18 2GM Friday March 6 2020 | the times
News
OWEN HUMPHREYS/PAA self-driving vehicle that can see
around blind spots and pinpoint a
pedestrian opening a car door from
several streets away has been unveiled
by Google’s parent company.
Alphabet has revealed its “fifth-gen-
eration” model, developed by its auton-
omous car unit, Waymo. The vehicle is
the culmination of a decade of testing
on the roads of California and Arizona,
in which more than 20 million miles
have been travelled in self-driving mode.
The car has been “engineered to
tackle an even more diverse range of
complex driving environments with
unparalleled capabilities”, according to
Satish Jeyachandran, head of hardware
at Waymo.
This ranges from “the biker weaving
and speeding through traffic on a foggy
morning, to the family pet rushing into
the street to greet you at night”, he said.
Waymo is considered one of the leaders
in bringing self-driving cars to the
world, alongside Ford, Honda, Tesla,
the taxi-hailing giant Uber and Cruise,
which is part of General Motors.
The Waymo car includes 29 integrat-
ed cameras that enable it to see pedes-
trians and road signs more than
500 metres away.
Its 360-degree light detection and
ranging (lidar) system, which involve
sensors on the top and sides of the
vehicle emitting pulses of infrared light
Long-range
camera and radar360 degree
vision and lidarPeripheral vision,
lidar and radarPerimeter lidar
and visionLidar and
visionPeripheral vision
and radarEyes on the prize
Self-driving car
can spot danger
around corner
to build a 3D map of the surrounding
area, allows it to determine the distance
and size of objects up to 300 metres
away. Its radar imaging system can
detect the speed and direction of mov-
ing objects. This all means that the
vehicle can spot “the opening of a car
door a city block away”, Waymo said.
The cameras are equipped to keep a
steady temperature whatever the wea-
ther, enabling them to work in different
driving environments. Waymo said the
vehicle was able to see around blind
spots, such as a parked car, with a
“peripheral vision system”.
The company also designs self-
driving lorries and said that the lidar
system gave vehicles the ability to spot
road debris hundreds of metres ahead
on the motorway, giving it enough time
to stop or change lanes.
The vehicle has been developed in
partnership with Jaguar’s all-electric
I-Pace SUVs, with Waymo focusing on
the technology rather than the car
itself. The company has a deal to buy
20,000 I-Paces as it builds its autono-
mous taxi service in the suburbs of
Phoenix, Arizona.
The company has been testing its
vehicles in the area since 2017 and its
self-driving taxi service has gradually
been offering rides without a safety
driver in the seat.
However, the area in which cars can
go without drivers is about 50 square
miles and Waymo has a team of remote
employees who watch video from each
vehicle’s cameras as it is driving.
Almost every company attempting
to make fully autonomous cars has
scaled back their rhetoric in recent
months on how soon it will be that cars
that do not need any human assistance
will hit the road. Most believe the tech-
nology is more than a decade away.
The hype around the technology has
dimmed following an incident in
March 2018, when a 49-year-old
woman was killed by a self-driving
Uber, which had a human monitor
behind the wheel, as she crossed a road
in Tempe, Arizona.Tom Knowles
Technology Correspondent
Rise and shine Two fishermen enjoyed a bright and early start at Blyth pier in Northumberland yesterday. Weather, page 61‘Cut VAT’ on
electric fleet
Graeme Paton Transport CorrespondentTax on new electric cars should be abol-
ished to cut £9,100 from vehicle costs
and accelerate the shift to green trans-
port, ministers have been told.
Incentives are needed to enable the
government to hit its targets to phase
out new petrol and diesel cars within 15
years, motor industry bosses say. The
Society of Motor Manufacturers and
Traders said that sales of pure electric
cars had more than tripled in the first
two months of this year compared with
last year but made up only 2.9 per cent
of the total market.
The society called for next week’s
budget to scrap VAT on electric cars,
charged at 20 per cent, to cut the price
of an average family-sized electric car
by £5,600. This should be on top of the
government grant of up to £3,500, the
society said.Tyres create more particle
pollution than exhausts
New cars can emit 1,000 times more
particle pollution from their tyres than
their exhausts, a study has found.
The popularity of SUVs and electric
cars is contributing to the problem
because they are heavier and their tyres
may wear faster, shedding more parti-
cles than lighter cars over the same dis-
tance, according to Emissions Analyt-
ics, a testing company.
It tested a family hatchback with new,
correctly-inflated tyres, and found that
the four tyres collectively emitted
5.8 grams of particles per kilometre.
New cars are allowed to emit up to
4.5 milligrams of particles per kilo-
metre from their exhausts.
The company weighed the tyres
before and after road tests to measure
how much material they had shed. It al-
so installed a scoop behind a rear tyre tocollect and measure particles shed.
Richard Lofthouse, a researcher at
Emissions Analytics, called the find-
ings “frightening”. He said: “Tyre wear
is totally unregulated and with the in-
creasing growth in sales of heavier
SUVs and battery-powered electric
cars, non-exhaust emissions are a very
serious problem.”
The government’s Air Quality Expert
Group said last year that brakes, tyres
and road surfaces contribute to over
half of particle pollution from roads.
Nick Molden, the chief executive of
Emissions Analytics, said the immedi-
ate solution was to fit tyres that wear
more slowly but he said the industry
should also make vehicles lighter.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers
and Traders said that there was no evi-
dence to suggest that electric vehicles
emitted more non-exhaust particulates
than others.Ben Webster Environment Editor