Friday's Mobility Roundup 🚍🚊🚘🚲🛴🚶🏻♂️
A roundup of headlines with the occasional commentary
The OG transportation (ICEs/ transit / bikes / walking)
NYC’s Subway Used to Be for Everyone. What’s Going to Happen Now? [Motherboard]
From Aaron Gordon:
When talking about public transportation usage in the United States, there's New York City and then there's everywhere else. During pre-COVID times, one out of every three transit trips in the U.S. took place on a New York City subway or bus, according to data from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) factbook, despite having just 2.5 percent of the country's population.
Beyond the [MTA’s] predicted $8 billion shortfall thanks to long-term ridership loss—which is on top of its pre-existing debt that was threatening the agency's long-term viability even before anyone had used the term "social distancing"—there is a larger existential threat for the New York City subway looming. That is the possibility that the New York City transportation system, and the subway in particular, stops being quite so different from all the others in this country.
It is the only transportation system in the country providing round-the-clock frequent, fast service (a 2017 New York City comptroller report found subway commuters actually have a slightly higher average personal income than the city average; bus commuters have much lower personal income). Of course, New Yorkers use the subway not out of some altruistic sense of civic engagement but for selfish reasons. It is typically the fastest way to get where you need to go. Even for wealthier people with the means to pay for other forms of transportation, speed often beats comfort.
Why it matters: The political economy of public transportation is neatly tied to the collective action problem. Many disperse actors find it difficult (if not impossible) to advocate for better and higher quality service. NYC’s subway system, as Gordon so eloquently notes, is different in this respect. A lot of that has to do with the built environment of the city: for example, Manhattan is a densely populated peninsula surrounded by water. Build up or don’t build at all (sometimes that means literally adding earth to the original footprint). Critically, people from all walks of life in NYC rely on the subway because it is, well, reliable. As Gordon writes, “one of the few public spaces left where rich people rub elbows with poor people on a regular basis” is the subway. A broad-based coalition of riders is critical to sustaining its political relevance and by deduction its long-term vitality.
Ride-hailing (aka ride-sharing)
New research shows that entry of Uber/Lyft into cities increases average vehicle ownership [iScience]
The authors estimate the effects of Uber/Lyft market entry on U.S. urban areas
Vehicle registrations per capita increase by 0.7% on average
Effect on registrations is larger in car-dependent and slow-growth cities
Transit displacement is larger in cities with high income or fewer children
Why it matters: Uber/Lyft frequently tout their services as being carbon-reducing (or even carbon-neutral as they look to roll-out greener fleets). This study arrives at a counterintuitive result: ride-hailing adoption is correlated with more (not less) cars on the road and consequently contributing to an increase in not only CO2 emissions but more car congestion in the urban core. No surprise, both Uber and Lyft dispute the findings.
Study Methodology: The authors of the study looked at vehicle registration data from 2011 to 2017 in several urban areas. Instead of looking at “average effects”, the authors employ a set of difference-in-difference propensity score-weighted regression models that exploit staggered TNC market entry into urban areas across the U.S. from 2010 to 2017. Additionally, the authors combine annual individual vehicle registration data from Polk/IHS Markit with annual ZIP code-level sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau and aggregate to the urban area to estimate effects.
Passenger ended up with a rod and 6 screws in his neck, but Lyft refused to pay medical bills [CBS Denver]
From CBS Denver:
A Denver man says his life has been flipped upside down after being hospitalized following a Lyft ride. Brian Fritts was riding in the back of a Lyft when it was involved in a hit-and-run rollover crash. However, Lyft allegedly declined to take any responsibility for the more than $173,000 in medical bills he now has.
With mounting medical bills Fritts expected Lyft to cover them. However, when his attorney Eric Faddis sought compensation Lyft declined to pay. After investigating the claim, Faddis learned there may be a legislative loophole which Lyft could hide behind.
The Lyft driver’s personal insurance policy had a clause in it which denied coverage of ride-share passengers in the event of a crash, with the assumption the ride-share company would carry uninsured motorist coverage. However, according to Varner Faddis Elite Legal, Lyft got rid of such insurance in the first quarter of 2020, months before the crash.
Why it matters: Beginning in March 2020, Lyft appears to have axed uninsured motorist coverage in most of the jurisdictions in which it operates (at least in the continental US). Uninsured motorist insurance typically covers passengers if an uninsured driver (i.e., not the Lyft driver) causes the passenger’s injury; for example, in a hit-and-run where the other driver was never identified. This is yet another case of the ride-hailing companies shedding risk, or in this case directly shifting the burden of risk onto its ride-hailing customers. When someone hails an Uber/Lyft, they typically aren’t thinking through the insurance implications of being involved in a potentially life-altering crash. No one really knows how many cases like Brian’s exist because neither Uber nor Lyft publish settlement data.
Delivery / e-Commerce
Nuro becomes first company to receive commercial autonomous vehicle permit from California DMV [VentureBeat]
From VentureBeat:
Nuro revealed it’s the first company to receive permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to charge a fee and receive compensation for its driverless delivery service. Unlike the autonomous testing licenses the California DMV previously granted to Nuro and others, which limited the compensation self-driving vehicle companies could receive, the deployment permit enables Nuro to make its technology commercially available.
The California DMV permit allows Nuro to use a fleet of light-duty driverless vehicles for a delivery service on surface streets within designated parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, including the cities of Atherton, East Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Woodside. The vehicles have a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour and are only approved to operate in fair weather conditions on streets with a speed limit of no more than 35 miles per hour.
Why it matters: The pandemic accelerated the timeline for many AV companies to deploy their semi-autonomous or fully-autonomous delivery robots, especially as more people moved to shop online. With this latest green-light from the California DMV, Nuro is jumping to the front of the pack in an increasingly hot space (Amazon and FedEx, notwithstanding). The company has designed its own fully integrated electric delivery device (“R2”). At least for people living in the Bay Area, you may soon be able to have groceries delivered to your doorstep and not have to worry about tipping.
EVs
Tesla just barely misses the much coveted 500,000 deliveries mark [Bloomberg]
From Bloomberg:
The electric-car maker said on Jan. 2 it handed over 180,570 vehicles in the year’s final three months, the most for any quarter but just 450 vehicles shy of the half-million mark Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sought for the year. Tesla has been ramping up output of its more mass-market models to meet rising global demand for battery-powered cars, with 2020’s total jumping 36% from the prior year.
Musk and Tesla had a remarkable year, with the company joining the S&P 500 Index in December after five consecutive quarters of profit. The shares rallied 743% in 2020, giving the carmaker a $668.9 billion stock-market capitalization. Musk -- who ended the year as the world’s second-richest person -- took to Twitter to praise his team, saying that in its earliest days he thought the carmaker had only a 10% chance of even surviving.
Why it matters: Elon Musk’s quest to deliver on his promise to deliver 500,000 new Teslas appears to have just fallen short (<500 units). However, Tesla left everything on the field as the company went all out to juice sales before the clock struck 2021, including hiring ~1,000 sales and delivery people in the final months of 2020. Tesla sold just shy of 200,000 vehicles in the year’s final three months (the most for any quarter). Total output of vehicles increased by ~36% YOY. Clearly, the EV company is still struggling to scale production; although, with new manufacturing plants coming online in Austin, TX and Brandenburg, Germany, the company is poised to significantly ramp up its capacity for 2021.
Volkswagen previews mobile charging robot [Press Release]
Volkswagen Group has developed a mobile EV charger that can autonomously navigate parking garages (and other enclosed spaces). The idea is that users can summon (via an app) the mobile charger to their vehicle once having parked instead of drivers having to park in a designated EV charging space. The device navigates to a user’s parked vehicle, connects the charging device, and then disconnects the device once the EV is fully charged and returns the device to a central charging dock. All of this would be done autonomously.
Statement from Volkswagen: “It independently steers to the vehicle to be charged and communicates with it: from opening the charging socket flap to connecting the plug and decoupling it. The entire charging process takes place without any human involvement whatsoever. To charge several vehicles at the same time, the mobile robot moves a mobile energy storage unit to the vehicle, connects it, and then uses this energy storage unit to charge the vehicle and repeats the process to charge other vehicles. Once the vehicle is fully charged, the robot independently collects the mobile energy storage unit and takes it back to the central charging station.”
Must watch: [Video]
Why it matters: EV charging infrastructure is the missing puzzle piece to a fully electrified fleet. Mass installation of EV charging stations across the continental US is a key sticking point to arriving at that EV paradigm. Tesla is the undisputed leader in this space and has an entire policy team dedicated to working with local municipalities and private property owners to install their own EV charging stations. Volkswagen’s latest foray would compete directly with Tesla’s “Destination Network” or charging solutions commonly found at places like hotels or shopping malls. Volkswagen’s “mobile” solution makes a lot of sense when you think about all of the current/potential EV-owners that live in dense urban areas where at-home charging is not feasible. In theory, it also produces a massive multiplier effect by expanding the network’s capacity. No longer would a vehicle’s physical location be a barrier to its charging access.
AVs
Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” is Misleading to Consumers at Best and at Worst Poses a Danger to Drivers and Everyone Else on the Road [Slate]
David Zipper writes:
In October, Tesla offered some of its customers an upgrade to its “Autopilot” driver-assistance system called “Full Self-Driving.” Anyone familiar with how Tesla cars work knows that “Autopilot” isn’t really “autopilot,” and “Full Self-Driving” isn’t “full” either. For now, the feature allows a car to stay within lanes on a road, automatically brake in an emergency, turn, and respond to traffic signals on its own. But the company warns drivers to “not become complacent” because the vehicle “may do the wrong thing at the worst time.” Indeed, within days of FSD’s launch, a YouTube video showed a Tesla trying to drive itself into a parked car. Tesla called FSD “beta” to underscore that it was a work in progress.
Why it matters: The Twitter pushback from Tesla’s investor community was swift and decisive. Kudos to David for directing some much-needed spotlight on Tesla’s very strangely worded “Full Self-Driving” feature. The comments on Twitter were notable not for the veracity of their counter-arguments, but more for how they framed their thinking: “surely, more people die in car crashes every year due to driver error (i.e., with humans behind the wheel) than those who perish in FSD-related crashes”. Unfortunately, this is a false dichotomy. We are not yet at the point where it’s a choice between bug-free self-driving vehicles and ones driven by error-prone humans. Instead, we find ourselves in a world where some cars have the look and feel of autonomy, but in reality still lack the critical capabilities to do all of the navigating themselves (itselves?). People (humans) purchasing Tesla models with FSD-capabilities deserve proper priming.
Rolling out driverless cars is ‘extraordinary grind’, says Waymo boss [Financial Times]
From the Financial Times:
Last year was the most significant yet in Waymo’s 11-year effort to develop a driverless car. The Google sister company raised $3.2bn, signed deals with several partners and launched the world’s first truly driverless taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona. Even so, the widespread rollout of fully autonomous vehicles remains slow, staggered and costly.
“It’s an extraordinary grind,” said John Krafcik, Waymo chief executive, in an interview with the Financial Times. “I would say it’s a bigger challenge than launching a rocket and putting it in orbit around the Earth . . . because it has to be done safely over and over and over again.”
Why it matters: Here at the start of 2021, it’s probably fair to say we’ve either arrived at or are approaching the trough of disillusionment with respect to fully autonomous cars (the much coveted “Level 5” designation). How quickly car/tech companies can climb the slope of enlightenment is still an open question. Obviously, much progress has been made over the last 5 years and we can reasonably expect the debut of fully autonomous vehicles in certain limited use cases (entertainment districts like Las Vegas? grocery delivery in the suburban Bay Area?) in the near future. However, at least the big consulting firms can finally feel comfortable hitting the brakes on some of their more ambitious fortune-telling. There are many parallels between AVs and urban air mobility (UAM) or advanced aerial mobility (AAM) (sometimes comically referred to as “flying cars”). As we’ve witnessed, industry provides the bylines, investors provide the funding and the consulting firms juice the story with lots of pretty bar charts and estimated CAGRs. But a driverless car is only as good as what’s under the hood (or increasingly, what’s embedded in the software code).
Back of the Bus (but still worth your time):
Best e-bikes for 2021 according to [CNET]
NYC’s MTA urged to look beyond fares/tolls to keep the subway and buses moving [The City]
NIMBY-ism 3.0: Opponents of lower Manhattan project would prefer a tow pound instead [The Gothamist]
Waymo, in a shot across the bow (Tesla), says it’s ditching “self-driving” [The Verge]
Who’s riding Europe’s beautiful trains right now? Almost no one [New York Times]
From the archives: In a pandemic, we’re all ‘transit-dependent’ [Jarrett Walker - CityLab]