Auto blog

Aurora's Chris Urmson on autonomy — that's one way to avoid speeding tickets

Although this year's CES was full of companies announcing and exhibiting their real and conceivable self-driving car technologies, while actual self-driving cars from Aptiv-Lyft were giving conventioneers 400 rides around town, the biggest news came when Volkswagen Group — and recognize this is the entire group, not just the brand — and Hyundai announced that they'd both partnered with Aurora Innovation. While the VW announcement was vague — "The collaboration brings the two companies together to realize self-driving electric vehicles in cities as Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) fleets" — Hyundai provided a concrete goal: "a strategic partnership to bring self-driving Hyundai vehicles to market by 2021." You may not have heard of Aurora, which has been described in some news accounts as "mysterious." But Aurora Innovation has been in business since December 2016, and it is to autonomous technology what the 1927 Yankees are to baseball. The three leaders of the company are Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO, who had previously been chief technology officer for Alphabet Self-Driving Cars; Sterling Anderson, co-founder and chief product officer, who had directed the development of Tesla Autopilot; and Drew Bagnell, co-founder and chief technical officer, who had been autonomy architect and perception lead at the Uber Advanced Technology Center. We had the chance to sit down with Chris Urmson after he appeared onstage at a Hyundai press conference. He shared his insights on Aurora's approach to automated driving. Initial deployment of self-driving cars? "We think the first place this technology comes to market in in the transportation services or ride-hailing applications, but that's for our partners to decide." (Ride-sharing is a strategy a lot of players in the field are shooting for, as round-the-clock use is one way for paying for what will initially be a technology too costly for private ownership.) Transporting goods or people? "I personally — and as a company — am more excited initially about moving people around. Urban mobility. That's where you see the largest social impact. And it provides better access to mobility for people." Can you create a car that doesn't crash? "It is a fundamentally hard problem because other operators on the road can behave erratically at any moment. For example, if you are in a two-lane, opposing-traffic road, if you want to be safe, you don't drive there, ever.

Former Porsche execs acquitted of stock manipulation charges

A German court acquitted former Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking and former CFO Holger Harter of stock manipulation charges, according to Bloomberg. Prosecutors alleged the men hid plans to takeover Volkswagen while publicly denying their intentions to investors. The presiding judge didn't find any merit to those claims, though. "There is nothing to the allegations, absolutely nothing," Judge Frank Maurer said, according to Bloomberg. "There was no secret plan to take over VW." Rather than Porsche taking over VW, the exact opposite eventually happened, and both execs stepped down. Investigators first indicted Wiedeking and Harter for alleged stock manipulation in late 2012. A court in Stuttgart dismissed the case in 2014 because of a lack of evidence, but an appeals court later overruled that decision. The current trial finally began in October 2015. If convicted, Wiedeking faced up to 30 months in prison, and Harter could have received up to 27 months, Bloomberg reported. Prosecutors also wanted one million euro ($1.1 million) fines from them and 807 million euros ($910 million) from Porsche. The acquittal might not be the end of this long-running case, though. In Germany, prosecutors have the right to appeal a ruling, and the lawyer hasn't made a final decision yet. If the court thinks there's a reason, the former execs could be back in front of a judge at some point in the future.

Volkswagen Golf Variant will make a lovely Jetta SportWagen

In addition to several other versions of the Golf, Volkswagen is debuting the new Golf Variant (read: wagon) here at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. And if this bigger version of the Golf looks like it might fit right at home in the States, it's because we could possibly see some version of this car as the next-generation Jetta SportWagen here on our shores.
Volkswagen is debuting the Golf Variant with two efficient diesel engines, rated at 110 and 150 horsepower, the smaller of which is good for an impressive 71.3 miles per gallon on the European cycle (when mated to a six-speed manual transmission). The Golf Variant also gets a version of Volkswagen's 4Motion all-wheel-drive system, making it incredibly all-weather capable.
It's a handsome estate, and it wears the new Golf's design language well. We can't say for sure if this car will actually make its way Stateside, but given the fact that the current Jetta SportWagen still rides on the old Golf platform, the odds look to be in our favor.