Billy Riggs (00:41)
Welcome back to rewiring the American Edge. I'm Billy Riggs

today asking a question that is specifically related to my area of expertise: should autonomous vehicles be designed to be context sensitive to the built environment that they're in?

In our last episode with Stefan Al we were really focused on: What does the future of AI mean to design and architecture.

So while we pivoted between autonomous vehicles and the economics and jobs that will come from that industry and to the design and architecture profession, I think it's important to think about how to rethink the vehicle. Should there be a visual relationship or design relationship

between our transportation platforms and the neighborhoods they move through? And is there a design vernacular or a logic for visual cohesion between the two? And that might sound abstract at first, but I think it's a very practical design question and it's one that we haven't given a lot of attention to in the Academy. I think we've been very dismissive

of this idea of evolving the platform, the vehicle, whether or not it's the streetcar or the automobile, or now the autonomous vehicle, the AV. And I think we're rewiring transportation,

we're rewiring the economy, we're rewiring our cities for innovation. Should we think about rewiring the visual vernacular of our cities, of our streets. And that could mean everything from cars, but it could also be benches. It could also be bus stops.

So what does that mean? It could be paint, it could be materials. We'll talk about that. But before we do that, let's start with a quick rundown of things that are happening on autonomous vehicles because it's been a busy few weeks and there's been a lot of movement, of course, with Tesla.

and Waymo. There was a recent conference in Atlanta called ITS,

the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Conference. And at the same time, Waymo was rolling out their vehicles in true marketing fashion, in Atlanta. Of course, they're only running about 12 vehicles in their service in Atlanta. And so that was reported by TechCrunch that they're running about 2000 vehicles nationwide in the US.

The bulk of those vehicles, about 800 vehicles, are in the San Francisco Bay Area. The second largest concentration in greater Phoenix, so Arizona. The third largest concentration in Austin, and then Los Angeles, and then Atlanta. So those are their primary markets. But again, only 2,000 vehicles spread across all these markets, and then at the same time,

We have a lot of these other announcements. So announcing New York, announcing Seattle, and then announcing some cold weather destinations, announcing Denver. Denver next on the list and testing that their software, their Waymo driver is ready to launch in snow destinations, is a bullish from a software standpoint. I think that's a sign that the Waymo driver

that self-driving software is prepared to operate in harsh weather conditions. Now we have seen self-driving software for example in northern European countries as a part of the SHOW project and we've heard Dr. Henriette Cornet talk about that project and her experience working on that project in prior episodes. So

this is not a first for automated vehicle technology working in cold weather destinations. So it is possible and achieving particularly level four driving in snowy climates is feasible. I got asked a couple of weeks ago, when will Waymo achieve level five driving?

And I want to make it clear for our audience and for all of you listening, know, level four, the idea of level four, that is a level of automation. That is the idea that the vehicle can drive like a human in most conditions, in most operational conditions, in most environments, safely. The idea of level five is that the vehicle could operate in all conditions. And I will tell you, and you can quote me on this,

Level five is a myth that that doesn't exist just like a human cannot on drive in all conditions Level five is a myth why? Because vehicles cannot violate laws of physics There is something called traction control there is something called ice and rubber and when they meet they they don't like each other. And so, we have to keep in mind that there are physical limits

that objects have to adhere to, and there will be points in time where the vehicle cannot operate. And that's where, astute companies realize the operational limits of their software. And that is where, they do what's called exiting the operational domain. They cease operations.

And that is why level five or level five fully autonomous driving ceases when the operational conditions no longer allow them to fully operate at their operational capacity. So exciting that we'll have driving happening in potential cold weather destinations like Denver.

Now, when will that be? Waymo's saying 2026, who knows? We don't know.

with Waymo's production partners being Jaguar, Zika and Hyundai and phasing out Jaguar, phasing in Zika and then Hyundai being a ways out, Toyota being a long tailed potential production partner. The issue here is, will they have vehicle supply to meet demand? We know that

potentially in 2026, there may be about their projection, I believe a couple months ago, in a TechCrunch article, it was stated that they anticipate 3500 vehicles by the end of 2026. Well, 3500 vehicles spread across the markets that have been announced is not a lot. So what we have is a lot of demand for vehicles in quite a few markets;

a little bit of a self-induced fleet cap issue here.

You know, I think until we can get automaker and self-driving software alignment here, we have a little bit of an issue. And this is where, you know, I've said to a couple of folks in the media, there is vulnerability from Chinese innovators and Chinese companies where what we do know about some of the Chinese companies, be it Baidu, be it

pony AI, be it WeRide, and don't let me leave out BYD, is that there's a lot more alignment between the manufacturer and the self-driving software provider. And so that is an intrinsic threat to self-driving software providers like Waymo.

where there's a vertical alignment between the software and the hardware. It was an asset for company like Cruise where they had an aligned stack between their hardware and their software. But of course, Cruise withdrew their product from the market and now has ingested certain parts of that product piecemeal into the GM family.

Now whether or not that product has the same value that it had when it was vertically aligned within Cruise LLC remains to be seen. I think there's some speculation that piecemealing that hardware and software stack may not be the same thing as trying to take the software from Cruise and separate it from the Cruise.

hardware that may be a little bit counterintuitive when you have a purpose-built cruise autonomous vehicle that was heavily reliant on sensor fusion, a traditional DARPA style.

Okay, that was a lot. It got a little nerdy there, but I want to pivot over to Tesla. I think seeing it up on a couple of fronts, of course, Tesla scaling full self-driving. Still level two automation, but they're building momentum and

looking towards long-promised RoboTaxi, but

at this point has been more about unleashing rideshare. What we can keep in mind there is that Tesla could unleash rideshare on its entire existing fleet. That's an interesting idea is that, every Tesla owner could become a rideshare driver today

in a level two fleet that takes advantage of Tesla's full self-driving technology. But the bigger story is Elon Musk really talking about this Optimus humanoid robot. It's a bold claim because he says that 80 % of Tesla's future value could come from robotics. That is interesting because I think there's a massive market for that, particularly in the

industrial sector. I think we when we heard from Parker Huncilman earlier in this podcast series when you think about factories when you think about industrial work. In some of the stuff we heard from Stefan, there could be a lot of synergies with AI and robotics and heavy-duty work that has to be done

And even when we think about what we talked about with Justin Hollander, with colonizing other planets, that is definitely critical path in terms of space exploration. So, you know, I think the issue there is that does Tesla have the tech talent to achieve this? Is Tesla bifurcating their

their goals? Can they achieve two AI tasks at once? Can they do both unconstrained AI for vehicles and unconstrained AI for the broader built environment with excellence? Or will both be more or less mediocre products?

Is it basically creating a fork in that model. And I'm not sure that it is the same product. And so in my mind, it separates what was one initiative into two corporate initiatives and it could lend itself rather than a focused corporate goal into a bifurcated corporate goal. the fact is, is that they're already behind schedule.

on the primary initiative, which was RoboTaxi, and does it set them behind schedule on Optimus? Optimus is already behind schedule, in terms of units, they'd already promised 5,000 units. Meanwhile, there's earnings dip, there's a 12 % dip in revenue and

Elon Musk tries to cast stories to drive the company forward.

So, lots of announcements lots of things at play but how much is marketing how much is real? I think it's really interesting time fascinating time to be at the edge of AI and automation and how will impact cities

And a lot of that will shape the way we look at cities. And that's what I really want to focus on today is the visual implication, context design, and the built environment. After that, so after that little review of where we are, what is happening with the way we look at cities, the visual DNA of cities? Are we going to have a lot of robots walking around, a lot of

a lot of Teslas that look like cars, or can we even reskin these vehicles to blend into the visual DNA of our environment? Can we come up with new ways of having infrastructure that is much more context sensitive? So maybe we can look backward before we look forward.

And I thought a good way to start will be to look back historically and to look at the streetcar era in the 21st century. And

one of the things I talk a lot about in my book, End of the Road, is this idea of the streetcar city and how in the early part of the 20th century, there was this idea that...

the wooden cars with brass rails and etched glass, They weren't just about moving people, but they were almost extensions of the neighborhoods they served. They many times, they had a visual identity of the neighborhoods

I grew up going to Oak Park a lot in Illinois, which was a classic city. Oak Park and Riverside. They had a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, but they also had roadways that were planned by Frederick Olmstead. And so in these neighborhoods that were served by streetcars, they would they they would have

streetcars that actually gesture in the same ornate ironwork that actually was reflected on the buildings. So it's the same kind of ironwork that you also see still today in Paris, ironically. So if we pivot over to Paris, if we look at Hector Guimard's Art Nouveau

entrances to the metro. They're not just portals to underground trains. They're a deliberate attempt to connect the visual identity of the city and the period artwork from

Art Nouveau Paris to the transportation infrastructure. I think another idea we could look at is the kind of the visual identity of the Shinkansen in Japan. Perhaps it's a little more akin to the confrontational architecture that I talked about with Stefan, it's kind of very unique.

visual identity. It's a engineering marvel, the Shinkansen as the bullet train. But it's this aerodynamic duck like nose cone has really become a part of Japan's visual identity. as a result, kind of the train system in Japan, people will go and there are games you can play to ride it. They will they engage with the system. And

there's a cultural identity that's tied to the Japanese train system. so I think that, when we see historically we've seen moments where transportation and the built environment have spoken the same design language. And maybe we can even think about the Mustang as a good example.

And how Lee Iacocca really put the muscle in the Mustang. Another example that comes to mind is, I, it's funny as I, I'll, should put this example up here for everybody to see. And I should, pop some of these examples up. Esther Malangu did the BMW art car and Esther Malangu amazing.

South African artist. So she did one in the early the 80s and then she recently did the ghost car. And so the ghost car is has translucent paint. And so the goal of the ghost car is it's most recent BMW. And the idea there is that

It can actually basically be transformed and Esther's designs is that actually can change color, can adapt to the environment around it. And so, you know, today's cars, for example, don't speak their perhaps normalized design, they're designed for a generalized pilot. They're a globalized product.

Toyota Prius or a Toyota Corolla looks the same whether you're not in San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Munich. Of course, if you're driving a Corolla or a Prius in Munich, people are gonna roll their eyes because you should be driving a BMW in Munich. The point there is that back to Esther's car and Esther's BMW,

is there's an opportunity there to have adaptive design, to have this design creativity on some of those vehicles that can speak the language of cities. And that's where maybe there is now this case to be made for context-sensitive design of vehicles. And maybe autonomous vehicles are where we start.

And so know that's perhaps radical, but why might it make sense for AVs to fit into the environment that they serve?

I don't know, some ideas. First and foremost, think you could think safety.

Safety and wayfinding. So first and foremost, safety and wayfinding. In my mind, creating design coherence can help build trust with the vehicles. If the vehicle feels like it belongs, pedestrians and cyclists can identify it. They can anticipate how it behaves. They can also understand directionality. It can feel like it's a vehicle that's a part

of the visual vernacular and not like it's an alien just being dropped off into the street.

I think secondly, there can be an aspect of identity and civic pride, particularly at the local level, if there's this amount of local identity and local ownership of the design. I think cities around the world have always had their icons.

of visual design identity in the vehicles that they have operated. And particularly as we see automated vehicles become integrated with local transportation fleets and at Autonomous Vehicles Initiative, we really focused on opportunities to integrate automated vehicles into public transportation fleets. We've talked about that and Dr. Cornet and I have really emphasized some of the work that we've been teasing

on some of that and you're going to see more and more of our work that talks about first last mile connectivity with autonomous vehicles. But we can think about, you know, yellow taxi in New York, the double decker red bus in London, tuk tuks in Delhi or Bangkok. You know, these vehicles aren't just transport, they're cultural symbols. And

Perhaps automated vehicles could be the next iteration. People, when they see a Jaguar I-PACE right now, they identify it with Waymo. But as they start to become identified with local municipalities, shouldn't...

they reflect the the DNA of the cities they serve? And I think that's a really provocative question. Could there be a visual identity for for different neighborhoods or for different transit agencies or different different even different routes? And could there be even civic or neighborhood connectivity with these vehicles? And I think that's a really

I think that's something we should think about, should gnaw on as a profession. I think the third thing I wanted to bring up is this idea of sustainability and placemaking as an argument. And I think when we think about human beings and feeling

centered and we think about living compact and living sustainably. And, you know, is there an argument that the vehicles themselves need to contribute to the sense of place? Now, of course, arguably, autonomous vehicles give people the power of choice, potentially not to own a vehicle, potentially not to store a vehicle in your own garage.

but also potentially to not drive all the time, to potentially occasionally take transit, potentially occasionally bike, to walk, or to drive your private car if you choose to own one. Now, but at the same time, maybe the vehicles themselves can contribute to that place through the materials they're designed with.

through the scale. Maybe the vehicle should be smaller. Maybe they should be designed with a different type of material. Maybe they should be designed with softer colors. Maybe they should have less lights, less noise. So you think about, we could talk about Waymo's fleet as an example. I think white, clean, neutral is a good palette. It's designed to fit anywhere.

It's designed to be a little placeless and it looks a little, it's a bit sterile. it's, so you know, perhaps that's a bit of a critique.

Comparing that to Zoox, it's very symmetrical, futuristic, almost like a toy. So it's very visually striking. It's almost so different. I think the vehicle almost feels surreal. It's almost like a backdrop or in a set.

So does it feel disconnected? Does it feel like it's not a part of the visual vernacular? So I think as we think about integrating these vehicles, should we start experimenting with smaller, more subtle vehicles that can be brighter, more friendly?

As we think about scale, design, materials, we definitely need to think about electric and charging at the local level. Can we think about neighborhood charging? Can we think about individual citizens offering up charging from a sustainability standpoint to integrate charging at the neighborhood scale?

Now, there's always the counterpoint.

Can I argue against my own argument?

I think if we were to talk to an AV company about this to tailor or to think about tailoring AV design to every built environment would likely be a non-starter. It's hard to scale a company or to specify a vehicle to every market. be incredibly expensive.

to design and test, also to customize a vehicle city by city, raise costs and slow down their deployments. you know, I think

focusing a little more on aesthetics and having a universal design language that builds trust and allows for compatibility at the local level

that allows for building trust and allows for agencies to try to tailor a pallet locally might be a benefit.

I think there might be a middle ground.

where rather than designing entirely different vehicles for

every city or municipality or jurisdiction on the planet, we have this idea of visual modularity. this idea that you could have a general brand, a chassis or a general platform that's standard.

for example, the exterior, the interior, the signage, there could be adaptive layers that could be programmable. And so, you know, this is where I see an opportunity that goes back to this Esther Merlangu BMW art car that had the adaptable skin, this programmable digital skin. You could have a core vehicle that is your core AV, but you could have...

adaptable layers, could have surface treatments, could have lighting signatures, programmable skins that allowed transit operators that allowed specific neighborhoods that allowed users to visually tune the vehicles to their environment. And so that a vehicle could look and operate differently in

in Barcelona that it does in Boston or San Francisco. Even if the chassis is the same, even if the sensors are the same, the visual gesture might be a little different. And I think modular design to visual presentation might preserve scalability while still allowing for a...

common visual vernacular and cultural resonance and allow for more place making opportunities. And I think that's a, this is something where it hasn't gotten a lot of airtime and maybe there's an opportunity to really explore these kinds of ideas going into the future as we think about human machine interaction and the future of autonomous vehicle design.

It's also an opportunity to think about how the built environment infrastructure that interacts with these vehicles should also change using the same type of technology. Should there be programmable digital skins on bus stops on

Should there be surface treatments on pedestrian infrastructure? Should there be signage for scooters and bikes that is dynamic? Should there be benches that have different types of color treatments that make them more or less visible or blend in at certain times that make them cooler in hot environments versus cold environments?

And I think this goes back to something that my colleague Stefan Al and also Jennifer Walsh and I have been discussing with Biophilia. This has to integrate with natural design. has to integrate with green space, groundwater recharge and rebuilding green design and climate sensitive infrastructure at the same time. We have to be building greener cities at the same time. And that is

at the core of what you should be thinking about as we integrate AVs and build multimodal infrastructure. back to the big question, Should autonomous vehicles be designed to blend in to the built environment or stand apart from it? Well, there's probably not one answer, but I think

the idea that I want to leave us with is that we're getting to the point where AVs are not just about moving people. They can be about placemaking. They can be about creating better cities. And what if the design of future vehicles, the design of public transit,

can reflect the neighborhoods that they're a part of and become a part of the visual DNA of cities. They can be a symbol of place as much as platforms for technology. And so I think it's a design choice as much as a political choice or a cultural choice. And ultimately, these are the kind of choices that we have to make.

about what kind of cities we want to live in. So with that said, thanks for listening. I hope you appreciate all these questions and ideas. If you like what I'm saying, feel free to leave us a review on whatever podcast flow that you are listening in. I'm Billy Riggs and this has been Rewiring the American Edge.