Lifeboat Foundation

Self-driving car company Argo AI failure when Ford and VW pulled the plug after spending over $3 billion. It is big evidence that Lidar-dependent self-driving has a long way to go. All of the self-driving car companies except Tesla and Comma were using Lidar. Ford said removing the driver is over 5 years away. Most robotaxi players are dependent upon removing the driver for their business model to work enough to get to serious scale. 5+ years to get to the true starting point and 5+ years to scale translates to an 8-year lead for Tesla if Tesla solves robotaxi in 2 years. Uber had a 2.5 year lead over Lyft and that meant three times the market share for Uber.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) may be slowly making its way toward Ark Invest’s Golden Goose scenario, which involves a $22,000 price target pre-split.

At the beginning of 2020, ARK Invest released its updated TSLA valuation based on new research it had collected at the time. ARK analysts described ten difference scenarios Tesla could take leading up to 2024 and gave each one a price target.

Tesla seems to be on track to hit the scenario ARK Invest labeled “The High Functioning EV Company” which has a price target of $3,400. Keep in mind that ARK released these estimates before Tesla announced the stock split. In this scenario, Tesla manages to lower costs and build factories efficiently, but doesn’t launch its autonomous network.

Continue reading “New York Leads World’s Most Innovative Cities” »

The California PUC granted Waymo a permit to operate 24 hours/day in San Francisco taking select members of the public for rides with no safety driver in the vehicle. Waymo says it will begin this shortly. This comes on the heels of them expanding such service in Phoenix, as reported in my article on how the death of self-driving cars has been greatly exaggerated earlier this week.

This service will be with “trusted testers” rather than members of the broad public that can ride in Chandler and Phoenix, Arizona. Limiting ridership can be useful when demand is higher than supply, and also to learn from people who ride it repeatedly, but it has another less noble purpose, namely that riders can be under NDA and not exposing any problems to the public. (Waymo previously has required this of “trusted testers” but says they will very quickly transition to not needing an NDA.) Once a service allows members of the general public to ride with no conditions, it’s a declaration that “we’re confident we are not going to do anything embarrassing.” Cruise, which is Waymo’s rival in SF, has been serving the public for some time, and on Nov 16 announced they will be doing daytime rides with GM employees. Cruise had previously only been operating with passengers after 10pm on much calmer streets.

Waymo also announced it will deploy in Los Angeles soon (it has been testing with staff there.) In LA they also revealed their new robotaxi model, built by Geely under the Zeekr brand in China. I will have more comment when I get to see it, though I am disappointed the front seats don’t swivel to allow more social settings when a group of more than 2 go for a ride. (Facing backwards is less comfortable for some, but also safer in a forward crash.) California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), in ongoing efforts to support transportation innovation, today authorized Waymo LLC to participate in California’s pilot program to provide “driverless” autonomous vehicle (AV) passenger service to the public. Waymo joins the CPUC’s Driverless Pilot program, in which passengers can ride in a test AV that operates without a driver in the vehicle. Waymo may not charge passengers for any rides in test AVs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aHKZY3DeMc

How will transportation look like in the future? In today’s video we take look into the Future of Transportation and explore some amazing technologies that will revolutionize how we travel in the future. There has been no denying that for several years in the past, the world has been undergoing massive changes, thanks to the advancement in technology. However, when it comes to transportation, the changes have not been that large. Transportations method such as cars, trains, ships, and planes have improved somewhat in functionality over time, but since their creation, they have in large part stayed the same.

In this video, we will unveil some amazing future transportation technologies that without a doubt will absolutely blow your mind!

Continue reading “WOW! Traveling In The Future Will Be A Delight!” »

The California PUC granted Waymo a permit to operate 24 hours/day in San Francisco taking select members of the public for rides with no safety driver in the vehicle. Waymo says it will begin this shortly. This comes on the heels of them expanding such service in Phoenix, as reported in my article on how the death of self-driving cars has been greatly exaggerated earlier this week.

This service will be with “trusted testers” rather than members of the broad public that can ride in Chandler and Phoenix, Arizona.

Waymo gets a permit to take the public and will start running with trusted testers. They also start in LA and show off their new robotaxi. Cruise also ups its game. Zoox got into an accident but it was in manual. Aurora reminds us they do more than trucks.

Continue reading “Waymo To Begin No-Driver Operations with Public In SF; Zoox Accident” »

It has been built to be a self-sustaining floating city.

Designer Pierpaolo Lazzarini has proposed a concept for a bold and innovative terayacht which is a giant floating continent double the size of the Roman Colosseum, as first reported by DesignBoom last Friday. It’s called the Pangeos watercraft and it consists of a floating city that includes various hotels, shopping centers, parks, as well as ship and aircraft ports.

Continue reading “This terayacht concept is double the size of the Colosseum” »

Twitter could see organizational restructuring this week.

Getty Images.

Musk was among the people who were asked to testify to determine if the Tesla CEO had undue influence on the decision. Former Tesla board member, James Murdoch also testified later on Wednesday, The Verge report said.