Self-Driving Cars The world’s first head-to-head, high speed autonomous race at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway

The world’s first head-to-head, high speed autonomous race at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Self-Driving Cars with ROS and Autoware: Free 14-part course to learn something new while you're stuck at home
Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles expand autonomous driving technology partnership (Ram ProMaster)
The Biggest Self-Driving Truck Startup Stumbles in Hitting High Goals
How NASA Built a Self-Driving Car for Its Next Mars Mission
Motion Prediction for Self-Driving Cars at Lyft, Level5
Qualcomm, San Diego area launch real-world self-driving communications test
In An Industry First, Plus.AI To Submit Their Self-Driving Trucks To Independent Testing @ TRC, Ohio

The world’s first head-to-head, high speed autonomous race at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Posted: 22 Jul 2020 07:50 AM PDT

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Self-Driving Cars with ROS and Autoware: Free 14-part course to learn something new while you're stuck at home

Posted: 22 Jul 2020 05:38 AM PDT

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Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles expand autonomous driving technology partnership (Ram ProMaster)

Posted: 21 Jul 2020 10:09 PM PDT

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The Biggest Self-Driving Truck Startup Stumbles in Hitting High Goals

Posted: 22 Jul 2020 09:59 AM PDT

TuSimple has fallen short of expectations, hampered by the same technological challenges that have afflicted other developers of self-driving vehicles. It had predicted several hundred million dollars of revenue by this year, but instead acknowledges revenue is minimal, according to the company's financial projections reviewed by The Information. And it has fallen short of its timeline for removing human backup drivers, repeatedly pushing that goal into the future.

THE TAKEAWAY• Best-funded developer of self-driving trucks has missed revenue goals• It has repeatedly missed its timelines for removing backup drivers• Defense Department asked Treasury for security review

TuSimple's situation illustrates the obstacles lying in wait for even the best-funded autonomous vehicle startups. Companies including Embark, Ike, Plus.ai and Kodiak Robotics have poured money into outfitting semitrailer trucks with sensors and software that aim to remove a huge expense—the drivers—from the $700 billion-plus revenue U.S. trucking industry. Most of the other startups, unlike TuSimple, didn't set public timelines for achieving driverless trucks.

Started in Beijing and San Diego in 2015 by California Institute of Technology computer scientist Xiaodi Hou and Mo Chen, now its CEO, TuSimple has barreled past its competitors in terms of size. TuSimple has the biggest headcount of any self-driving–truck startup with 600 employees, including 350 engineers. It has raised $300 million, at a pre-money valuation of about $1 billion, from investors including Sina, known for its stake in Weibo, China's version of Twitter; Beijing-based CDH Investments; and microchip maker Nvidia. TuSimple says it's in the process of trying to raise more.

More than a dozen times per day, TuSimple says, some of its 40 trucks guided by its self-driving software travel across fixed routes in the Southwest, including a 130-mile stretch of interstate highway between Tucson, Ariz., and Phoenix, accompanied by two human operators. In China, it operates 20 prototype trucks, which it tested at a port area near Shanghai.

Revenue Shortfall

While it generated early buzz based on videos of its retrofitted big rigs and gained clients like McLane, a food distributor owned by Berkshire Hathaway, TuSimple's business has remained small because its software hasn't advanced enough to allow it to remove human backup drivers from the vehicles. This has resulted in far lower revenue than it told prospective investors to expect.

In 2016, the company had a lofty business forecast: It anticipated generating $284 million in revenue from U.S. operations in 2020 and nearly $1 billion in revenue in 2021, according to a fundraising-related document viewed by The Information. From its self-driving trucks in China, it forecast $171 million in revenue this year and $776 million next year.

Instead, its current revenue is minimal, according to a different document related to a recent fundraising effort. The document didn't specify the amount. TuSimple President Cheng Lu said in an interview that TuSimple has "very limited revenue for the size of the company," which is one of the reasons it applied for and received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of between $2 million and $5 million from the U.S. Small Business Administration to avoid layoffs.

That shortfall has not prevented TuSimple from continuing to tell prospective investors profits are coming. The company projects that in 2026 it will generate more than $4 billion a year in profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from more than $12 billion in revenue by operating a commercial freight network of more than 30,000 driverless trucks, according to the recent fundraising document.

"We set very aggressive goals for ourselves and try to keep them as much as we can," Lu said. "The difference now versus five years ago is, from our perspective, we have clearly defined the [technical] problem.…We understand the complexity of the trucking problem and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles to understand the edge cases and how to solve it. And we do have to execute it." (Edge cases are rare occurrences that can trip up an automated driving system.)

Semitrailer trucks that drive themselves have become a heated battleground in the autonomous vehicle industry after efforts to automate cars ran into technical difficulties. Top venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, hedge funds like Tiger Global, and transportation companies have raced to invest in the sector's entrants.

The allure of autonomous trucks is twofold: They would follow fixed highway routes, which represent an easier technical problem to solve compared to transporting human passengers within cities. They would also cut labor costs while solving a chronic industrywide driver shortfall for some types of freight routes—a shortfall that persists even amid the Covid-19 economic downturn. The opportunity has also attracted new, well-funded competitors, such as Alphabet's Waymo and Aurora Innovation, which originally focused on automating passenger cars.

Despite the surge in investments, the trucking startups have run into some of the same challenges as self-driving car pioneers. One such issue is developing a system that can reliably react to unfamiliar occurrences, from recognizing potential dangers far ahead of the vehicle to encountering mattresses or bricks on the road after they fall off other trucks.

Missed Milestones

TuSimple is no exception. Like its rivals, TuSimple hasn't disclosed data about how well its automated driving software performs, but it has discussed changes to its technical strategy. After initially heralding a system focused on cameras and computer-vision software, it now incorporates lidar laser sensors, a device most self-driving–vehicle systems use to detect objects.

"We set very aggressive goals for ourselves and try to keep them as much as we can"

It has also had to push out timelines for proving the capabilities of its technology.

In an interview in mid-2018, TuSimple's head of public affairs, Robert Brown, told The Information that the company planned to remove the human backup driver from behind the wheel of its prototypes as soon as 2019. It has yet to do so.

Last year, co-founder Hou told Forbes that TuSimple wanted to reach that same milestone in 2020. President Lu now says the company plans to run prototypes without a backup driver by 2021.

TuSimple may have good reason to delay removing backup drivers.

On the morning of Sept. 26, one of TuSimple's retrofitted 18-wheelers was involved in a freeway collision on Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix that resulted in an injury. A speeding vehicle hit the back of a van in front of the TuSimple truck, and then spun around and came to a stop, according to a video recorded by TuSimple and viewed by The Information. The software system was tracking the car and was prepared to brake, said TuSimple Chief Product Officer Chuck Price, but the backup driver slammed on the brakes first, which he says may have saved the car driver's life. The truck then hit the stopped car at a relatively low speed. TuSimple voluntarily suspended prototype road testing for two days.

Red Flags From Defense Department, High Costs

Meanwhile, U.S. security concerns over TuSimple's Chinese ties loom. The company says roughly 40% of its employees are located in mainland China, and major investors such as Sina and CDH are based there as well.

That drew the interest of an agency within the U.S. Defense Department. That agency asked the U.S. Treasury Department to review Series D funding received by TuSimple, which the company said totaled $215 million, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who requested anonymity. However, the Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which investigates foreign investments in U.S.-based companies and can block them if they pose national security concerns, did not choose to review TuSimple's funding.

As TuSimple avoids such detours and seeks to perfect its technology, it is also facing a rising wall of costs.

Its deal last week with truck manufacturer Navistar to develop by 2024 production-grade vehicles with TuSimple's self-driving software came at a steep price tag, according to two people who spoke to Navistar. TuSimple, which also gave Navistar an equity stake in the company, is expected to pay Navistar tens of millions of dollars per year for at least several years to develop and gain access to Navistar trucks. TuSimple's software would then more easily be able to control the trucks' steering, brakes and throttle.

It's a contrast to the self-driving car world, where manufacturers including Hyundai, Magna International and Volkswagen essentially paid the developers of automated driving software they worked with. A Navistar spokesman did not comment.

TuSimple's Lu said, "Both sides are committing resources and capital over the next four or five years" to develop and test dozens of trucks in the field. "We're happy to fund it," he said, adding, "As a tech company we have access to capital."

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How NASA Built a Self-Driving Car for Its Next Mars Mission

Posted: 22 Jul 2020 01:46 AM PDT