Guest: Phil Koopman, professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Will we see a vast fleet of cybercabs (or robotaxis) — with no regulatory approvals — wheeling around public roads in the United States any time soon?
This scene could materialize a lot sooner than you expect.
Our podcast this week features Phil Koopman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, sketching, in five steps, the plausible path that automakers and tech companies can take to deploy robotaxis.
Carmakers and tech companies can get away with commercial robotaxi proliferation — without seeking exemptions or bothering to comply to FMVSS.
Phil Koopman
To be clear, Koopman isn’t endorsing this “Wild West” of regulatory-free robotaxis. But he explains how easy it could be for “a company that likes to move fast and break things, take action now and ask forgiveness later.”
Proponents of fully autonomous vehicles often describe regulation as the biggest impediment to AV technology innovations.
In reality, “That has always been a smoke screen to give AV companies a reason why they can’t deploy” [AVs just yet], observed Koopman.
This podcast reveals how carmakers and tech companies can get away with commercial robotaxi proliferation — without seeking exemptions or bothering to comply to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).
Of course, evading regulations shouldn’t be a goal for any carmaker.
But that’s not the point of the podcast.
Koopman says his 5-Step Playbook is “halfway between satire and a scary bedtime story.” He wants the world to know that this is not the time for us to believe it can’t happen here. Robotaxis with no regulatory oversight are plausible. “There’s a strong incentive,” Koopman warns. “You’d be stupid to think no one will do it.”
He concludes: “If one company does robotaxis with no regulatory approvals, there’s going to be tremendous financial pressure on the other companies to engage in a race to the bottom.”
Here are the five easy steps:
Step 1:
Just build a car, no steering wheel, no gas pedal, no brake pedal, no accelerator, no turn signal. Just a touchscreen in front of the driver.
Step 2:
Meet FMVSS specs by self-certifying the robotaxi, with no requirement to show anyone your homework until asked. You buy time to deploy.
Step 3:
Add a self-driving capability that works most of the time. Claim that the person in the car is still the driver because he/she can intervene — in a crisis — with the touchscreen driving controls.
Step 4:
Hire remote drivers. When the car suddenly can’t drive itself, the out-of-car safety drivers take over … maybe.
Step 5:
Partner with an existing ride-hail network and tell anyone who complains that it’s not a robotaxi. It’s a “Level 2 supervised driving service.”
Junko Yoshida is the editor in chief of The Ojo-Yoshida Report.
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