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jeremy's review against another edition
4.0
Autonomy
The book is full of great stories and Burns’s first-person account of what happened in the development of autonomous and non-gas vehicles. It also tells stories about some of the key contributors to the technology--Chris Urmson, Red Whittaker, Sebastian Thrun, Anthony Levandowski, and others. The book combines these anecdotes with reflections on technical and economic changes affecting the automobile industry.
Burns is an advisor to Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary. He worked at GM for 40 years, eventually serving as corporate vice president for research and development reporting to the CEO. He was unusual--as Detroit car executive who cared deeply about sustainability. He sponsored projects like hydrogen fuel cell propulsion systems and a collaboration with Segway that built a two-wheeled, two-person electric vehicle that looks a little like an auto rickshaw without a driver.
Burns sees three trends coming together that will transform the automotive industry:
Driverless technology
Electric vehicles
Transportation as a service
The first two are technical changes. The third is a new business model.
The book begins with a narrative about the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenges, particularly the CMU team that was funded by GM. The Stanford team enters the story, and it continues when a set of them wind up working on Google’s Chauffeur project.
The story mixes in more background about engineering these systems. Burns did some modeling work around 2010-2011 to see how transport-as-a-service would work. He found a surprisingly small fleet could serve a city like Ann Arbor, Mich.
He also looked at total costs of our current cars-- $4.5 trillion/year to operate. If we make a large-scale transition to autonomous, electric vehicles, it will represent a tremendous economic improvement. Transportation should cost 10x less per mile, bring the benefits of on-demand cars to many more people. These savings mean less money flowing to established economic players. Auto manufacturing would employ many fewer people, which will be a burden for people employed by the industry today.
Oil companies probably get the majority of this $4.5 trillion. We need to shift away from fossil fuels, but oil companies are going to fight to preserve this revenue. Electric cars will be far more efficient than big gas-powered automobiles that often just carry one or two people. But we’ll probably still rely on fossil fuels to produce much of the electricity.
He talks about safety, which comes up a in a few different guises. Early on there’s someone at GM appalled at the way CMU was testing the Boss car for the DARPA challenge. (Funny story.) Sadly there have been fatalities recently--both Tesla drivers and a pedestrian killed by an Uber self-driving car test. There are two distinct approaches that are being pursued right now. One is the driver assist technology like Tesla autopilot, and another is the fully driverless car--the Firefly prototype doesn’t have a steering wheel, just an on-off button. He’s deeply skeptical of driver assistance, and probably appalled at the way Tesla and Musk seems to down-play the serious risks of driver assistance.
The book is full of great stories and Burns’s first-person account of what happened in the development of autonomous and non-gas vehicles. It also tells stories about some of the key contributors to the technology--Chris Urmson, Red Whittaker, Sebastian Thrun, Anthony Levandowski, and others. The book combines these anecdotes with reflections on technical and economic changes affecting the automobile industry.
Burns is an advisor to Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary. He worked at GM for 40 years, eventually serving as corporate vice president for research and development reporting to the CEO. He was unusual--as Detroit car executive who cared deeply about sustainability. He sponsored projects like hydrogen fuel cell propulsion systems and a collaboration with Segway that built a two-wheeled, two-person electric vehicle that looks a little like an auto rickshaw without a driver.
Burns sees three trends coming together that will transform the automotive industry:
Driverless technology
Electric vehicles
Transportation as a service
The first two are technical changes. The third is a new business model.
The book begins with a narrative about the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenges, particularly the CMU team that was funded by GM. The Stanford team enters the story, and it continues when a set of them wind up working on Google’s Chauffeur project.
The story mixes in more background about engineering these systems. Burns did some modeling work around 2010-2011 to see how transport-as-a-service would work. He found a surprisingly small fleet could serve a city like Ann Arbor, Mich.
He also looked at total costs of our current cars-- $4.5 trillion/year to operate. If we make a large-scale transition to autonomous, electric vehicles, it will represent a tremendous economic improvement. Transportation should cost 10x less per mile, bring the benefits of on-demand cars to many more people. These savings mean less money flowing to established economic players. Auto manufacturing would employ many fewer people, which will be a burden for people employed by the industry today.
Oil companies probably get the majority of this $4.5 trillion. We need to shift away from fossil fuels, but oil companies are going to fight to preserve this revenue. Electric cars will be far more efficient than big gas-powered automobiles that often just carry one or two people. But we’ll probably still rely on fossil fuels to produce much of the electricity.
He talks about safety, which comes up a in a few different guises. Early on there’s someone at GM appalled at the way CMU was testing the Boss car for the DARPA challenge. (Funny story.) Sadly there have been fatalities recently--both Tesla drivers and a pedestrian killed by an Uber self-driving car test. There are two distinct approaches that are being pursued right now. One is the driver assist technology like Tesla autopilot, and another is the fully driverless car--the Firefly prototype doesn’t have a steering wheel, just an on-off button. He’s deeply skeptical of driver assistance, and probably appalled at the way Tesla and Musk seems to down-play the serious risks of driver assistance.
takealoadoff's review against another edition
5.0
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I saw Lawrence Burns speak on the concept of autonomy (the confluence of electric vehicles, self-driving technology, and transportation-as-a-service) and was intrigued enough to pick up the book.
Overall, it's an animated and engaging narrative of the major players who developed the world's first autonomous vehicles. I loved his stories about the DARPA 2004 challenge to build a vehicle that could cross the Mojave Desert without a human driver. He made a great point: that moment was a perfect example of how public funding can spur massive technological innovation, which ultimately led to private sector adoption and spurred economic growth.
All in all, recommended reading. And I'm looking forward to the near future where I can hop into my quiet, safe, autonomously driven vehicle. The future of transportation is looking bright, folks.
Overall, it's an animated and engaging narrative of the major players who developed the world's first autonomous vehicles. I loved his stories about the DARPA 2004 challenge to build a vehicle that could cross the Mojave Desert without a human driver. He made a great point: that moment was a perfect example of how public funding can spur massive technological innovation, which ultimately led to private sector adoption and spurred economic growth.
All in all, recommended reading. And I'm looking forward to the near future where I can hop into my quiet, safe, autonomously driven vehicle. The future of transportation is looking bright, folks.
ncrabb's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fascinating look at how autonomous vehicles got their start and a thought-provoking look at the future of such vehicles. I loved the human face the author puts on this story. His anecdotes about the early competitions to build a self-driving vehicle for DARPA gave the whole idea of autonomous vehicles a kind of life it wouldn't have had otherwise. He clearly has significant expertise in the area about which he wrote, and he left me with a lot to think about regarding the future. If he's right, my youngest grandson will never apply for or be tested to receive a driver's license. The same may be true for the child's older sister. What an incredibly changed world they will inherit.
barrysweezey's review against another edition
I was at the Urban Challenge in 2007 (still have the T shirt). It was amazing standing next to the road watching cars and trucks go by with no one in them, including 32,000-pound TerraMax, which had to be deactivated before it took out a building. The MIT entry kept braking for shadows across the road.
One car was confused about something and came to a stop. Another car started going around it, and as soon as it started pulling in front, the stopped car decided to go, and there was a low speed collision. The race was paused and the cars were soon surrounded by an army of engineers who were relieved to find no damage. The cars were separated and allowed to continue.
I saw the cars handle four-way stops, driving in traffic with human drivers and parking in a lot. First and second place went to expected leaders Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, but third place went to Virginia Tech. Later I learned that elsewhere in the crowd were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who soon started the Google self-driving car project.
One car was confused about something and came to a stop. Another car started going around it, and as soon as it started pulling in front, the stopped car decided to go, and there was a low speed collision. The race was paused and the cars were soon surrounded by an army of engineers who were relieved to find no damage. The cars were separated and allowed to continue.
I saw the cars handle four-way stops, driving in traffic with human drivers and parking in a lot. First and second place went to expected leaders Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, but third place went to Virginia Tech. Later I learned that elsewhere in the crowd were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who soon started the Google self-driving car project.
barry_sweezey's review against another edition
I was at the Urban Challenge in 2007 (still have the T shirt). It was amazing standing next to the road watching cars and trucks go by with no one in them, including 32,000-pound TerraMax, which had to be deactivated before it took out a building. The MIT entry kept braking for shadows across the road.
One car was confused about something and came to a stop. Another car started going around it, and as soon as it started pulling in front, the stopped car decided to go, and there was a low speed collision. The race was paused and the cars were soon surrounded by an army of engineers who were relieved to find no damage. The cars were separated and allowed to continue.
I saw the cars handle four-way stops, driving in traffic with human drivers and parking in a lot. First and second place went to expected leaders Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, but third place went to Virginia Tech. Later I learned that elsewhere in the crowd were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who soon started the Google self-driving car project.
One car was confused about something and came to a stop. Another car started going around it, and as soon as it started pulling in front, the stopped car decided to go, and there was a low speed collision. The race was paused and the cars were soon surrounded by an army of engineers who were relieved to find no damage. The cars were separated and allowed to continue.
I saw the cars handle four-way stops, driving in traffic with human drivers and parking in a lot. First and second place went to expected leaders Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, but third place went to Virginia Tech. Later I learned that elsewhere in the crowd were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who soon started the Google self-driving car project.
georgea_1234's review against another edition
5.0
An insightful journey into the history of what will change daily travel in the coming decades. Less sci fi than an honest consideration of what the pros and cons of this technology are. Like technological disruption to music, shopping and movies, the changes will continue for some time. The author is someone with a background at GM and an advocate of the industry. The book will appeal to anyone wanting to learn more, although it is not trying to provide a skeptical perspective which I would have appreciated from time to time.
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