As an occasional rider of the rails in the U.K., I am charmed by the unusual station names. Unfortunately my exposure is limited for the most part to the short run from Euston Station in London to Milton Keynes – the planned city regarded with great disdain by most Brits.… Read More
Tag: roger c. lanctot
Between Waze and a Thin Hard Place
Car makers, semiconductor companies and wireless carriers are all excited these days about creating cars that can drive themselves. Billions of dollars are being spent on acquisitions and investments in companies and technologies that can make this happen. But there is a fly in the ointment by the name of Waze.
To create cars capable… Read More
Do You Know the (Green) Wave in San Jose?
No. A green wave isn’t something you do at a New York Jets or a Michigan State Spartans game. A green wave is that thing your dad or obsessive friend or maybe YOU do when you try to synchronize your driving with the changing of sequential traffic lights.
Connected Signals, BMW and Argonne National Lab are kicking off a study in … Read More
‘Que Legal,’ Uber é Legal
Uber went live in Florianopolis on September 30, a week before my wife and I arrived for some down time. But rumors suggested that the service was shuttered almost as soon as it started with a couple of drivers detained and their vehicles impounded. The word was spreading that the service was considered illegal.
As fate would have … Read More
Takata’s Deepest Betrayal
There’s been a lot of betrayal in the automotive industry over the past few years. Consumers have been betrayed by car makers that failed to identify, report or anticipate problems or that deliberately misled their customers. But no betrayal was deeper than that of Takata and the ongoing airbag recall effort. And Takata’s… Read More
The Privacy Delusion
Why do we think we have privacy in our cars? Why does the government believe there is an interest in preserving privacy in cars? Can we just get over it? One of the least private places known to mankind – outside of the Internet – is the car!
But our transportation regulators in the U.S. and their counterparts at the European Commission… Read More
The Virus of Car Ownership
What if we all looked at driving as less of a right and more of an addiction, a disability, or a disease to be avoided, cured or overcome? What if driving were seen as a menace to society draining lives, money and time from the economy? What would our public policy priorities become in this new context?
Sweden isn’t waiting to find… Read More
Apple, Google Go Home
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
Zero Tolerance = Vision Zero
Just returning from Sweden where the highway fatality rate is a marvel of modern transportation policy. Long before Sweden adopted a Vision Zero approach to reducing highway fatalities the country set itself apart from most others with a 0.02 blood alcohol limit for drivers. There is no question that this has contributed significantly… Read More
How Rapidly the Robots Will Rise
“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