2nd September 2016 - Driving Foreward



Every time I drive from South Africa’s East London to Zithulele, where my son and his family live, I imagine that it would be the perfect route for testing self-drive cars. The first few hundred kilometres are a beautiful highway; the latter part of the journey features potholes, speed bumps, steep hills, sharp bends and even a stretch of corrugated gravel. The speed limit changes regularly. Suicidal taxi-bus drivers overtake on blind rises then stop without warning to discharge passengers. Impatient racers try to overtake huge trucks as they lumber up the pass out of the Kei River. Cattle, goats and little black pigs wander onto the road at will. Perfect!


That thought came back to me again this week as I spotted a headline saying Ford planned to mass produce driverless cars by 2021, just five years away. So I Googled “Ford driverless cars 2021” expecting the Ford press release on the subject to be top of the list. It wasn’t on page one or on page two so, like many search engine users, I didn’t go further but instead linked to pages listed on the first page. (The other interesting observation about the search results is that the newspapers articles that broke the story first were listed way down below articles by the Johnny-come-lately journals.)


To date it’s been Google, Apple and ex-South African Elon Musk with his Tesla vehicles that have hogged the limelight. Now they have some interesting competition. Evidently Ford is planning vehicles which have neither steering wheels nor pedals as the company doesn’t believe humans can react quickly enough in an emergency. The cars will be gasoline / electric hybrids built to be taxis.


Ford isn’t the only one in the driverless limelight this week. Uber, one of whose shareholders is Toyota, signed a US$ 300 million deal with Volvo, the Scandinavian company owned by China’s Geely, to introduce driverless Uber vehicles on a trial basis on Pittsburgh roads later this year. Volvo’s XC90 SUV is also due to start self-driving trials in London, England, in 2017. Uber also recently purchased Otto, which is working with Volvo to create self driving delivery trucks which could be hailed by businesses for deliveries of their products using Uber-like technology. Perhaps these are the selfsame rigs that the British government is planning to have on their motorways before too long.


However, now it seems Pittsburgh is not to be the first city where automatic taxis are wheeled out. Last week American company NuTonomy launched a self-driving ride service in Singapore. The company, in partnership with the Singapore government, has been testing its technology in the country since April. Nutonomy expects to have a dozen vehicles in operation by the year's end. The initial cars are modified Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics with a driver in front who is prepared to take back the wheel and a researcher in the back seat who watches the car's computers.


In July BMW announced it was collaborating with MobilEye and Intel to produce a range of autonomous vehicles by 2021. Mobileye also announced a partnership with Delphi, another leading auto-parts supplier, to develop a near-complete autonomous driving system by 2019. The plan is to create a mass-market, off-the-shelf system that can be plugged into a variety of vehicle types, from smaller cars to SUVs. In another cross-industry collaboration, Fiat and Google are developing autonomous minivans.



That’s not all that’s happening in the auto industry. In my last musing on the energy sector, I discussed progress in moving to electric cars. This week the Netherlands joined Norway in legislating for sales of gasoline and diesel vehicles in the country to end by 2025. And Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that China might introduce compulsory quotas for carmakers requiring them to produce more electric vehicles or purchase carbon credits from their peers, in a bid to tighten emissions and support companies in developing what the government considers a strategic industry.



So, on my next journey to Zithulele, I plan to entertain myself by listing all the losers and winners over the next ten years as driverless electric vehicles take over the roads. Losers will start with professional drivers and traffic police officers made redundant; participants in petroleum product and biofuels supply chains also made redundant; insurers of motor vehicles as accidents drop; government fisci as fuel taxes and traffic fines dry up; OPEC countries and Russia;........and the winners?


Feedback from Musing Recipients


LW (in Sydney, Australia): One of the other possible losers of self-driving vehicles: domestic airlines? If I could have a sleeper car pick me up at my car at 10 pm and I wake up in Melbourne at my destination the next morning at 6 am I’d be a happy traveller. Domestic airlines may be forced to radically alter their business model on certain routes: make travel far more flexible without the massive lead times that exist now.


Also I’m wondering if Tesla isn’t sitting on an asset that nobody is talking about: possibly more real driving data than any other company. Their cars are all fitted with the necessary hardware for their autopilot system and they’re all constantly online, so Tesla may be a year or 2 ahead of all others in terms of having a massive dataset with which to ‘train’ the predictive machines that will be the brains behind the autonomous vehicles.


Also – when will the tipping point be: the point after which autonomous vehicles become commonplace and authorities look at the road accident data and say 99% (or whatever %) of fatalities are due to human error so humans are no longer allowed to drive? And once that happens I reckon speed limits will go out the window. Why travel 110 when 160 is safe. Cars will be part of some network where cars can warn each other via a new version of road network of imminent threats such as potholes and wildlife.


I’m thinking the place you really want to be in this race is the agency that operates the road network: designates speed limits via the network, does traffic optimisation etc.


NV (in South Africa): In terms of the taxi industry in SA: No jobs for crazed drivers, vehicles adhering to rules of the road, no direction indicators set for stopping anywhere, crazy solid line passing and of course speeding!. It could be a unique experience.


HS (a German in Bangkok): Recently I read an article that 8 out of 10 Chinese would prefer driverless cars whereas it is only 2 out of 10 Germans which doesn't surprise me, Germans enjoy driving by themselves and anyway believe that they are the best drivers.


SS (in the USA): It is NOT the auto industry that will drive all this. It will be the trucking industry, for the long-haul driving of the big rigs. The companies will see an immediate and large increase in profitability and a reduction in insurance and other costs as they automate. Plus, they will not be dealing with individual car owners and the per-unit pricing will be about the same. And the operating statistics are impressive so far, CLEARLY demonstrating driverless is much safer than the alternative. I read an article on stats three or four days ago…


AH (also in South Africa):  The big problem with using electricity for cars (and other uses) is not the electricity but its storage for when we need it. Battery technology still has a dinosaur approach and we still need to have that quantum leap that takes us from our current massive lead acid behemoths to innovative lighter, chemically or organically powered energy storage and accessibility facilities. 


BD (Argentina): The winners are surely the countries where the lithium triangle is based. Could Bolivia become the South American ‎Dubai by 2050? Or will hydrogen cells displace lithium before it ramps up?


PR (a doctor in South Africa): And one day medication vending machines, or drone home med delivery. And robotic caesarean? Only have to teach it once, and oil it once in a while.


Also in the Press


Of course thinking about these things makes one take a somewhat different view of events reported in the press. This past Monday saw two articles in our local business newspaper. In one the CEO of a platinum mining company was bemoaning the fact that platinum production in South Africa was going to “fall off the cliff” after 2020; he is right but the reason might be lack of demand for catalytic convertors rather than lack of investment in new mines.


On the opposite page an article described the impasse between the South African government and international oil companies; the latter can’t see any return on investing in upgrades to their ancient refineries to produce the cleaner fuels demanded by government. In the background I sensed the state oil company dusting off its project to build a mega refinery, a white elephant which would come into production around 2020 just as refineries around the world closed because of lack of demand.


Useful Links



Ford self driving plans


Bloomberg New Energy Electric Car Outlook


Uber and Otto


Self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh


And in Singapore


More on Singapore


BMW driverless plans


BMW and Tesla


Delphi and MobilEye


Chinese Electric Cars


Norwegian Electric Cars


Dutch Electric Cars


More Dutch Electric cars


And more on Dutch legislation


Renewable Energy Industry Overview


Bloomberg New Energy Report on Electric Vehicles


Nissan announced that charging points will outnumber petrol stations in the UK by 2020, at current rates of growth and decline, respectively.


Mostly about Tesla


Huge Battery Installation in Australia


Electric Cars Displace LNG Vehicles


UK Moves to Longer Trucks