Andrew J. Hawkins | Vox

Google, Ford and Uber just created a giant lobbying group for self-driving cars

2019-03-06T05:09:43-05:00

A who’s-who of car makers, technology companies and ride-hailing startups are joining forces to pressure the federal government on the issue of self-driving cars. Ford, Google, Uber, Lyft and Volvo announced Tuesday the formation of the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a lobbying group with the express purpose of advocating autonomous driving. It’s a power move by some of the most high-profile names behind the still nascent technology, made at a time when regulators and policymakers in Washington, D.C., are still wrapping their heads around the concept of self-driving cars.

The coalition will be headed up by David Strickland, a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He will serve as the group’s counsel and spokesperson. In essence, Strickland will be lobbying his former agency, which has been tasked by Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to come up with a set of rules for self-driving cars by early summer.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

You won’t be able to use your phone to pay for an NYC subway ride until 2021

2019-03-06T05:09:13-05:00

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority finally released its public bid for a mobile, contactless ticketing system, but don’t expect to use your iPhone to pay for a ride on the A train anytime soon. After it picks a private vendor to install the new fare payment system, the MTA says the contract will have a duration of 69 months, which means it won’t be up and running until at least 2021. And given the MTA’s track record for completing projects on time, probably even later than that.

So how will it work? In the request for proposals that was posted today, the MTA says it will be “an integrated, reliable and convenient fare payment and collection system” that allows bus and train customers to pay fares by tapping a contactless bank card, smartphone or smart card against an electronic reader. In other words, say goodbye to the iconic yellow MetroCard that’s been around since 2003, when it replaced subway tokens. And say hello to something completely different.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Uber poaches a top Ford engineer to help build self-driving cars

2019-03-06T05:36:27-05:00

Add Ford to the list of companies that are being pillaged by Uber in its quest to excel in the hyper-competitive world of self-driving cars. Sherif Marakby, director of global electronics and engineering at Ford, is joining Uber as vice president of global vehicle programs, the ride-hail company told The Verge Thursday. Marakby will relocate from Detroit to Pittsburgh, where Uber is busy expanding its Advanced Technologies Center.

In Pittsburgh, Marakby will oversee “manufacturer strategy and integration efforts,” which may or may not include the actual construction of autonomous vehicles. (Uber wouldn’t say whether its building its own self-driving cars, although the company is said to be shopping for a fleet of vehicles in Germany.)

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Uber Is Expanding Its Self-Driving Research Operations in Pittsburgh

2019-03-06T05:12:35-05:00

Uber announced Tuesday that it is opening a new Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, where its autonomous vehicle research operations are headquartered. The company will renovate an old locomotive roundhouse at the LTV Coke Works site in Hazelwood, along the Monongahela River, which was once a symbol of this Rust Belt city’s heyday. The company will build temporary roadways to test self-driving cars as part of its expansion, as well as housing and park space.

This is the first major news to come out of Uber’s so-far fairly quiet plans to develop self-driving cars since the ride-hail company began poaching robotics engineers from Carnegie Mellon University in early 2015. Uber snatched 50 researchers from CMU in total, in a move intended to signal the company’s seriousness in pursuing self-driving technology alongside heavy hitters like Google, Apple, Ford, and Tesla. But like Apple, Uber has kept its plans relatively close to the vest.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Uber Agrees to Pay $28.5 Million to Settle ‘Safe Ride’ Suits

2019-03-06T05:11:51-05:00

Uber is seeking to settle two class-action lawsuits that allege the ride-hail company improperly marketed its safety record to passengers by charging them a flat fee for “safe rides.” It says it will pay $28.5 million to around 25 million passengers who paid the “safe ride fee,” which will amount to less than a dollar per passenger. Still, if approved by a judge, the settlement would be the largest in the San Francisco-based company’s six-year history.

Uber has long-touted its safety record as compared to other for-hire vehicle services like taxis and black cars. But under this agreement, Uber will now have to avoid using certain language when marketing itself, such as “safest ride on the road” and “gold standard in safety.” It will also change the name of the fee it charges each rider, from “safe ride fee” to “booking fee.” The fee will remain on every passenger’s bill, just under a new name.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Amazon’s Echo Speaker Can Finally Order You an Uber

2019-03-06T05:11:35-05:00

You can use Amazon’s Echo device to order a pizza or stream music on Spotify, so shouldn’t you be able to ask the digital assistant “Alexa” to call you a car from Uber? Well, starting today, you can. Uber is announcing Friday that its application program interface, or API, has been integrated with Amazon’s smart home hub.

The update may be the purest manifestation of Uber’s mission to make getting you from point A to point B completely seamless. After all, what’s easier than speaking the words “call me an Uber” into thin air, and having the car show up minutes later? This could be the provenance of germaphobes everywhere. (Of course, you’ll still have to touch the Uber’s door handle.)

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

MIT Wins Hyperloop Competition, and Elon Musk Makes a Cameo

2019-03-06T05:41:30-05:00

In the end, Elon Musk couldn’t resist showing up to the competition he helped inspire. The billionaire SpaceX CEO made a surprise appearance at the end of the Hyperloop pod design competition at Texas A&M University on Saturday, eliciting a rapturous reaction from the thousand-plus audience of high school and college engineers who were there to compete for a chance to test their designs on Musk’s personal Hyperloop track later this year (video here).

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s team was awarded the top prize, and will now go on to build an actual pod to race on the under-construction track near SpaceX’s Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters. The Delft University of Technology team from the Netherlands was the runner-up. Auburn University won in the category of best overall subsystem. Twenty-two teams in all will go on to test their pods in Hawthorne, although up to 10 other teams could also qualify after further judging in the coming weeks, according to SpaceX.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Transportation Secretary Says Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Could Be Next ‘Moonshot’

2019-03-06T05:41:29-05:00

The Hyperloop — the super fast, super conceptual, tube-based transportation system popularized by Elon Musk — has its fair share of skeptics. But not Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

Foxx said the Hyperloop is a “very solid idea” that merited further beta testing, and that the federal government had a “responsibility” to support the idea. In fact, the Hyperloop could be eligible for federal money, through the University Transportation Centers grant program, he said. All in all, it was a pretty strong endorsement from the Obama administration for an idea that many dismiss as a pipe dream.

Foxx was Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, Friday to deliver the keynote address at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Competition, where over a thousand high school and college engineers from all over the world were presenting their designs for the best Hyperloop pod.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Uber Wants to Be Your Express Delivery Service for Everything

2019-03-06T05:41:21-05:00

Uber announced today its plans to expand its application program interface, or API, project to its nascent delivery service, UberRush. By adding just a few lines of code, businesses such as Nordstrom and 1-800-Flowers can now integrate UberRush’s one-hour delivery service directly into their digital products.

It’s an extension of Uber’s plan to encourage app developers to deep link to the car-hailing service — and a less-than-subtle way to place its branded service within a variety of third-party apps. But it’s also a sign of Uber’s desire to become not just the world’s de facto transportation service, but also its go-to delivery service. In doing so, Uber is entering a very crowded market, where Amazon, Google and other delivery startups are all clamoring to lock down big name retailers.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Obama Administration to Announce Plan for Self-Driving Cars

2019-03-06T05:40:41-05:00

Top officials in the Obama administration will announce a plan on Thursday to speed the development of self-driving cars, according to Reuters. Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told reporters that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will unveil the proposal at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit tomorrow.

The plan could have a galvanizing effect on the nascent self-driving vehicle industry. Currently, several automakers and technology companies are working on autonomous vehicles, with most experts predicting that self-driving cars will begin to appear on the roads in large numbers as soon as 2020.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.