Governments have taken the scissors to red tape in the age of COVID-19. In many states, people can now get cocktails to go and have appointments with doctors via Zoom call because of swift changes in regulations.
Many driverless car boosters are feeling left out of this ride.
Because of the lockdowns, commuting to work ground to a halt in most states. That left the roads reasonably wide open for so-called autonomous vehicles. Because of the great commuter pause and the fear of infection, public transportation ridership plummeted.
Yet plenty of people in major metropolitan areas still had to go places during the pandemic. Why wasn’t a fleet of regularly sanitized autonomous vehicles rolled out to get them there?
“Wherever possible, the industry is trying to move things along,” said Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the new book Autonomous Vehicles: The Road to Economic Growth?
At the same time, Winston told the Washington Examiner that he believes the government “has sort of fallen down on the job.”
It hasn’t been an across-the-board failure, Winston admitted. The robotics company Nuro has been cleared to use autonomous vehicles to transport CVS pharmaceuticals to customers in the Houston market, for instance. He would like to see more of that.
Still, the federal government hasn’t made things much easier for self-driving vehicles.
The House passed the SELF DRIVE Act in the previous Congress, which would have opened the market up for commercial autonomous vehicle sales. However, self-driving commercial trucks were excluded from the legislation at the behest of labor unions. Then, the bill died in the Senate because of concerns of trial lawyers.
There were talks of bringing the legislation back in the 116th Congress. It appears unlikely to go anywhere, even in the lame-duck session.
“It’s kind of amazing that no one seems too upset about it,” Winston lamented.
Luke Thompson drives for Uber, Lyft, and other ride-sharing and delivery services in the Seattle area. One might expect that he’d be hostile to autonomous vehicles as future competition. He doesn’t see it that way at all. In fact, he wants in on it.
“I love the idea,” he told the Washington Examiner. Thompson wants to get a Tesla with dual drivability.
“It seems likely that there will be a time when there is demand for both AVs and human drivers, depending on people’s confidence in the technology,” he said. “A car with dual drivability gives me options, as I can switch between me driving and the car driving, depending on where the opportunities in demand are. This should allow me to maximize earnings in a market facing a major shift.”
Thompson admitted that he isn’t quite sure when that might happen. He said he thinks that “communicable disease avoidance” will be one factor driving the adoption of autonomous vehicles, but the “bigger factor is the health of the overall economy.”
Demand for his ride-sharing services is significantly down right now. “What I make on a ‘busy’ Friday is comparable to a slow day from before the pandemic,” Thompson said.
He speculated that the dip in demand may be stalling out investors because “if demand is still down for rideshare, then I could see companies and individuals being less likely to make the investment.”
Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst for the Reason Foundation, told the Washington Examiner that he sees some encouraging signs but would like to see more.
Scribner said that the Google-associated company “Waymo’s recent announcement that they will soon open up Waymo One service in the Phoenix area to the general public is a big deal — the first time an AV would be operated like a common carrier.”
“Nuro seems to be looking to fast-track automated last-mile delivery,” he added, seconding Winston’s optimism about medical deliveries.
On the other hand, he said there are recent reports that “Uber ATG is a total mess and is not making progress like they’d hoped.”
Also, in many states and at the federal level, an uncertain or even hostile regulatory environment continues to be a problem. One of the biggest letdowns is the potentially huge autonomous vehicle market of California.
“California is blessed to have Silicon Valley and thus a lot of AV startups and automaker outposts, but their AV rules suck,” Scribner said.
