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I am in love with the idea of the active suspension in the new Audi A8, but maybe the autopilot is the more significant innovation?

“Audi Beats Tesla (And GM) To Level 3 Autonomy” (Seeking Alpha):

Audi’s forthcoming version of the A8 sedan is the first production automobile to arguably achieve Level 3 autonomy. … The key point in moving from Level 2 to Level 3 autonomy is that Level 3 expects that the user only has to intervene whenever the car is not able to handle a situation and asks for the user to take over. The vehicle for its part must be able to perform all activities related to driving the vehicle at other times.

Now to be clear, Audi’s solution has certain limitations. For one it is only meant to be activated in relatively slow moving traffic (up to 60 km/hr) and only on divided roads where a physical barrier separates vehicles driving in the opposite direction.

The new Audi A8 will be the first production vehicle to use LIDAR along with cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors.

Audi’s solution is the first of its kind to require absolutely no monitoring of the vehicle as long as the driver is available to take over when the vehicle asks him/her to. While the vehicle is driving itself, the customer is free to do anything else, for example even watch a movie on the on-board TV screen.

Tesla’s Autopilot also requires the user to keep their hands on the steering wheel and asks the user to monitor the actions of the car. This makes it a SAE Level 2 solution at best.

I’m wondering if an autopilot that works from 0-35 mph is useful. On a recent trip to Dallas/Ft. Worth we experienced highways clogged at all hours on both Friday and Saturday. After returning to Boston we found the central highway network jammed up and sat for an extra 30 minutes in stop-and-go traffic on the Mass Turnpike (I-90). However, traffic did occasionally speed up to faster than 35 mph in both cities and therefore we would have been turning the Audi autopilot on and off every 5-10 minutes.

Readers: What do you think? Is this Audi feature likely to be useful in practice?

[Separately, maybe Audi should be donating money to pro-immigration American politicians. If via immigration and the children of immigrants the population grows to 450 million, Americans will spend nearly all of their highway driving time below 35 mph. (Of course we have a lot of open space in the U.S., but immigrants, like native-born Americans, tend to cluster in cities.) See also How much would an immigrant have to earn to defray the cost of added infrastructure?]

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Here’s the Dallas Morning News from October 21, 2017:

Note that the center of the front page is devoted to the “firearms” category and the locals interviewed are against a ban on bump stocks. Wandering around the Fort Worth Stockyards I noticed a young lady wearing a “Keep Calm and Reload” T-shirt, complete with silhouette of a rifle. I decided to talk to ask some locals how they felt about this issue. Did they agree with a New England gun enthusiast’s statement “Bump stocks are ultra gay. I don’t know anyone who has one or wants one”?

A moderate by Texas standards (he owns fewer than 10 guns) indicated some support for a ban on bump stocks: “You can’t hit the side of a barn with one of those things.” Why didn’t he have dozens of guns? “You need to go to the range and practice. You need to clean them.” Why didn’t he have zero guns? “Well, when you need a gun you need one.”

[Note that bump stocks will be illegal in my home state, going forward: “Massachusetts House approves ban on bump stocks” (boston.com) The vote was 151-3 and, sadly, the journalists didn’t interview the three who voted against the ban. I would love to hear their attempt to explain their vote to an urban journalist!]

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Back in 2003 I asked why cars didn’t integrate data from existing sensors and warn owners about kids left in the back seat (see Lack of wireless Internet killing children). Today’s New York Times carries “Forgetting a Child in a Back Seat Can Kill. Cars May Soon Warn You”:

At least 41 children have died of heatstroke this year after being left in the back seat of a parked vehicle. Since 1990, when the annual number of vehicular heatstroke victims was first recorded, more than 800 children have died in hot parked cars.

But congressional lawmakers are now weighing whether to require new cars to include a device for detecting children in the back seat and warning the driver of their presence after the car has been turned off. The requirements were attached to a House bill, passed last month, that is meant to speed the development of self-driving vehicles. The Senate version of the bill, which cleared a committee vote this month, includes an amendment with the warning requirement.

It looks as though my 2003 post overlooked a super simple way to do this:

General Motors and Nissan have introduced technologies that remind the driver that a child is in the back seat by analyzing door sequencing. If the rear door is opened before the car is started but not after it is turned off, a warning sounds.

This will be annoying for dog owners, though, in moderate temperatures. The dog enjoys riding around in the back seat, but isn’t welcome in the Kwik-E-Mart. So there will be a lot of spurious warnings.

My 2003 post also overlooked the utility of an additional sensor:

Some companies that sell equipment to the auto industry have developed warning devices. One such system, the VitaSense, uses low-power radio to sense movement and breathing. The technology, developed in Luxembourg by IEE, a manufacturer of automotive sensors, can reportedly detect even a sleeping infant in a rear-facing child seat. If a child is detected after the vehicle has been turned off, it alerts the driver by several means, including flashing lights, beeps, and messages sent to cellphones and computers.

(maybe this is why Luxembourg is so much richer, per capita, than the U.S.?)

For proponents of markets, it is kind of sad that this has taken so long. Why wouldn’t Toyota have added this (at least the trivial door sequence monitor) to the Camry in order to distinguish its product from the Honda Accord? Unless consumers are indifferent to whether their children survive, how to explain this apparent failure of the market?

Readers: how come hundreds of children had to die between my 2003 post and today? There is sort of a competitive market in automobiles (enough competition that GM needed almost $100 billion in tax dollars to survive!).

Related:

• Maybe Tesla is our only hope

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Bernie Sanders supporters are apparently the most hostile Internet users. This map of average hostility level of an Internet comment (WIRED) shows that comments from Vermonters are, on average, the most hostile (rage travels by Prius?), while comments from the adjacent Live Free or Die citizens of New Hampshire are the least hostile.

Maybe New Hampshire needs to build a border wall to keep out angry Vermonters?

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The only thing Californians love more than expressing hatred for Donald Trump is fighting with each other. Right now opposing groups are battling it out in court over the City of Santa Monica’s plan to trash their federally-funded airport by shortening the runway from 5,000 to 3,500 feet (AOPA covered a brief victory for the pro-transportation folks, subsequently reversed).

Maybe it is time to ask cui bono? The standard business jet needs about 5,000′ of runway for operation with airline safety margins (e.g., land within 60 percent of the available runway). There are airports with runways this long pretty much all over the U.S.

The Swiss elves at Pilatus are about to certify their PC-24, an unusual jet whose textbook landing at max weight consumes 2,525′ of runway. So with Harvey Weinstein and a couple of young women in the back, the newly chopped 3,500′ runway would be comfortable for non-heroic pilots and likely legal for charter operations.

Who says that California politics don’t create jobs? Certainly there will be plenty of happy workers in Switzerland!

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Not all of the crime in America in the U.S. happens in hotel rooms between old men and young women… From a WIRED article on stealing purified silicon:

Wasi Ismail Syed had endured a draining day of travel by the time he picked up his rental van at the Pensacola, Florida, airport. He’d left his West Coast home that morning in February 2009, then weathered a lengthy layover in Houston. But rather than pining for a comfy hotel bed, Syed was excited to conduct a bit of late-night business: He was meeting two strangers who called themselves Butch Cassidy and William Smith outside a nearby Walmart.

Cassidy and Smith unloaded the 5-gallon painter’s buckets that filled their truck. Syed pried open one of the buckets’ lids and peered inside. He was pleased by what he saw: a pile of rock-like chunks of a silvery metallic substance. These were fragments of polycrystalline silicon, a highly purified form of silicon that is the bedrock for semiconductor devices and solar cells. … the average price … $64 a pound.

on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama … Mitsubishi Polycrystalline Silicon America Corporation … The plant’s feedstock is metallurgical-grade silicon, which can be extracted from pulverized chunks of quartzite. In this raw form, silicon exhibits the properties that make the element so essential to the tech industry: It can both conduct and resist electricity—hence the term semiconductor—even at high temperatures. But metallurgical-grade silicon is far too tainted with flecks of iron, aluminum, and calcium to be usable in high tech products that are expected to perform flawlessly for years on end. The material must thus be chemically refined, a process that begins by mixing it with hydrogen chloride at more than 570 degrees Fahrenheit.

After having its impurities removed through multiple rounds of distillation, the resulting hazardous compound, called trichlorosilane, is pumped into a cylindrical furnace containing 7-foot-tall silicon rods shaped like tuning forks. Hydrogen is then added and the temperature is turned up to more than 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit. This causes hyper-pure crystals of silicon to leech out of the trichlorosilane and glom onto the rods. After several days the rods are thick with grayish polysilicon, which is then cut into foot-long cylinders, cleansed with acids until glittery, and packaged in thermally sealed bags for shipment.

When the vast majority of manufacturers reach the end of this process, their polysilicon is as much as 99.999999 percent pure, or “8n” in industry parlance. This means that for every 100 million silicon atoms, there is but a single atom’s worth of impurity. … What the Mitsubishi plant in Alabama produces, by contrast, is 11n polysilicon, marred by just one impure atom per every 100 billion silicon atoms. … Mitsubishi’s facility on the Theodore Industrial Canal is one of fewer than a dozen plants worldwide that produce 11n polysilicon.

The Walmart parking-lot deal went smoothly, and Syed’s buyer was impressed by the quality of the merchandise. So Syed kept doing business with “Cassidy” and “Smith”: He bought another 441 pounds of poly­silicon two weeks after the initial purchase, then 1,323 pounds more in July 2009, then 2.2 tons that November, shortly after he’d moved his family and company to McKinney, Texas. As the scale of the transactions grew, Syed enlisted a freight company to pick up the polysilicon in Alabama and truck it across state lines to his customers; then he, his assistant, or his brother-in-law, Shahab Mir, would travel to Mobile, Pensacola, or Shreveport, Louisiana, to hand over the cash.

More: read WIRED

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Because there isn’t enough written about Harvey Weinstein…

“What decent men can do in response to #MeToo” (CNN) is a good example of one point of view from Plato’s Republic (see Harvey Weinstein gives Americans a teachable moment regarding Plato and the Myth of Gyges?) and, for those who think that Glaucon was right, a good example of the “fundamental attribution error.”

The author describes “male friends — good, decent men.” Plainly most men are better behaved than what has been reported about Hollywood’s most-hated person. But have her “good, decent men” been tested or tempted? What if they had the power and fame that Harvey Weinstein had? Due to their inherently superior character would they have behaved better?

[The article is also good because it is refreshing to see a young person with the courage to consider herself morally superior to old people: “Teach your elders to do better.”]

[Update: buried in the comments below is a simpler formulation of the above, from the 19th century “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” (Lord Acton)]

Related:

• Bill Burr talks about the absurdity of an average person criticizing a celebrity (about 6 minutes in)

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My moderately deplorable friends have been sending me private messages with their candidates for American Victim of the Week. Here are a couple of the most plausible…

“George H.W. Bush Apologizes After Actress Says He Sexually Assaulted Her” (Huffington Post) concerns Heather Lind, 31 years old at the time (2014) she was assaulted by a wheelchair-bound 90-year-old accompanied by his 89-year-old wife.

Jenn Sterger, whose Wikipedia page says “Sterger has posed in Maxim and Playboy magazines … Sterger was featured on the E!: Entertainment Television show Byte Me: 20 Hottest Women of the Web … In 2009, Sterger had her breast implants removed, stating that they had served their purpose for her career, and that she was tired of being stereotyped,” is the second candidate. Fox News says “The former Playboy model wrote a scathing Twitter post lampooning the sports network and claiming she was subject to inappropriate behavior by ESPN employees.” It seems that she was imprisoned in a strip club (“had to watch”) and unable either to (1) turn around in the parking lot, or (2) walk out of the building once she realized that she had entered a den of sin. (Like the married man ratted out by Find Friends on his iPhone who said that he thought that “Pure Platinum” was a club for precious metal futures traders and then wandered around for 3 hours trying to get insight into why platinum was now cheaper than gold.)

Readers: Who are your candidates for the American Victim of the Week?

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“America’s affordable-housing stock dropped by 60 percent from 2010 to 2016” (Washington Post) is kind of interesting on its face:

The number of apartments deemed affordable for very low-income families across the United States fell by more than 60 percent between 2010 and 2016, according to a new report by Freddie Mac.

At first financing, 11 percent of nearly 100,000 rental units nationwide were deemed affordable for very low-income households. By the second financing, when the units were refinanced or sold, rents had increased so much that just 4 percent of the same units were categorized as affordable.

… affordable housing without a government subsidy is becoming extinct.

The study defined “very low income” as households making less than 50 percent of the area median income, and “affordable” rent as costing less than 30 percent of household income.

During the period in which the U.S. was a market economy this never happened, did it? People who were poor found crummy places to live. If poor Americans couldn’t could afford the rent on a crummy place then the landlord would have to reduce the rent.

Can we blame income inequality? Supposedly it was higher 100 years ago and poor people were able to afford crummy houses back then.

Can we blame rich people stealing all of society’s wealth? Again, wealth inequality was very high 100 years ago. In any case, a rich person may cause us to become sick with envy but he or she doesn’t usually occupy 50 apartments at a time. So it doesn’t make sense to blame rich people for reducing the housing supply, does it?

How about population growth? We’re stuffed with 325 million people now, with planeloads of immigrants arriving every day, and immigrants choosing to have lots of children once they’re settled here. (“Foreign-born Americans and their descendants have been the main driver of U.S. population growth, as well as of national racial and ethnic change, since passage of the 1965 law that rewrote national immigration policy. They also will be the central force in U.S. population growth and change over the next 50 years.” (Pew)) But we still have land on which we can build apartment buildings and, in a lot of cities, we can also build higher.

Finally there is government, which promises to pay for housing if a low-income resident of the U.S. can’t afford it (“means-tested public housing”). That’s a change compared to 100 years ago. Landlords can insist on rents higher than poor people can pay because they know that the government will pay. (“As a former affordable housing underwriter, I’d say that affordable housing is 1% altruism, 99% profit..” (Wall Street Oasis))

I’m wondering if the most likely answer is a change in the definition of “housing.” Americans live in roughly twice as many square feet per person compared to the 1950s. So the standard low-income unit today might be larger than the standard high-income unit circa 1950.

Could it be selective click-bait journalism? They picked 2010 as the base year because the economy was still sluggish after the Collapse of 2008 and therefore cheap housing was unusually cheap? 2016 is therefore less affordable than 2010, but not that different in affordability compared to 20 or 30 years ago?

Could it be that low-income Americans circa 1900 could afford housing, but it was so cramped that it didn’t meet our modern definition of “housing”?

What about blaming/crediting Malthus? On a planet populated by nearly 8 billion people, not everyone can expect to have his or her own room? (world population was roughly 1.6 billion in 1900) Evidence for a housing “shortage” being inherent given current population levels sharing only a single Earth is that newspapers in England are running the same stories, e.g., “Housing crisis threatens a million families with eviction by 2020” (Guardian): “Shelter says that in 83% of areas of England, people in the private rented sector now face a substantial monthly shortfall between the housing benefit they receive and the cheapest rents, and that this will rise as austerity bites and the lack of properties tilts the balance more in favour of landlords.” The situation seems to be similar throughout Europe, unless someone wants to live in a barn on a farm that is 50 miles from the nearest job: “Wild Rent Hikes Are Leaving Europe’s Cities Totally Unaffordable” (Vice)

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The monster trade show for business jets, “NBAA” to most people (officially “NBAA-BACE”; NBAA is the name of the organization), recently concluded in Las Vegas. I was there, trick-or-treating the 1,100 exhibitor booths for items likely to delight the kids. (my photos)

Drones keep getting better while human pilots keep making mistakes. The only company that seems to be trying to bridge these two worlds of smart computers and dumb humans is the French company Dassault, which is trying to build an “autonomous co-pilot” (Flight Global). The most serious drone effort at the show was Insitu, a Boeing subsidiary. For about $1 million a border patrol post could get the ground equipment and three drones with basic cameras.

The F.A.A. was there at the show and seemed fully engaged in fighting the last war (e.g., avionics certification) rather than addressing the principal hazard: drone v. conventional aircraft collisions (a recent one in Canada; a turboprop rather than a turbojet and hence less likely to suffer an engine failure after a collision).

Although vendors of new aircraft were there, most of the show is about maintaining and operating existing planes. Honeywell’s forecast says that “stiff competition from the used-jet market, will restrain new aircraft deliveries.” What the vendors of new aircraft have going for them is the continuing decline in the skill level of the Americans willing to turn wrenches. Everyone involved in maintenance whom we talked to said that Americans coming to classes get less intelligent and less diligent every year. In theory a 20- or even 40-year-old plane can do every mission that a typical new airplane can, but in practice there are fewer and fewer shops with the capacity to keep an old plane airworthy. “In the 1970s if you needed an aircraft to operate reliably in Africa or Latin America you would have to send a new one,” said one expert, “because they didn’t have the supply chain and technical capabilities to ensure a high dispatch rate on an old plane. The U.S. is the new Africa.”

As in 2015 (my report), in-flight Internet connectivity was a big story. ViaSat, which enables the magic of JetBlue’s FlyFi, was there showing off their improved coverage. Due to more satellites being launched, it should be possible to get JetBlue-style connectivity all the way across the North Atlantic right now and, within a few years, nearly worldwide (you’ll need Iridium for the poles, though). Land-based systems aren’t necessarily finished, however. SmartSky is a startup building its own system of 4G LTE towers across North America ($250 million in funding). Planes above 10,000′ should be able to get high-speed data service for cheaper rates than offered by the satellite operators, though if you’ve been complaining about Verizon’s rates you might not like SmartSky’s “basic” subscription at $2,500 per month for 5 GB data. Note that Gogo already uses some ground-based towers. New Zealand-based Tracplus was there at the opposite end of the rate spectrum. For less than $100 per month they will send position reports and arbitrary text messages out of an aircraft via the cell network or, if unavailable, via Iridium.

As in 2015, the show was festooned with banners quoting famous people opposed to privatization of the U.S. Air Traffic Control system. Ownership of the right to authorize flight through clouds and flight above 18,000′ is hugely valuable. There is no way to operate a jet-powered aircraft efficiently without an ATC clearance to climb above 18,000′. Any organization that can get hold of this right should be able to exclude competition, extract trillions of dollars in profits over the years, etc. The labor union representing air traffic controllers and the airlines are passionate about capturing control over this currently-public resource and, as with most crony capitalist situations, it seems inevitable that they will get it one day. The issue is complex and the opposition is diffuse.

[That this grab for privatization won’t go away calls into question the assumption that rich people control American politics. The truly rich don’t work as air traffic controllers and don’t fly on airlines. Why would they want the ATC union and airlines setting prices for them to operate their Gulfstream G450s?]

Government regulation continues to help the big get bigger. A charter operator said that he couldn’t imagine being competitive with fewer than 30 jets over which to spread the cost of complying with the latest regulations and data submission requirements. One new task is submitting literally thousands of data points regarding usage every month. This pins down a human at a web browser for days. Complying with regulations around supplying fuel is also becoming more challenging, thus leading to consolidation in the FBO market. Signature, a division of BBA Aviation plc, for example, has more than 200 locations. (see my photos for a selfie with the president and COO of this multi-billion dollar enterprise)

Regulation and government involvement keeps competition to a minimum. The same charter operator says that he thinks his will be the last company in his region to be approved for a certificate. U.S. airports are typically owned by cities or counties. Thus the existing FBOs can and do invest in lobbying politicians in order to prevent new FBOs from being established (we heard a story of more than $2 million spent on lobbying in order to obstruct a competitor, which had been approved by the airport management).

Stratos flew its prototype single-engine jet to KLAS and then taxied it down the street into the convention center. This design uses one of the engines from an Embraer Phenom 300 to power a plane up to FL410 and a 400-knot cruise speed. The design team is small and candid. They admit that controlling interior noise is a big challenge, though made somewhat easier by having all of the pieces that make noise in a separate space frame attached at the back of the cabin. If they get $200 million in financing (who wants to write the first check?), they hope to achieve FAA certification within 3-4 years.

Unlike in 2015, ICON was not there. I talked to a guy who went through ICON’s amphibious seaplane training in California and he spoke highly of the program and also the aircraft. Right now the company’s site says that they have delivered 19 out of 1800 aircraft ordered and that they started in July 2015. At this rate it will take them only a little over 200 years to work through the order book!

Aerion had a beautiful booth and an inspiring model of a supersonic vehicle for global douchebags who need to make it from TED to Davos and back to Aspen. Back in 2015 they were talking about a first flight in 2019 and certification in 2021. Now the plane will fly in 2023 and deliveries will happen in 2025. Progress since the last show: a partnership with GE to try to adapt and existing GE turbojet engine for supersonic flight. Aerion’s chairman is Robert Bass and the company doesn’t seem to be looking for financing.

XTIAircraft, by contrast, had big video screens soliciting investors. They had brought a mock-up of their TriFan 600 concept and were promising the world: three ducted fans; single-pilot IFR, advanced avionics, carbon fiber and epoxy structure, sliding door conceals third fan for forward flight, hybrid electric propulsion. There is a Cirrus-style airframe parachute. This $6.5 million VTOL machine will take six people “as high above weather, and as far as traditional business jets” (then the brochure says 660 statute mile range and 29,000′ ceiling, so this would be like a regular business jet after an engine failure and a fuel leak?). The chief engineer is George Bye, who is also promising electric airplanes with 4X the range that anyone else can deliver (while using the same Samsung batteries!). Power comes from a Honeywell HTS900 helicopter turboshaft engine, an evolution of a 1960 Lycoming design. Unlike a helicopter, in which there is one driveshaft that can fail, the TriFan 600 will have three driveshafts that are potential failure points.

Mitsubishi was there to remind people what real commitment to customers looks like. The last MU-2 was built 31 years ago. Owners rave about Mitsubishi and, in surveys, their support is rated far above any other turbine aircraft manufacturer, including Gulfstream, et al. Mitsubishi’s latest retrofit improvement is stronger acrylic windows. Costs for precision manufacturing in Japan should be lower than in Europe or the U.S. Why can’t Mitsubishi come back into the G.A. market?

Jetpedic was there with a comfortable foam mattress system ($6000+ and about 50 lbs.) to spread across two seats. For relaxing back on the ground, all of the major manufacturers of massage chairs were at the show. The folks from New Hampshire-based Infinity told me that everything is made in China now, even if the brand name is Japanese.

For those who missed high school chemistry, Rhode Island-based Tanury was running a six-bath electroplating demonstration at the show. If you’ve ever wanted to live a gold-plated lifestyle, this was inspiring.

To a first approximation, the farther that people in this industry get from actually flying or producing airframes, the more money they make and the less risk that they take. Walking the trade show floor is an education in just how many enterprises are involved every time an aircraft departs. There are companies making money planning flights, training crew, finding crew, pumping fuel, tracking maintenance, making components that wear out, overhauling parts, etc.

Speaking of money, at the 2015 show an attendee commented “Wherever jets are parked there will be [family court plaintiffs].” My badge sparked some conversations about Real World Divorce, and it turned out that attendees’ experiences tracked the prevailing family law in their respective jurisdictions. An attendee who had money and lived in a jurisdiction where divorce and/or collecting child support was lucrative was unlikely to be married to a first spouse. Europeans (except the British), Texans, and Nevadans tended to be married; Californians with money could not stay married, indicating a full transition to serial polygamy for high-income men. As in 2015, the harshest attitudes were from new (female) partners who referred to plaintiff women with terms such as “gold digger,” “greedy cunt,” “lazy bitch” (for women whose alimony and/or child support profits enabled them to retire from the workforce and/or work only part-time), etc. Do they say this in front of the stepchildren? “There is one rule in our house for the steps. They are not to mention their whore of a mother for any reason or at any time. That keeps conversations civil.”

Regarding the alternative of earning money via a W-2 job… there was a lot of talk about the challenge of recruiting and retaining qualified personnel. The airlines are ferocious competitors for pilots and mechanics. The market is global so that U.S. general aviation companies now face competition from foreign airlines as well, i.e., when airlines in China, India, and the Middle East expand the result is a tougher market for U.S. employers.

Aviation regulation tends to be nonpartisan. However, show attendees were generally happy to see Donald Trump in the White House. “It is almost impossible to operate a medium-sized business in the U.S.,” said one attendee. “I’m not sure Trump will make this easier, but Hillary was trying to make it a lot worse.”

Bottom line: Traditional aviation is progressing, but so slowly that if progress in the drone world continues at the current rate there will be massive unemployment and parked legacy aircraft.

Related:

• RC car racing at the Westgate adjacent to the convention center (not something we expected to see in a hotel meeting room!)

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