Honda R&D and Alphabet’s Waymo enter discussions on technical collaboration on full autonomous vehicles
22 December 2016
Honda R&D Co., Ltd., the R&D subsidiary of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., is entering into formal discussions with Waymo, an independent company of Alphabet Inc. (earlier post), to integrate its self-driving technology with Honda vehicles. This technical collaboration between Honda researchers and Waymo’s self-driving technology team would allow both companies to learn about the integration of Waymo’s fully self-driving sensors, software and computing platform into Honda vehicles.
As part of the discussion on technical collaboration, Honda could initially provide Waymo with vehicles modified to accommodate Waymo’s self-driving technology. These vehicles would join Waymo’s existing fleet, which are currently being tested in four US cities. (Waymo will also receive 100 Chrysler Pacifica PHEV minivans from FCA built uniquely to support self-driving operation. (Earlier post.) Waymo CEO John Krafcik will have one of the autonomous PHEV minivans onstage for his keynote at NAIAS in January.)If both parties agree to enter into a formal agreement, Honda R&D engineers based in Silicon Valley, California and Tochigi, Japan, would work closely with Waymo engineers based in Mountain View, California and Novi, Michigan.
Honda previously announced its intention to put production vehicles with automated driving capabilities on highways sometime around 2020 related to its goal of a collision-free society. In addition to these on-going efforts, this technical collaboration with Waymo could allow Honda R&D to explore a different technological approach to bring fully self-driving technology to market.
These discussions are an initial step that will allow Waymo and Honda R&D to further explore the potential of a broad range of automated driving technologies.
The Honda Silicon Valley Lab (HSVL) is a division of Honda R&D Americas, Inc., the North American research and development subsidiary of Honda R&D Co., Ltd. HSVL was established in May 2011 in Mountain View, Calif. as an open innovation lab for global Honda, focused on information technology. HSVL interfaces with a broad spectrum of IT innovators, from large, well established companies to small startup firms and individuals. This technical collaboration with Waymo is a part of its role.
Waymo should start to install fully autonomous hardware on all of one of Honda’s upscale production cars like Tesla has done for all of their models. You need hundreds of thousands of cars on the road with fully self-driving hardware to iron out all the freak cases in the software that causes accidents. Tesla can do it safely because they can run their unfinished software in shadow mode and get all the real world info they need to see where the car would have failed had the software been in control.
Until we see other automakers do like Tesla and install fully self-driving hardware on a production car that sells in hundreds of thousands per year they are not going to be able to develop the self driving software. It is really hard to do the code and without massive real world data to help the programmers focus on important issues it will be impossible IMO. Google has spent ten years and they are still far from ready to deploy because they do it the wrong way. Tesla is many years ahead on self driving cars as a result. The auto world will tremble when Tesla boot a fully functional Tesla Network in 2018 with over 500,000 self driving Tesla taxis each with a potential to drive 100,000 miles per year earning 100,000 USD per year. That is 50 billion USD worth of potential taxi fees per year!
The Tesla Network will enable Tesla to make all the cash they need for expedited investments in new factories, service centers and charging infrastructure so that they can continue their rapid expansion.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 22 December 2016 at 02:26 AM
I think it is good that Honda do the car and Google do the self driving.
I wonder who is in charge of the sensors - do google just spec them and let Honda fit them, or do google spec and fit them ?
A fully functioning Tesla network by 2018 seems ambitious to me, there is the technological side, and there is the legal side, which is another thing altogether.
Uber seem to feel they are completely above the law and can do whatever they like. Putting the CEO in jail might enhance their respect for the law.
You have this problem that if you deploy the systems very safely, it will take too long, and if you deploy them all at once, you will cause accidents and maybe deaths. But also, the programmers won't be able to keep up with the number of new scenarios coming in.
You need to deploy the vehicles at a "goldilocks" rate which is fast enough to make progress, but not so fast that you kill people and the programmers die from stress and lack of sleep.
Posted by: mahonj | 22 December 2016 at 03:03 AM
It will be Waymo that spec the all the self-driving hardware and Honda that makes it happen at their production line. Waymo will not have any people at Honda’s factory floor.
Tesla does not need to deploy until they have gathered the stat so that they know it will work as safely as they intend. Tesla is running the autopilot in shadow mode all the time. I don’t think you have quite understood this. Tesla only enables drivers to activate a new version of the autopilot when it has been thoroughly tested in shadow mode on Tesla’s entire fleet soon over 200,000 cars. It is one of the brilliant solutions Tesla has made to actually make this happen fast.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 22 December 2016 at 03:39 AM
Tesla will be ready with their fully driverless software by the end of 2017. Some jurisdictions will be ready during 2018. Tesla will deploy their finalized software as soon as they can legally region by region.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 22 December 2016 at 03:43 AM
Google spun them off so they could be bought, the name Waymo will not last long.
Posted by: SJC | 22 December 2016 at 12:39 PM
@mahonj:
Why not let the software do the "learning" and give the human programmers a rest? They're the ones who need sleep.
Posted by: Brent Jatko | 27 December 2016 at 06:08 AM