An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The most recent crash involving a Tesla Model S and alleged connections to running driver-assist features without a driver behind the wheel spurred a lot of talk on how to handle advanced technology and its growing impact on drivers. Following Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey's calls for enhanced guidelines from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the two introduced new legislation on Monday that aims to tackle the problem.

With Sen. Amy Klobuchar signed on as a sponsor, the Stay Aware for Everyone Act would compel the Department of Transportation to study driver-monitoring systems installed in vehicles. With findings delivered to the appropriate committees within 180 days, the Transportation Secretary would then need to finalize a rule within four years deciding if the systems should become mandatory on all new vehicles. Not just vehicles with any level of driver-assist system, like Tesla's Autopilot, but all new cars sold. Automakers would then have two model years to meet compliance with any new vehicles going on sale.

The language in this bill, however, is interesting since it covers all new vehicles, rather than vehicles equipped with advanced assist systems. Naturally, this opens up privacy concerns, and all the bill says on this front is that the Transportation Secretary would determine "appropriate privacy and data security safeguards." The SAFE Act is one of four new bills the pair of Democratic senators introduced today, proposing potential legislation to speed up recall reporting from automakers, to bolster vehicle seat backs to reduce related fatalities and to set up a system to help automakers report possible vehicle defects earlier for NHTSA to investigate.

Lyft will sell its self-driving car unit to Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota, for $550 million in cash, the companies announced Monday. CNBC reports: As part of the deal, Lyft and Woven Planet will work together on enhancing automated driving technology safety, according to a release. "Not only will this transaction allow Lyft to focus on advancing our leading Autonomous platform and transportation network, this partnership will help pull in our profitability timeline," Lyft Co-Founder and President John Zimmer said in a statement.

The company expects the deal will remove $100 million of annualized non-GAAP operating expenses on a net basis, according to the release. Because of that, Zimmer added that if the deal closes when expected in the third quarter and recovery from the pandemic continues, Lyft expects to become profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis in Q3.

Long-time Slashdot reader DesertNomad summarizes a report from EE Times: It's been known for a long time that the various Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) systems are easily jammed; the more "interesting" problem is the potential to spoof a GNSS signal and by spoofing use that to cause GNSS receivers to determine incorrect positions. The challenge lies in the observation that the navigation messages can be constructed by bad actors on the ground. Work going on for several years now has been to provide crypto signatures that have the potential to authenticate valid transmissions. Current commercial receivers can't take advantage of that, so there may be industry-wide needs to update the receiver devices.
"The vulnerability of the global positioning system, or GPS, is widely acknowledged..." reports EE Times: Spoofing creates all kinds of havoc. For example, it can be used to hijack autonomous vehicles and send them on alternate routes. Spoofing can alter the routes recorded by vehicle monitors, or break geofences used to guard operational areas. It also poses a risk to critical infrastructure, including power, telecommunication and transportation systems. Jan van Hees, business development and marketing director for GNSS receiver maker Septentrio, provided these analogies: "Jamming involves making so much noise that the [satellite signal] disappears. Spoofing is like a phishing attack on the signal."

The U.S. Coast Guard has recently tracked a growing number of high-profile incidents involving GPS interference. For example, the loss of GPS reception in Israeli ports in 2019 left GPS-guided autonomous cranes inoperable, collateral damage from the Syrian civil war. In 2016, more than 20 ships off the Crimean peninsula were thought to be the victim of a GPS spoofing attack which shifted the ships' positions on electronic chart displays to land.
The article recommends real-world auditing, testing, and risk assessment, adding that one pending fix is signal encryption "including a framework called open service navigation message authentication (OSNMA)." The OSNMA anti-spoofing service developed for the European GNSS system, enables secure transmissions from Galileo satellites to encryption-enabled GNSS receivers. In the midst of final testing, OSNMA will soon be available free to users... A secret key on the satellite is used to generate a digital signature. Both the signature and key are appended to navigation data and transmitted to the receiver. OSNMA is designed to be backward-compatible, so that positioning without OSNMA still works.

Honda will end production of combustion motors by 2040 as it embarks on a wide-reaching drive to achieve total carbon neutrality by 2050 and to advance the development of its zero-emission powertrain solutions. AutoCar reports: Company president Toshihiro Mibe detailed a series of ambitious objectives at a press conference in Japan today, where he solidified the brand's commitment to leading "advancements which will be made in the areas of mobility, the power unit, energy and robotics." By 2050, Honda aims to achieve carbon neutrality across "all products and corporate activities," which will see it shift focus predominantly to developing environmentally friendly powertrains and overhauling its supply chain to ensure products are "made from 100% sustainable materials."

The brand had already confirmed it would offer exclusively electrified passenger cars in Europe by the end of 2022, but is now solidifying its global electrification strategy for the coming years. By 2030, Honda plans for 40% of its sales to be pure-electric or fuel cell (FCEV) vehicles, rising to 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2040. Specific goals for the European market have yet to be fully detailed, but a strategic partnership with General Motors will accelerate electrification efforts in North America, while a total of 10 new Honda-badged EVs will be launched in the Chinese market "within five years" - the first of which will be the production version of the e:prototype shown at Shanghai last week. Honda has also confirmed that in the second half of the decade, it will launch a range of EVs atop its new 'e:Architecture' platform. The models will arrive in the US first, before being rolled out to other regions, likely including Europe.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is shutting its two main car factories temporarily due to a shortage of computer chips. From a report: The difficulties at Britain's biggest carmaker echo similar problems at other manufacturers, including Ford, who have been hit by a global shortage of chips. JLR said there would be a "limited period" of closure at its Halewood and Castle Bromwich sites from Monday. A mixture of strong demand and Covid shutdowns at chipmakers has also hit phone, TV and video games companies. Tata-owned JLR said in a statement: "We have adjusted production schedules for certain vehicles which means that our Castle Bromwich and Halewood manufacturing plants will be operating a limited period of non-production from Monday 26th April. We are working closely with affected suppliers to resolve the issues and minimise the impact on customer orders wherever possible." Production at a third factory, at Solihull, will continue. The Castle Bromwich factory makes the Jaguar XE, XF and F-Type models, and employs about 1,900 people. Halewood makes the Range Rover, Evoque and the Land Rover Discovery Sport, and has about 4,000 workers.

Alphabet's Wing Aviation is asking U.S. regulators to allow it to expand drone operations as a way to make more efficient deliveries controlled from a central command post. From a report: Wing wants to control its drone flights at a "central hub" from which the remote pilots can oversee operations without being in the aircraft's operating area, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday in a filing in the Federal Register. The company also wants to launch drones from multiple locations within an operating area, and get FAA permission to receive less frequent checks from the regulator, the filing said. The agency posted the requests without saying whether it will approve them.

Rei_is_a_dumbass shares a report from Ars Technica: Last Saturday, two men died when a Tesla Model S crashed into a tree in a residential neighborhood. Authorities said they found no one in the driver's seat -- one man was in the front passenger seat, while the other was in the back. That led to speculation that the car might have been under the control of Tesla's Autopilot driver-assistance system at the time of the crash. Elon Musk has tweeted that "data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled." Tesla defenders also insisted that Autopilot couldn't have been active because the technology doesn't operate unless someone is in the driver's seat. Consumer Reports decided to test this latter claim by seeing if it could get Autopilot to activate without anyone in the driver's seat. It turned out not to be very difficult.

Sitting in the driver's seat, Consumer Reports' Jake Fisher enabled Autopilot and then used the speed dial on the steering wheel to bring the car to a stop. He then placed a weighted chain on the steering wheel (to simulate pressure from a driver's hands) and hopped into the passenger seat. From there, he could reach over and increase the speed using the speed dial. Autopilot won't function unless the driver's seatbelt is buckled, but it was also easy to defeat this check by threading the seatbelt behind the driver. "In our evaluation, the system not only failed to make sure the driver was paying attention, but it also couldn't tell if there was a driver there at all," Fisher wrote in a post on the Consumer Reports website.

Audi has revealed its all-electric A6 E-tron concept, a luxury sedan that will come packed with tech including the ability to project video games on to a wall. Tom's Guide reports: The A6 E-tron, which was unveiled at Auto Shanghai 2021 today, is built on the new Premium Platform Electric (PPE) chassis architecture that Audi is developing in collaboration with Porsche. And though a production version of the car isn't likely to be available until later in 2022, its development is well under way; the car you see here shouldn't be miles away from the final version.

The A6 E-tron Concept boasts almost 435 miles of range and comes armed with a 100 kWh battery, which can be replenished from 5 to 80% in under 25 minutes as well as being able to accept fast 270kW charging. Featuring a motor on each axle, with a combined power output of 469 bhp and 590lb ft of torque, the Audi A6 E-tron should be quick, too, with a 0-62 mph time of under 4 seconds. However, Audi also plans PPE-based models with a single motor mounted on the rear axle to keep energy efficiency and prices in check.

Standout cosmetic touches include digital matrix LED headlights, which have the party trick of being able to project images. Audi suggests that owners can park facing a wall during recharging and pass the time playing a video game using the technology, or watch a movie. Audi has even developed a game, which is playable via a smartphone, to show how the concept works. Four more LED projectors are housed in the corners of the car to shine animated turn signals on the road. OLED technology in the taillights promises more electrical trickery and there are additional projectors that switch on when the doors are opened. These, suggest Audi, can be used to issue greetings to passengers or warnings to passing cyclists when the doors are opening.

Rei writes: After a Tesla crash in The Woodlands killed two people last Saturday night, news reports were quick to jump to the conclusion that Autopilot (or even FSD) was being used and led to the strange crash, in which investigators reported nobody in the driver's seat, one victim buckled in in the front passenger seat, and the other buckled in behind them. On Twitter, however, Autopilot users were quick to question this account, noting that Autopilot can't be enabled on a road lacking lane lines; the speed and acceleration were far higher than Autopilot allows; and numerous other problems. Now Elon Musk has weighed in with the first official statement since the crash. Responding to a user questioning the reporting, Musk said: "Your research as a private individual is better than professionals @WSJ! Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD. Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have." What actually caused the crash and why nobody was found in the driver's seat remains unclear at this point; analysis of the logs and investigation of the crash site remains ongoing.

Texas TV station KPRC 2 reports that two men are dead after a Tesla "crashed into a tree and no one was driving the vehicle, officials say."

Long-time Slashdot readers AmiMoJo and McGruber both submitted the story: There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said authorities believe no one else was in the car and that it burst into flames immediately. He said it he believes it wasn't being driven by a human.

Harris County Constable Precinct 4 deputies said the vehicle was traveling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a cul-de-sac turn, ran off the road and hit the tree.

KPRC 2 reporter Deven Clarke spoke to one man's brother-in-law who said he was taking the car out for a spin with his best friend, so there were just two in the vehicle. The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road...

Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames because the vehicle's batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.

Mercedes-Benz's parent company Daimler AG unveiled Thursday its newest battery-powered sedan that challenges Tesla in the high-end electric car space. CNBC reports: The 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS, unveiled Thursday, marks a new era for the German automaker as it pivots to EVs. The car will be part of its large S-Class car family when it arrives in U.S. showrooms in the fall. Most notably, the interior of the vehicle looks like a cockpit out of a futuristic spacecraft more than a car. It has screens across nearly the entire dashboard of the vehicle. In total, it features three screens under a single 56-inch curved glass surface, including a passenger screen that will not be visible to the driver.

The automaker did not release pricing for the EQS, however industry experts expect it to easily top $100,000. The starting price on the 2021 Mercedes-Benz S-Class ranges between $94,000 and $160,000. Its Mercedes-Maybach S models can top $200,000. The price range for Tesla's Model S large sedan ranges from around $79,990 to $149,990, including a new high-end performance model, Model S Plaid.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Throughout December, someone was setting fires at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Presbyterian Church, a "predominately Black" congregation located in Springfield, Massachusetts. An FBI affidavit claims that the last of these fires, set on Dec. 28, "essentially destroyed" the building -- burning away large parts of the interior. During this period, the same person is suspected of having carried out a "series of tire-slashings" targeted at vehicles near or around the church -- a majority of which were owned by Black individuals. Now, 44-year-old Maine resident Dushko Vulchev has been arrested in connection to the crimes. He was charged in a federal court in Springfield on Thursday, a release from the U.S. Justice Department shows, and is potentially facing decades behind bars.

Court documents illustrate how state, local and federal authorities used a variety of surveillance footage and data collection to piece together Vulchev's whereabouts and place him at or near these crimes. In particular, the vandal slipped up when he allegedly slashed the tires of a Tesla located not far from the church. Authorities say one of the car's many pre-installed security cameras caught blatant images of the culprit as he damaged the tires, then later returned to steal them along with the vehicle's rims. "Based on my training and experience and this investigation, I am aware that the Tesla mentioned above is equipped with cameras at various points around the body," said the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit. "I have reviewed video footage retrieved from the Tesla showing an individual that I can identify as Vulchev...The video footage from the Tesla shows Vulchev at a close distance crouching near the Tesla and using a tire iron to remove the wheels." Using other data collected and a variety of local surveillance footage, law enforcement was able to build a case against Vulchev.

France is offering residents $2,975 to trade in their gas-powered vehicle for an electric bicycle. The Next Web reports: Earlier this week, lawmakers in France approved the measure in a preliminary vote. The French Federation of Bicycle Users claims that if France does go ahead with the scheme, it would be the first nation in the world to give people money for old cars to put towards new electric bicycles, Reuters reports. However, the organization must be leaving out crucial details as to how it reached that conclusion as there have been other similar schemes.

For example, as Martti Tulenheimo, chief specialist at the Finnish Cyclists' Federation points out, Finland has a similar rebate which citizens have used to fund more than 2,000 ebikes, 1,000 new low emission cars, and 100 public transport tickets. Lithuania also offered such a scheme last year. The nation's Environmental Project Management Agency (APVA) offered residents $1,200 if they traded in their old cars. The money could then be used against anything from escooters, to ebikes, to public transport tickets. The scheme was considered a success with more than 8,500 people applying for the grant.

Ford has revealed that it spent last year conducting the "mother of all road trips" for its upcoming BlueCruise system, sending five Mustang Mach-E crossovers and five F-150 trucks on a collective 110,000-mile journey across the US and Canada. Engadget reports: The aim, to no one's surprise, was to gauge how BlueCruise handled in a wide range of realistic road and traffic conditions. Ford had already racked up 500,000 miles of development testing, but these were shorter, narrowly-focused dry runs. The road trips helped Ford look for changes in everything from road signs to weather while traveling cross-country.

BlueCruise will reach 2021 Mustang Mach-E and F-150 models later in the second half of the year through a software update, although you'll need the Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 Prep Package. Like Super Cruise, it relies on looking for "prequalified" highway sections and verifies that you're paying attention to the road. You really can take your hands off the wheel, but you'll have to be ready to intervene when you either leave the BlueCruise-ready area or face an unexpected issue on the road.

Most business travellers in the UK will take fewer flights than they used to, according to a poll, thanks to increased use of video conferencing. Only a third expected to return to the same level of flying as before the coronavirus pandemic, once travel restrictions are lifted. From a report: The huge reduction in air travel caused by Covid-19 had no impact on the work life or productivity of the majority of the business flyers, the poll found, with one in five saying the shutdown had had a positive impact. Carbon emissions from aviation were growing at 5.7% a year before the pandemic, despite many countries committing to cut all emissions to net zero by 2050 to tackle the climate crisis. Green campaigners argue that the aviation shutdown provides an opportunity to put the sector on a sustainable trajectory. Business-class seats provide most of airlines' revenues but result in more emissions than those in the economy cabin because of the greater space occupied by each passenger. Business fliers also fly far more frequently than most holidaygoers, with 10% of those in the poll taking more than 10 flights in the year up to the first lockdown in March 2020. Bill Gates recently estimated that more than 50% of business travel would end as companies adopted online meetings and cut costs.

Mobileye, the company that specializes in chips for vision-based autonomous vehicles, announced that it will launch a full-scale, fully driverless delivery service starting in 2023. The company, a subsidiary of Intel, is joining forces with self-driving delivery startup Udelv to run this new service. From a report: Deliveries will be made using a new type of cabin-less vehicle called The Transporter. While manufacturing plans are still in flux, Mobileye and Udelv say they will produce 35,000 Transporters between 2023-2028 -- a signal of their seriousness to launch a driverless delivery system at scale. "This is a real commercial deployment," Jack Weast, vice president of automated vehicle standards at Mobileye, told The Verge. "Thirty-five thousand units starting in 2023 that will fully integrate our self driving system for commercial use for automated goods delivery." Mobileye's turn-key self-driving system features a full-sensor suite of 13 cameras, three long-range LiDARs, six short-range LiDARs, and six radar. It also includes the Israeli company's EyeQ system-on-a-chip and a data crowdsourcing program called the Road Experience Management, or REM, which uses real-time data from Mobileye-equipped vehicles to build out a global 3D map.

Huawei will invest $1 billion on researching self-driving and electric-car technologies, accelerating plans to compete with Tesla and Xiaomi in the world's biggest vehicle arena. From a report: Huawei's autonomous-driving technology has already surpassed Tesla's in some spheres, for instance by allowing cars to cruise for more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) without human intervention, Rotating Chairman Eric Xu told analysts in Shenzhen Monday. The Chinese telecom giant will partner with three automakers initially to make self-driving cars that carry the Huawei name as a sub-brand, said Xu, one of three executives who take turns to fill the post. It will keep its circle of partners small and get its logo onto cars -- not unlike how Intel calls attention to its microprocessors on PCs -- that adopt its autonomous driving technology, he added. The mobile giant has so far agreed to team up with BAIC Group, Chongqing Changan Automobile and Guangzhou Automobile Group.

phalse phace writes: A minor change in Boeing's 737 MAX manufacturing process that was insufficiently vetted caused an electrical system problem that on Friday temporarily grounded more than 60 of the aircraft -- out of almost 200 MAXs that have returned to service since December. While this latest manufacturing flaw is unrelated to the flight-control system implicated in two fatal crashes that grounded the MAX for nearly two years, it slows the positive momentum that had begun to build as more MAXs took to the air and new orders came in from United, Alaska and Southwest.

The problem, according to two people with knowledge of the modified manufacturing process, arose when a backup electrical power control unit was secured to a rack on the flight deck with fasteners -- in place of the rivets previously used. This change was executed in such a way that it did not provide a complete electrical grounding path to the unit. The lack of secure electrical grounding could potentially cause malfunctions in a variety of electrical systems, such as the engine anti-ice system and the auxiliary power unit (APU) in the plane's tail. Boeing said it discovered the issue "on a production airplane during normal build activity" and that inspections are needed to verify "that a sufficient ground path exists" for this control unit.

AmiMoJo writes: French MPs have voted to suspend domestic airline flights on routes that can be travelled by direct train in less than two and a half hours, as part of a series of climate and environmental measures. After a heated debate in the Assemblee Nationale at the weekend, the ban, a watered-down version of a key recommendation from President Emmanuel Macron's citizens' climate convention was adopted. It will mean the end of short internal flights from Orly airport, south of Paris, to Nantes and Bordeaux among others, though connecting flights through Charles de Gaulle/Roissy airport, north of the French capital, will continue. The climate commission set up by Macron had originally recommended the scrapping of all flights between French destinations where an alternative direct train journey of less than four hours existed. This was reduced to two and a half hours after strong objections from certain regions and from Air France-KLM, which, like other airlines, has been badly hit by local and international Covid-19 restrictions on travel.

Elon Musk's Boring Company showed off its 1.7 mile loop of tunnel underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center this week, and Electrek writes that "it proved to be, well, quite boring... The vehicles are not going faster than 35 mph, and they are not being driven autonomously."

CNET's headline even calls the tunnel "lame," complaining that the project "is quickly turning into Tesla cars driving people underground, rather than some sort of futuristic transport system."

"Detractors say that makes The Boring Company's projects little more than reinvented subways with significantly less passenger capacity," adds Business Insider: Critics also point out that The Boring Company's noble aim of building congestion-alleviating tunnels under cities worldwide ignores the phenomenon of induced demand, which says that more roadways — even underground ones — will give way to more cars.
But Jalopnik had probably the harshest reaction to the Vegas Loop, noting that the speed of the system is "about 10 mph less than the top speed of a 1908 Ford Model T," and calling it "about as exciting as a sheet of unpainted drywall discarded in a closed office park..." Musk's The Boring Company own the machines that dug the tunnels, and those machines, some of which were heavily modified by the company, are capable of using the excess dirt from the tunnel to turn into bricks, which is pretty cool, I guess. Raw, humid thrills of brick-making aside, all this really is are some Teslas driving in tunnels lined with LED lights.

Sure, it's a 45-minute walk (correction, more like 20 minutes, sorry) on the surface and only a few minutes ride underneath, but the system is still remarkably bad at moving large numbers of people per hour, the metric normally used to evaluate mass transit systems. While it was originally intended to move up to 4,400 people per hour, fire regulations will limit the system to moving between 800 and 1,200 people per hour. That said, it looks like the company still states the 4,400 number, when used with 62 cars in the tunnel, though based on the safety issues, this does not seem likely. That's in the same ballpark as normal vehicular street traffic for private cars (600 to 1,600 people per hour) and a lot less than a dedicated bus lane (4,000 to 8,000 per hour) — hell, normal 60-passenger buses can do about 1,800 per hour, if we have them going back and forth every two minutes or so.

A dumb old sidewalk can move 9,000 people an hour! But that's walking, which is what animals do, and it takes a while and has the potential to make you sweat. Proposed moving high-speed sidewalks, similar to the ThyssenKrupp ACCEL system used in the Toronto Pearson International airport, are expected to move about 7,000 people per hour, and such a system would be far cheaper and easier to build... As it stands now, we have a few Teslas driving around in long, narrow loops under the convention center, saving you a bit of walking but doing every other part of the job of moving people worse than almost any other solution.
Business Insider's report adds that the Boring Company "aims to expand the system to other Las Vegas destinations, including the airport and downtown" — and that the company also in talks with Miami officials about a similar project.