The Station: Rimac-Bugatti is born, Tesla releases FSD beta v9 and Ola raises $500M Posted on : Jul 12 - 2021

Hello and welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

I’m back from my road trip and swimming in emails. If you sent me a message on Twitter, email or pigeon post, please give me a few days to dig out of the pile that awaits me.

You might recall that I mentioned I was off to do some backpacking and climbing in Grand Teton National Park and then eventually would make it to Yellowstone National Park. Yes, the crowds were real, especially for those who stuck to the traditional schedule of sightseeing between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. I took the early morning and late evening approach and never encountered the infamous parking lot traffic jams.

It’s that tactic that allowed me to take a ride in an empty T.E.D.D.Y., the autonomous vehicle that is being piloted in Yellowstone this summer. Beep, in partnership with Local Motors, is operating the autonomous shuttle called T.E.D.D.Y., which stands for The Electric Driverless Demonstration in Yellowstone. The company plans to operate two routes, seven days a week. Information collected during the pilot will be used to inform future deployments in national parks across the country.

Here’s what I discovered. The two shuttles, which always have a human operator who can take manual control if needed, are currently shuttling folks around the busy Canyons section of the park, specifically between the lodging area and main shopping area, where there is a general store, post office and eateries. The folks operating the shuttle told me about 1,240 people a week are riding the TEDDY vehicles and that riders were both curious and more knowledgeable about the tech than they expected.

My ride was on eventful, as it should have been. The vehicle did pause unnecessarily because the self-driving system thought it needed to. The human safety operator warned me that this pause would likely occur, as it had been happening regularly over the past few days.

One final item. The Autonocast, the podcast I co-host with Alex Roy and Ed Niedermeyer, is teaming up with SAE for a zoom call to have a wide-ranging discussion on the future of transportation and how the discourse about autonomous vehicle technology that occurs online — yes, Twitter I’m looking at you — impacts public perception. Specifically, we’re going to dig into a term coined by Liza Dixon called “autonowashing.

SAE MidCal, in conjunction with SAE SoCal, is hosting the meeting, which you can register for here. Please join us and post your questions in advance to get the conversation started. View More