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MC: I feel low anxiety. I usually ride my bike so I give them a great distance and I don’t fully trust them yet.
LG: Uh-huh. Sometimes I see people texting or Snapchatting while driving and I’m like, yeah, let’s bring self-driving cars. But I’m also curious about how quickly that will become a reality.
MC: Oh, at least ten years. People love to drive, and it takes a while.
LG: Well, we might get a clearer clarification from a guest on the podcast today.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
LG: Hello everyone.Welcome to Gadget Lab. I’m Lauren Goode and I’m a Senior Writer for Wired.
MC: I’m Michael Calore, senior editor at WIRED.
LG: Today we also join WIRED staff writer Aarian Marshall. Hey Arian.
Arianne Marshall: Hello.
LG: It’s been a while, so glad you’re back.
Yes: Nice to be here.
LG: So, today we are talking about self-driving cars or self-driving cars. Now, Aarian, you covered all the transportation elements for us in Wired. You recently spoke with Jody Kelman, head of Lyft’s autonomous driving division, during CES, the big annual consumer electronics event, and you also spoke with Aubrey Donnellan, co-founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics. Many of you may have heard of Lyft and maybe not Bear Flag, but what you should know about Bear Flag Robotics is that they are now owned by John Deere.
So, they both paint a rosy picture of how self-driving cars can transform everything from cities to farming operations, but actually implementing the technology is complicated, as we report here at WIRED. They also talked about how they initially envisioned certain use cases for their AV technology and ended up deploying in different ways, which I think is something we’re working on in the broader technology space. Aarian, before we start our interview, tell us how the two companies are approaching autonomous transportation and the different markets they serve.
Yes: Yes. So these companies are completely different, serving completely different markets. Lyft is an interesting case because they actually had their own team of engineers in Palo Alto working on self-driving technology, and then last year they sold that part of the business to Toyota. So now all they’re doing with self-driving cars is partnering with other companies that are developing the technology and eventually deploying it into their ride-hailing network. So, people like Jody are dealing with product questions about who’s going to use self-driving cars? How will they use them? Will there be certain likes and dislikes? Marketing issues around AV.
And then the folks at Bear Flag Robotics are dealing with very different people, they are dealing with farmers, they are dealing with agricultural workers. In these environments and many industry environments, manufacturing, factory-related things, self-driving cars are actually already doing little tasks that are routine and don’t require that kind of complex thinking. You can drive. So John Deere actually unveiled a new tractor at CES with more autonomous capabilities, and it can do a lot in the field right now.
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