Walmart’s driverless pilot sounds so depressing

All this development money, this technological progress, this risk, for what? More range for Walmart pickups? This is what we have built on? All that and more in it The morning shift before December 16, 2020.

First Gear: Advanced transport technology makes Walmart pickups more available

The dreams of self-driving car technology still don’t quite match the reality of autonomous vehicles today. Nowhere is that more evident than at Walmart’s new press release about the further development of self-driving technology with his partner Gatik. What is this breakthrough technology used for? Walmart explains:

Now we’re expanding our pilot with Gatik to a second location to test an even longer delivery route and a second use case: delivering items from a Supercenter to a Walmart pick-up point, a designated location where customers can easily place their orders. to pick up. The Autonomous Box Trucks in Louisiana will initially run with a safety driver.

The operation will begin early next year on a 20-mile route between New Orleans and Metairie, Louisiana. This gives customers who live further from our New Orleans store the opportunity to take advantage of the convenience and convenience of Walmart’s pick-up service.

Walmart goes on to say he won’t sleep, he won’t stop until a driverless Walmart truck circles your block at all times, ready to blast cheap bikes and paper towels through your windshield:

Since 90% of Americans live within a 10 mile radius of a Walmart, a store closest to you isn’t always the answer. Maybe it’s just a pick-up location, with an autonomous vehicle delivering continuous delivery.

I am increasingly convinced that we will never get self-driving cars from consumers, only delivery robots roaming the roads.

2nd Gear: Oh Right, Buttigieg To Transpo Secretary

Congratulations, everyone. Her not the man accused of covering up a police murder. As for what Buttigieg has actually done in his career that we the public don’t know about, that’s a question for a place where I can’t be charged with libel!

My longtime office mate Aaron Gordon described the development as something of a non-news item, stating, “Mayor Pete’s Secretary of Transportation nomination probably doesn’t matter” in Vice:

But the biggest reason Mayor Pete would probably make a great transportation secretary is because a lot of people would make great transportation secretaries. I know this because the current one, Elaine Chao, is one of the least qualified people imaginable for the job. Unlike Chao, Mayor Pete knows how to talk about the problems of transportation in the US without sounding like a badly programmed robot and has several obvious conflicts of interest. And yet almost all Americans would not be able to name one transportation policy that is good or bad that Chao is undertaking, let alone who the secretary is.

I myself would take this time to complain about Mayor Pete, but he gets fed up with that anyway:

3rd Gear: Chords, CR-Vs & Insights Under 1.4 Million Honda Recalls

This is a big one and is stuck in four different recall campaigns. Some of these are for software issues, others are for power window switches associated with fire, some are for drive shafts rusting. ThThese are the bad ones, via Reuters:

The Japanese automaker said a recall includes 268,000 CR-V crossovers from model year 2002-06 to replace master switches for power windows. Honda said no injuries had been reported, but 16 fires were related to the problem.

[…]

Honda is also issuing two recalls for 430,000 Acura and Honda vehicles in 22 US states to inspect and possibly replace the front drive shafts. Both are in response to possible breakage of the drive shafts due to corrosion. No injuries have been reported in relation to the recalls, the company said.

Also involved are “approximately 735,000 2018-20 Accord and 2019-20 Insight vehicles to update the body module software,” said Reuters. My colleague Erik’s Honda Fit 2008, an automatic transmission, is missing a chance on some new drive shafts.

4th Gear: BMW is still hoping for good news on Brexit for one reason or another

I don’t know how long I have been reporting on BMW and other car companies involved in both UK manufacturing and manufacturing elsewhere in the world, but complaints are everywhere and there is little actual progress as a result of those complaints. Listen to this weak language, as reported in Bloomberg:

BMW expects its automotive profit margin to be between 2% and 3%, the highest level it predicted for the year, Chief Financial Officer Nicolas Peter said Wednesday. Free cash flow will be well above EUR 1.5 billion ($ 1.8 billion) before, he added.

While there is optimism about revenues, the executive said it was concerned about trade talks between the European Union and the UK. The rates for cars that would follow a hard Brexit would cost BMW a “mid-range three-digit” million euros per year, Peter said. BMW would try to make up for the losses by raising prices for cars imported into the UK and all Oxford, England-made Mini vehicles sold on the continent.

[…]

“We hope the UK and the European Union will come to a sensible agreement,” said Peter, adding that the company has stockpiled parts to safeguard production.

Good luck hoping!

5th gear: VW’s Tesla obsession continues

There’s no hard amount of money attached to this recent pledge from VW CEO Herbert Diess, so it’s hard to see this as anything other than an ongoing Tesla obsession from VW. Bloomberg reports that “VW’s CEO is putting the world’s largest car factory against new Tesla site” today:

Diess said during an internal video conference that VW’s home plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, will be upgraded with the latest electric vehicle technology and software procedures, the people said, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was not public.

The factory is the largest car factory in the world, with more than 800,000 cars annually.

[…]

Wolfsburg will be “the groundbreaking factory” for highly automated electric vehicle production and will build a VW brand electric flagship, VW said in a statement. statement on Monday. VW gave no further details about the car, other than to say it will be set up in the same way as the Artemis technology project at Audi, which develops electric flagships for Audi, Porsche and Bentley among the code name Landjet.

Making more than 800,000 cars a year isn’t enough for Diess? You must be cool while doing it too?

Downside: Oh cool, it’s going to a snowstorm here today