.
Yeah.
Okay.
The stillers are a family of comedians on television,
but the stealers play football.
Yeah, oh, they try to.
Oh, boy, do we love Aaron Rodgers.
Back to some of the headlines here.
Yeah, back to reality here.
Okay.
Tesla has received approval
to begin RoboTaxi service testing
in Nevada on public streets.
And while that's happening,
Amazon Zooks is now offering RoboTaxi rides
to the public in Las Vegas,
not charging for them yet in their vehicle.
It's this toaster-shaped thing
that with no pedals or steering wheel.
So they're-
Yeah, great.
I'm glad that Nevada says it's okay.
I don't know who knows what Nitz is gonna say.
I mean, how many of them,
as long as they don't make,
I don't know, 2,500 of them, they're good.
If you limit your forever production to 2,500, I guess,
you might as well make it a luxury good
because not too many people
are gonna be able to take advantage of it.
So you might as well go after the luxury market
going after the-
But this has been a bit of a problem,
what you just said.
I listened to something the other day
by someone who was, who should be,
actually I was listening in on a,
on Friday in a standards group.
And someone talked about this
that Nitz has finally allowed
the American companies to do
what foreign companies have been doing
for so many years.
And this is a major breakthrough.
And I tried it and I explained this in the,
in one of the issues of the dispatcher
before the dispatcher became two news, newsletters.
This is not actually the case.
There has never been a prohibition
on the part of Nitz for companies
to do what foreign companies were doing,
what the exception, so-called exception was
cars that are manufactured in Europe
are not compliant
with the federal motor vehicle safety standards
in the United States.
Just like our cars here are not compliant
with the regulations that are set up
for type approval in Europe.
So what Nitz has allowed is companies
taking their cars as they are
into the United States
to test certain parts of those vehicles
before those cars have gone through the process
of being adapted to be compliant
with the federal motor vehicle standards.
It's like Europe saying,
you can take your Chevy into Germany
and you can test that car
without being type approved
in order for you to understand what you need to do
to have that car working in Germany
so that you can then make the modifications
of being type approved.
This has also been used by companies like,
yeah, small, we have a small company
called Koenigsegg here in Sweden.
And it makes a very small number of cars.
Those cars can be driven,
taken into the United States
and under what you're referring to
as the luxury possibility of taking a car
and with a low number of vehicles
without meeting all of the motor vehicles,
the federal motor vehicle safety standards.
Now, if it sounds like we're finally opening up
the United States market for United States cars
because we prevented them
from doing what we allowed the European companies to do,
that's not the case.
The American cars are made from the beginning
to be compliant with federal motor vehicle safety standards.
Now you take Zooks.
Zooks is not compliant with any standards.
It's not gonna meet any of the requirements
for type approval in Europe.
And it certainly doesn't meet
the motor vehicle safety standards in the United States
because it doesn't have a steering wheel.
Very simple, right?
So you can't put a vehicle on the road
in the United States to be operational
unless it meets the federal motor vehicle safety standards
unless, and this is where you come in,
this is where California has come in
and this is where Las Vegas has come in,
unless the motor vehicle operation,
the state says we're going to allow this to be done
in a test mode, but you have to fulfill the requirements
in that test mode that we have established.
So California said, you can test,
Waymo, any company, you can test your vehicles here,
but you've got to comply with our requirement
to report every single incident
that occurs with that vehicle.
And this is where Tesla's had a problem
because Tesla hasn't,
Tesla has, they've gotten the approval,
but they haven't made any attempt
to provide the information that they need.
And what Tesla said, and I agree with them,
Tesla says, but our cars aren't,
they're not driverless cars.
Our cars aren't driverless.
We don't tell people that they can sit in the back seat
and we don't let our cars be driven around in California
without people sitting behind the wheel.
Yeah, yeah.
So we don't think we need to comply with that requirement
because even though we're selling a full self-driving car,
which they're saying they are,
essentially our cars must have somebody
behind the steering wheel.
They have to be paying attention.
If they don't pay attention,
the car isn't going to let you drive it
even though you're in full self-driving mode.
So what's the problem?
And that's been the mis,
sort of the lack of communication on that point.
But it doesn't help when, you know,
when people make other kinds of statements
that simply, that somehow imply that,
well, now, Zooks of course doesn't have a steering wheel,
but if that's okay because the car can drive itself
and it's safe and, you know,
let's see how it works without a driver,
without a steering wheel.
It would be a lot better.
If this obfuscation that's occurring,
but particularly generated by NHTSA,
because it's not doing its job properly,
it's not doing what it should be doing.
So taking this and saying,
no, let's be responsible about this.
Let's really try to understand what is the reason
why we want driverless cars on the road in the first place?
Let's get to the base,
you know, the fundamental basis of what it is
that we're trying to do with driverless cars.
You, Waymo, are telling your people,
the reason that you're doing this,
the reason you're spending billions of dollars
on driverless cars is to make them safer.
It doesn't help if there are people out there saying,
the only reason for having driverless cars
is because they're going to be safer
because there's absolutely no proof, none whatsoever,
that driverless cars are safer.
In fact, I put these numbers out there.
If you take all the accidents that Waymo's had
and you compare them with all of the mileage
that cars have driven,
Waymo's actually, their rate of accidents is higher
than the standard rate of accidents
with all cars on the roads.
It's just this, that's, you know, the numbers are there.
But somehow Waymo's got this story out there saying,
you know, we're 88% safer than human-driven cars
and because we've had X number of accidents
versus these number of accidents,
and they're comparing, they're not comparing their vehicles
to the total number of miles or kilometers
that are being driven by all of the cars
and all of the roads.
So they've taken a little slice and said,
oh, we compare ours with just this,
and based on that, we're 88% more safer
than cars driven by humans.
Well, come on, let's forget the whole discussion.
Michael, okay, I want to argue with you
about 18 points that you've just gone through.
One, I think is with respect to the numbers,
I think, you know, US has some sort of limit,
2,500 or 2,000 or whatever the number of cars
you can put out there in a road
to do your various testings of the various things
that don't mean federal motor vehicles.
And I think that that's part of the reason
that's one of the things that they're doing,
they're using, they can go out there and do that.
But of course, you know, to do more vehicles
then you've got to change them.
You either have to change your design to conform
or you have to change federal motor vehicles standards.
I mean, the federal motor vehicle standards
need to be looked at, okay, because those things,
I mean, they might as well just say
we need to have a horse out there
in front of the vehicle.
And, you know, I know it's not true.
Okay, so I was over, I'm sorry, it's not true.
I was being mean to FMCSA, but come on.
I mean, guys, you know, do we really need
a rear view mirror instead of a camera
with a screen that shows what the image is?
You know, I don't want to go into it, whatever,
but somebody should say, hey, this is,
we're in 2025, we're about to be 2026.
You guys are still in 1950 or 42 or 27 or I don't know,
but you know.
I could not disagree more.
I could not disagree.
The people who are doing,
the people who are actually doing the work,
working on those standards know,
they know what they're doing.
They know how to get to the level of safety
that's required, I do not agree
that there's a-
Level of safety that's required.
What is the level of safety that's required?
I mean, now we're going to talk about safety, okay?
And to me, the problem about safety
is misbehavior by the human in the loop.
Okay, it is misbehavior of the human in the loop.
And we have not dealt with that human in the loop at all.
And what we should probably do
is get that human the heck out of the loop, okay?
I mean, the human is a very frail, very limited
and what that human can do.
And of course that human is, oh man,
I mean, do not take my freedom away from me.
Don't take that steering wheel out of my hand.
Don't take that gas pedal off of my foot.
We've had this discussion.
I know.
I do not agree.
Okay, well, you know, it's great.
I mean, we don't need to agree on this one, okay?
It's not the reason why I'm working on driverless mobility.
The reason I'm working on driverless mobility
is not to put a lot of taxi drivers or bus drivers
out of work, that's not the point.
The point is-
Did I say that was my point?
I didn't say that was my point either.
But to take the driving out of me as owner of my car,
the person in command, thou shalt not ever even think
that I'm not doing the right thing.
I mean, come on, never mind.
Very good.
Hasn't Madison Avenue sold that to me?
I didn't come out of the womb, you know, just thinking that.
Do, do, do, do, do.
I mean, I gotta have an E type.
I gotta whom to do.
I don't know.
Yes, we are going in the weird places.
One of the headlines you included in the newsletter, Alan,
is from the Harvard Business School.
Why people blame self-driving cars more than human drivers?
Yeah, I think that this thing, this discussion leads in.
I read the paper.
Don't just, just don't, just don't, this isn't that in.
You know, I mean, we didn't give you all the,
all the good stuff.
Michael, this is a new one.
Please, those, those, those of you
that, that, that, that look at the, the E letter,
you can read the cliff notes, okay, of the article,
but really take a look at the article.
The article is actually a very, to me, a very good look
at this really, sort of, hang on, hang on a second.
I canceled my subscription that I had
for 25 years, 30 years, actually 30 years
to Harvard Business Review,
because it just got to be so
un-business-like, so much, you know,
canceled culture-like.
What are you talking about?
What was it?
I just found, I found a good article
in Harvard Business Review.
Yeah, who is it?
Who is it?
What is it?
Fritas, he's, I think he's an,
he's an assistant professor there.
And I just thought it was a very thought,
I'm not allowed, I mean, I understand,
I don't like Hobbit either, you know.
I'm a Princeton, I mean, of course we don't like,
I've Harvard sucks t-shirts, you know?
I mean, you know.
I live there for 18 years, I know what it's like.
Whatever.
Is that for hockey or football, Alan?
In Cambridge.
So what is, what was the point of this Harvard professor
writing, saying that people distrust,
because, you know, where does that come from?
You know, it's, he's looking at the,
at the issue of, of, of perception
versus liability of an automated vehicle
being the cause of a crash.
So it's all hypothetical.
It's not-
It is in a sense, it is in a sense hypothetical,
but looking at other, other areas
in terms of, of other places where in fact,
perception is not necessarily reality.
And how do you then match up, you know, why?
Because, because the, the thought is,
is that if there's a crash then
between an autonomous vehicle and a non-autonomous vehicle,
the knee-jerk reaction is going to be
that it's the autonomous vehicle's fault.
So this is percept, this is his,
his theory is not based on any fact
because there is no fact, there's no,
there's nothing for him to base his opinion on.
He looks at surveys.
He looks at that.
He tries to provide substance into this question.
Okay, so the survey that he,
the only surveys that I'm, that I'm aware of
are the surveys that AAA has done,
saying, how do you, how would you feel
about driving or riding in a car without-
Those kinds of surveys.
I'm not sure that exactly, but there've been others,
there've been others in terms of the whole perception
with respect to the situation in Florida
where Tesla was found by the jury to be,
to have liability associated with a guy is,
I don't know if he was drunk,
but he certainly had his foot on the accelerator
all the way up into the crash.
And killed a woman and, you know,
now, yet the public perception on that is that,
yeah, no, it was the fault of the automated vehicle
that it was Tesla's fault on that.
Yeah, that's a good example of a,
the media took this, people who are writing about this,
people who are putting this in front of other people
who are going to read it
without having any understanding at all
about what the actual situation was.
What, what is it?
We're choosing, we're choosing to have another fish to fry.
Choosing to have, choosing to have another fish to fry.
Or a fish to fry as opposed to one kind of fish
versus another kind of fish.
Well, what's, what advantage does somebody have
of getting an article written or published
by having a view that says, well, that the person is wrong,
that Tesla was-
And because, because they're client,
the clientele of the entity, you know, sort of, you know,
is that, I mean, you know,
it's a continuation of the flow of information
in one direction or another,
which is either implicit or explicitly biased.
Okay.
And so a lot of us playing that, you know,
if you're going to watch Fox News,
you're going to love Trumpy Poo.
If you're going to watch MSNBC,
you're going to hate Trumpy Poo.
I don't know.
Yeah.
You know, it's that sort of thing.
And they try to deal with this,
with this perception problem.
They're more, they're more trying to,
to focus the problem and define the problem
than they are to really do a solution.
Hey, before you can find a solution to the problem,
you have to do a good job.
You know, first of all,
stating what the problem is.
Yeah, exactly.
And so the point of the summit,
I didn't read the article.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd like to read the article
to get a sense of what this person is saying.
You'll have it.
You'll have it and you'll enjoy it.
The problem, I don't know if I will.
I think you will because the problem,
the problem as I've seen it is
not only Elon Musk and Waymo,
but everyone who has been involved
in the process of developing driverless vehicles
has never addressed the main issue.
Who wants it?
And why do they want it?
So the answer to the first question,
who wants it?
Nobody wants it.
Nobody, nobody,
nobody is asking for driverless cars.
That's a given.
No one is asking for driverless cars.
Very few of any.
Yes, I agree.
I agree.
I agree.
Okay.
Now, so why is anybody working on driverless cars?
What is it?
What's the reason behind a Waymo spending billions
of dollars on developing and buying cars and doing this?
What is it?
What's behind it?
They claim safety.
They claim safety.
They're not in the safety business.
Waymo.
They claim safety.
I don't care whether you think
they're in the safety business or not.
I think you read all this stuff.
They claim that it's safety.
Yeah, but so far, they haven't proven that it is.
Not with anything that they've done.
They have not.
Well, they may not have proven it to you,
but they must have proven it to themselves
that think that they're gaining on safety
and safety.
I don't even know how you prove it.
Yeah, well, you prove it by saying,
you gotta compare apples and apples.
They can't.
Waymo is not driving on the same roads
where Tesla can drive all of their cars today.
Absolutely.
So therefore, you can't even do the comparison.
Exactly.
Alan, also in the newsletter from the city,
where are driverless cars going in New York City?
I guess you answered the question with another question.
Yeah, I mean, I think it says how much some folks
have spent to try to get them there,
which is an amount of money.
It's not all that much money,
but they still haven't, it doesn't answer it.
Okay, but you can read it.
And I guess I keep wondering why,
I know Frank Sinatra is a reason.
Okay.
Because of course it's a perception
that some people think it's a law from God
or something like that.
If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.
Okay, so I mean, if you're a believer in that
and you're trying to make it anywhere and everywhere,
then sure, go for the city.
Couple of other quick headlines.
I mean, how long are you gonna live?
I'm trying, I think these companies,
what I'm trying to do is do it somewhere,
deliver an ounce of public good,
of value to somebody.
Okay.
You know, as opposed to,
oh, mom, look, no hand selfie to do.
Mother D, look at the thrill.
Oh, I got a ride.
But they don't like me because that's,
you know, what else have you done?
And you can't solve the safety problem back
to the safety problem.
I'll put in my word, Michael put in his word,
we probably cut it and it ended up
on the cutting room floor or something.
But my word on the safety thing,
the safety thing is the human in the loop.
I keep saying that 90% of my opinion,
sorry, 90% of the crashes on a daily basis
are due by human misbehavior.
And guess who's the last person
that you're gonna take that steering wheel
out of their hands?
That's the people that are misbehaving.
So therefore you can go get everybody
and you've done nothing until you get them
on a safety end.
So I don't know,
I argue with my students about it.
They treat me nicely.
I like them, I like my students.
Couple of other quick headlines on
from the New York Times, you have in the newsletter,
taxi driver runs over a man who once escaped custody
on a city bus.
Did he do it on purpose?
I mean, you know,
you can read the article.
Crews drag the woman whatever number of feet,
60 feet, 20 feet and gets closed down.
Another mode of mobility drags a person,
what are they saying there, 10 miles kills them.
I don't think the woman in the crews thing died.
I hope she didn't.
I hope she's well.
I wish her well.
What's happened to the taxi industry in New York?
I don't know.
Newspapers and the San Francisco Chronicle
certainly isn't out there saying, shut it down.
It's so unsafe.
How could it happen?
Where in the heck's the perception here?
And on top of that, the most grueling thing about this
is a discussion about the person who got killed.
He'd gotten fame apparently a year or so before
because he basically escaped from Rikers Island prison
by hopping on a bus.
I mean, using mobility to escape hopping on a bus.
But when you read, why was he in Rikers?
Because he didn't pay a $36 taxi fare.
What are we doing as a society putting people in Rikers
for not paying a $36 taxi fare?
When I don't wanna suggest that maybe on Wall Street,
there are a lot of people doing a lot of stuff
that I have probably a heck of a lot of that Wall Street,
but a heck of a lot worse than not paying a $36 taxi fare
and not ending up in Rikers.
So, I mean, what is, I mean, can you imagine
not being able to pay a $36 taxi fare,
getting arrested, throwing, whatever,
then having to wear with all the walk out of there
and hop on a bus and go try to live your life
and then getting hit by a taxi and drag 10 miles
and that's the way it ends.
Oh my goodness.
I don't know, this one to me just rattled me
and rattled me in terms of what's being done on one end.
Some people are trying to provide this mobility
for a lot of money and billions of dollars
and whatever they're gonna do
and really not even doing it for,
I don't know, we still have to ask why they're there
and then going on and on, whatever, anyway,
it just rattled me because I was rattled
because of the other thing that you're about to mention now
which is the plane crash in Colorado.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
You did include that here in the newsletter, Alan.
Yeah, and there was a plane crash in Colorado
last Friday and of course that totally rattled me this week
because of course my longtime friend,
former student, class of 84, Rob Hill, passed away in that
and Rob for years had come to my classes
and talked about the cellular auctions
at the turn of the century and auction theory
and we just had a ball in that class
talking to students about auctions and computer auctions
and various kinds of auctions and whatever
and always found a way to come to the class
and I think he did tell us when he was in class last spring.
He always told the students, what you wanna do
is really follow your dreams and do fine work
is what you wanna do because then it's not work
and really an inspiration to who,
I don't know how many of my former students
and in fact, he told us last spring
that he was going back to his initial inspiration
which what he loved to do was be a flight instructor
and I don't know the details,
there is a memorial service for him on Monday in Colorado
and I think I have a link to it
if any of you can attend the new robber
that sat in this class that we had with him
and this is the second of the Hill brothers
to pass away much too early age.
His older brother Andy passed away,
I don't know, 10 years ago, cancer.
He was one of the early employees at ALK
had I think, and then went to Microsoft,
had a badge less than a thousand at Microsoft.
Retired at Microsoft, I mean after a nice career
and of course, if you're badge less than a thousand,
I'm sure he did well and became a state senator
in Washington state and did wonderful things
for the state of Washington and unfortunately passed.
And his youngest brother Wayne,
who is still alive, condolences to you Wayne,
he was also an employee at ALK
so I had close interaction with all three brothers
of that family and now we've lost two of them
so I was rattled this week.
On a somewhat brighter note, Alan,
we wanna I guess congratulate Kelly Funkhouser
who's been in the past, she was at Consumer Reports,
now a senior product manager at NVIDIA.
Yeah, great, I mean, I'll have a great ride.
I mean, we've had a couple of people
that we've been close to it in video,
had a great ride there and I'm sure you can add
to that all the good work that that company does.
Before we wrap things up, Alan,
a little update on progress with handy rides.
Yes, soft launch last Thursday,
it was with virtual riders, burned a lot,
upcoming continuation of the soft launch
with addition of real riders from the non-emergency
medical riders and high quality nutrition riders
and also maybe some high quality affordable housing riders
and maybe even a few friends and family.
So things are going well.
Things are moving.
Things have been, things have been,
I don't know, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Things have begun to move.
We'll see.
So that will do it for this episode.
Michael, thank you again for all of your insights
and another great discussion.
Love those.
And these are all challenging topics
and it's not easy, that's why we talk about them,
that's why, yeah.
The website for more again is michaelelsenna.com.
You can always find us at smartdrivingcar.com.
My tech reports are at textination.com.
Thank you for watching or listening and please stay safe.
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