The headline screams off of the page and challenges all that we know about the fatal crash in Tempe, Ariz., that took the life of Elaine Herzberg two and a half years ago. “Backup Driver of Autonomous Uber SUV Charged with Negligent Homicide in Arizona.”
How could the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) associate itself… Read More
Keynoting the TU-Automotive event in Novi, Mich., last week on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy I took the occasion to note the lofty visions to which Robert and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, aspired. We face our own challenges in the automotive industry today, with an annual global… Read More
General Motors has had wireless connections to its cars for more than 21 years, thanks to Project Beacon, better known as OnStar, now operated as Global Connected Consumer Experience. OnStar has likely saved hundreds of lives, if not thousands, by summoning emergency responders to the scenes of crashes where airbags deployed.… Read More
Some days it seems like the world is obsessed with autonomous vehicles. No one really understands why. Surveys tell us that consumers are both interested in and repelled by self-driving cars. What’s missing is the business model – the commercial reason for the existence of self-driving cars.
Today’s announced acquisition of … Read More
Questions are being raised on how autonomous vehicles should react in life-or-death situations. Most of these have been based on thought experiments, constructed from standard dilemmas in ethics such as what should happen if the driver of a car or an autonomous car is faced with either killing two pedestrians or killing the occupants… Read More
For some marketers the operative mantra is go big or go home. It looks like Apple and Google are both taking a harder look at the automotive industry and have decided to go home.
The media is rife with reports of Apple hemorrhaging automotive engineers while senior executives on Google’s automated driving team have been skipping… Read More
“For car buyers, an end to the days of dickering?” reads the headline across the center of the front page of the Washington Post this morning. No, it’s not an article about new tools to make car buying easier. It’s a story about electric vehicle maker, Tesla Motor’s impact on car retailing.
The article… Read More
Nielsen’s latest AutoTECHCAST study once again introduces confusion to the connected car debate, but it’s understandable and relates to a demographic gradient around technology. Young people are aware of an interested in so-called “brought-in” technologies, while the majority of (older) people… Read More
A report in the Wall Street Journal last week dives into the insurance industry’s quandary over the anticipated onset of self-driving cars that might significantly and negatively impact the volume of claims and, ultimately, mitigate the need for car insurance altogether. The report is simultaneously a source of alarm and relief… Read More
The Chevrolet Volt was a technological marvel from its very launch. A so-called plug-in extended range electric vehicle that could be operated entirely on battery power as long as it was only driven short distances or for hundreds of miles on gasoline. But something happened on the way to the market that suggests deeper troubles… Read More
