Transcripts For CSPAN2 Auto Industry Executives Testify On Self-Driving Cars 20170216

Hours. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good morning. The subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection to order. The chair recognizes himself are five minutes for an Opening Statement. Good morning and welcome to the first hearing of 115th congress and Consumer Protection subcommittee, pleasure to be with you today. Before we get started i think chairman burgess for the hard work in the last congress on the subcommittee and also recognize the new vice chairman, the gentleman from mississippi. Glad to have you on board and look forward to working to advance innovation agenda that creates jobs and puts consumers first and also to recognize the gentlelady from illinois, our Ranking Member, working with her this congress and working in a bipartisan fashion to protect consumers. Finally as chairman, look forward to working with all members of the subcommittee to continue exploring areas in the Digital Economy creating new art engines of economic growth, Jobs Creation and Consumer Empowerment in america. I had an opportunity to visit the auto show in washington dc, the showroom floor filled with vehicles that innovated newly designed systems that promised enhanced safety, mobility, convenience of the drivers experience. And greatly impressed with the creativity and ingenuity of the Auto Industry to build a vehicle we could only dream about a short time ago. The technology, Technological Advancements in this sector are nothing short of amazing. The subcommittee will continue its focus on self driving vehicles and potential to transform our Transportation System. We hear about testing that is happening to what testing needs to happen and what the timeframe is for that deployment. In 2015, over 35,000 lives tragically lost on the nations highways. 1000 of these fatalities were in my home state of ohio. Based on early estimates traffic detailing in 2016 are even going to be higher. Unfortunately we also know human error accounts for 90 of all the traffic accidents, these are startling statistics, Automated Vehicle technology and growing investments with self driving vehicles to reduce life by decreasing traffic accidents making roadways safer for all users. As the Auto Industry works to make self driving vehicles a reality adequate the testing these vehicles are critical to refining their systems for commercial deployment and Gain Consumer confidence that are safe. And more proving grounds for consumers. Each of these settings vehicle engineers and professional test drivers with detailed inspections of vehicles to ensure compliance with crashworthiness and verify vehicles overall structural integrity. Sometimes hundreds of thousands of miles of testing to assure once a vehicle is on a dealers lot it is safe for consumers and their families. Unlike conventional vehicles fully self driving vehicles without the input or concern of human drivers. And they take corrective action for the system failure. And flexible and on regimented tests. And self driving vehicles. And commercial deployment. Looking forward to witnesses on how other entities are testing these technologies for future deployment. Look forward to hearing about the existing testing environment can be improved to celebrate the invitation of lifesaving Automated Vehicle technology in this country. The Transportation Center released a significant investment into its Mobility Advanced Research center in east liberty, ohio to allow for self driving vehicles with thousands of acres, take positive steps moving forwards. And robust vehicle testing is essential to the successful of self driving vehicles. And the data will help build Consumer Confidence in this technology which is essential to realizing its future for self driving vehicles. I think the witnesses for being with us and look forward to a thoughtful and engaging discussion. At this time i have a minute left. Anyone on our side would like to claim the minutes . The chair recognizes the vicechairman. Thank you for calling this hearing to build on the subcommittees previous efforts to examine and better understand the world of self driving cars. As many of you noted the development and innovation of self driving cars has potential to provide countless improvements in our Transportation System and invaluable safety enhancements that could save thousands of lives. Of particular interest to me is potential benefit in new opportunities self driving cars provide to americans with disabilities including those with intellectual disabilities unable to obtain drivers licenses and must rely on friends and relatives uncertain to modes of Public Transportation, including running errands and getting to a job. In the disability world, lack of transportation is widely viewed as a top impediment to success and advancement in society. Self driving cars offer the ability for a tremendous opportunity looking forward to being more about this and i yelled back. The gentleman yields back in the chair recognizes the gentlelady from illinois, the Ranking Member of the subcommittee for five minutes for Opening Statements. The subcommittee the subcommittee that i am glad to be here. Where it belongs. Important work to do. We are kicking off safety, nationwide, and the Consumer Product safety, and meanwhile the emergence of new technology for cybersecurity. The subcommittee impacts americans everyday lives. The nation occurred to the benefit for consumers. And Consumer Services over the course, and the committee in air force members, and the rest of the subcommittee. And self driving cars in november. Self driving cars have potential to reduce the number of accidents by human error and ensure that human error does not replace vehicle error. And optimism about the longterm promise of Autonomous Vehicles. And how we get there. Testing is necessary before we can confidently with consumers in self driving cars, it doesnt work for passenger vehicles. We see from takata airbags and the vw emissions scandal, viability of self driving cars depends on manufacturers and government working cooperatively to share data and safety. We have to figure out the specifics of how many waivers are necessary in coming years and how specific those waivers should be. We need to decide what safety tests or standards are necessary and determine how state and federal government can best work together. And we step out a moment, as i told the chairman, i have a Budget Committee meeting this morning, i hope to be back to ask questions of witnesses. I want to thank those i met before this hearing for time and information and thank you all for being here today. I yield the remainder of my time to congresswoman matsui. Thomas vehicles have potential to change more than just cars. This Technology Gives us a way to think about mobility, to expand access, americans with disabilities and so many more who may not be able to drive today. This Technology Allows us to rethink urban landscapes and public spaces we may no longer need for Parking Spaces and most importantly promises safety for American Families of this innovation will rely on connectivity, placing new demands on roads and highways and infrastructure that powers communications. We need a framework that ensures we are building to connect the future of the 21stcentury economy. Driverless cars will have an impact of local economy, communities and competitiveness. As we consider the new landscape this is an Important Role for Technology Companies and manufacturers and congress to play into this. I look forward to working with all of you in this area and i yields back the balance of my time. The gentlelady yields back. I dont believe the chairman of the committee will pass on the chairmans testimony at this time. The chair will recognize for five minutes. I wanted to start by congratulating you of your chairmanship of the new subcommittee and i am hopeful the subcommittee will use the mandate to watch out for the little guy and i am pleased at the words Consumer Protection that appear in the subcommittees name. The hearing on self driving cars is an example of Consumer Protection oversight obligation. I recently read something i think can sum up where we are, the decade ago self driving cars were a matter of debate. Today they are an inevitability. Since we know they are coming to the marketplace i am pleased to be talking again about the potential benefits achieved in the out years we will actually get to the weeds of it and look forward to hearing about where we are today in the testing, what needs to be done to establish these cars rei liable and safe. Self driving cars in november, we need these vehicles to be safe not just when all cars are autonomous but also during the decades of transition time when they share the road with human drivers was i look forward to hearing how innovators are using testing, modeling, analytics and other tools to demonstrate these vehicles are safe, meet the challenges of interaction with obstacles on roads like bicyclists, pedestrians and snowcovered payment. And strong fiber security and privacy protections to defend against hackers was so many of the latest technologies created in this country by hardworking men ends women. And your immigrants to bring amazing skills to the workforce. To put up roadblocks, immigration and roadblocks to our efforts to be ahead of the technology curve. With 47 of American Workers vulnerable to computerization we need to find ways to tap these technologies to help find new opportunities through education and training. I yield the remainder of my time to representative dingle. Is she ready . Im going to talk loud. No one ever said i didnt have a big mouth. There has never been a more exciting time to be a member of this committee, the midwest is here. It is technology. The forefront of innovation technology. There has never been a more exciting time to be in the Auto Industry. Automated vehicles are not just something you read about in a Science Fiction novel. They are already here and helping transform mobility and the transportation of people and goods. Transportation is no longer the accurate word, mobility is. In 2015, 35,092 people died on the road in this country. This would be a Public Health epidemic if it was in any other industry. Automated vehicles will help us save lives as many of my previous colleagues noted, since 94 of accidents are attributable to human error. Also an issue of international competitiveness. Automated vehicles will be developed globally whether we like it or not. It is critical that america be at the forefront of innovation and technology by taking the lead in developing lifesaving advances or lose our Competitive Edge in this critical space. Michigan is leading the way in this area. I am proud the American Center for mobility is in the 12th district and will focus on testing verification and certification of Automated Vehicles, just designated as an Automated Vehicle by dot. Michigan in a bipartisan way, my colleagues, the governor and others are dedicating considerable resources to Automated Vehicles and i am committed to helping it and the United States be leaders in this vital area. That being said, cybersecurity has to be our top priority. Nobody wants to let unsafe technologies on the road but we dont want to prevent vehicles and improve safety for reach searching consumers either. Looking forward to working with the committee and stakeholders for the right balance on supporting innovation and making sure consumers are safe. I yield back the balance of my time. The gentlelady yields back. As i mentioned when the chairman of the committee will be afforded the opportunity to give his Opening Statement. That concludes with the members Opening Statements. These Opening Statements are made part of the record. We thank our witnesses for being with us today and taking time to testify, todays witnesses give Opening Statements by a round of questions from the members. Witness panel for today at hearings will include mike abelson, Vice President of global strategy for General Motors, anders karrberg, Vice President of Government Affairs at volvo cars group. And the senior information scientists and read avco designer of decisionmaking, mister gill gil pratt, ceo it Toyota Research institute and Mister Joseph okpaku, Vice President of Public Policy at left. Appreciate you being here today. Begin the round of questions starting with mike abelson, you will be recognized for five minutes and appreciate you being with us today. Thank you, mister chairman. Good morning. My name is mike abelson, Vice President of Global Mobility strategy for General Motors but i want to thank chairman walton and Ranking Member pallone, subcommittee members, for inviting me to tell you about General Motors vision for the coming transformation in mobility and the opportunities self driving vehicles hold for the future safety of the american public. If i could come up i would like to relate a personal story that struck close to the heart of myself and General Motors colleagues. This last september, one of my colleagues suffered an incredible tragedy. A weekend at home when he was struck and killed by a distracted driver. Watching steve and his family go through this avoidable loss increased determination of all those to make this Technology Available as soon as it is ready to avoid these losses in the future. Unfortunately steve is not alone. 18 of injuries and crashes are due to distracted driving. And fatalities 28 of fatalities are speed related. Vehicle crashes continue to be the leading cause of death for children and adults. 94 of fatal crashes caused by Human Behavior there is tremendous potential to do better. Self driving cars by drugs or alcohol, they wont be distracted by a cell phone. They wont drive drowsy or recklessly in their speed will always be appropriate for the conditions at hand. For years automakers committed our resources when crashes happen. Today through the continuing development of this technology, we have the opportunity to avoid crashes altogether. We are not only committed to self and reliable self driving vehicles but self driving vehicles will provide tremendous benefits to society for convenience and quality of life. Such vehicles provide unprecedented access to transportation to those who need it most. Like disabilities those in underserves neighborhoods with limited access to transportation and the elderly. General motors, incredibly optimistic about the future of mobility. A tremendous opportunity to create a new model for transportation, the changes the way society, rising to the challenge. And on interstate roads in arizona, challenging urban center in San Francisco and in december announced we would begin testing in metro detroit. That we have 50 self driving vehicles in these cities with more planned in the future. We also announced gm will produce the next generation of self driving test vehicles in michigan. This will allow us to accelerate testing and validation of this exciting new Safety Technology. Expansion of our realworld self driving Vehicle Testing Program will allow us to deploy self driving vehicles in boundaries during projects. The safety of our customers is the driving principle, to uphold the standard is the top priority. Test vehicles currently have to monitor and evaluate performance. And statistically significant data to prove vehicles are already operated without a human driver. Current federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards have served the motoring public well for years. Barbarous technologies evolved standards behind. They do not contemplate vehicles without human drivers, without changes to those regulations it may be useful for the promise of todays technology can be realized, thousands of deaths could have been prevented. At the same time we must be able to prove to customers, in the american public, vehicles are safe. Its a has become a collaborative process with stakeholders to facilitate safe testing and deployment of self driving vehicles. Regular work continues, it is impaired of manufacturers have the ability to test these vehicles in greater numbers to gather the safety data. It is critical to inform largescale deployment of lifesaving self driving vehicles. And authority to grant specific exemptions for highly Automated Vehicle development. This is similar to authority currently provided under existing law. During this hearing another eight people will have died on us roads, eight families into laws that steve did. With the nation and citizens in reach of the solution. And the right policy framework to bring this lifesaving technology to our roads as quickly and safely as possible. We have more to learn, self driving getting smarter every week. We are exist for the public to experience the technology firsthand. Let me be clear, our priority is and always will be the safety of our passengers and fellow road users. I look forward to answering any questions members of the committee might have. The chair recognizes four five minutes. Congress superwoman angle, members of the subcommittee. My name is anders carver, Vice President of Government Affairs. Mobile came to the us in 1955, 81,000 cars here, together with dealers, 10,000 people with 300 direct entries in new jersey. We open our First American factory in south carolina. This adds to 4000 the hereafter. Our factory would be the first allnew american car factory in ten years. Safety is a founding principle, we invented 3 point safety belts, we waved the patent so the safety belt could save millions of lives. No one should be killed or seriously injured in a new volvo by 2020. We are very excited about self driving cars. Roads will be safer. It has been said many times but cannot be overstated over 94 of all crashes are due to human error, test driving cars will be important, also self driving cars will free up by time for the driver to do something more productive while being in the car. Our vision is to give back one week of quality time by 2025. Going forward there are important preconditions, Technology Must be safe, must be trusted. The proper National Framework must be in place. It is fundamental to bring this technology to market. Self driving volvo will be an suv. If we offered to customers in selected cities in the us, europe and china in 2021. The cars would be capable to operate unsupervised during normal traffic conditions on designated roads only. And instead, less complicated conditions where consumer benefits are the highest. They offer stepbystep to open up more complex traffic as it matures. We take a comprehensive approach. Groundwork engineering is based on our extensive experience developing active safety and driver support systems. And redundancy, we perform data from historical crashes. 100 Real Customers on railroads in sweden. We plan to extend those to london and china and cooperate with huber, and engineering hardware. And we test ourselves in the us, and it was a concern. In the last two months, introduced in 20 states. The start to become a problem in 2015 when we publicly called for federal guidance. Last year we got the federal Automated Vehicle policies, very positive initiative. What could congress do . To accelerate Traffic Safety improvements, and rated in the end which major markets having done this. Building blocks of driving cars, they take partial control. And help build Consumer Confidence in unsupervised driving. Second congress would encourage netzer with an explicit request that the states refrain from legislating and regulating self driving cars. Third congress should consider incentives for states to adopt model state policy. A patchwork to a delay making roads safer in america and a competitive disadvantage. This is a race for jobs. Lots of regulations with politicians in the us, europe and china. Six years ago, seeing the patchwork, not so sure. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and i will take any questions. Thank you for your testimony and the chair recognizes for five minutes doctor carl rave. Dismissed as of the subcommittee, thanks for the opportunity to testify on the safety and testing of Autonomous Vehicles. Rand is a Nonprofit Institute committed to improving Public Policy through objective research and analysis. In the interest of full disclosure my spouse is a cofounder Silicon Valley startup working on these vehicles though his work has no bearing on my testimony. As you know traffic poses a Public Health crisis in the United States and Autonomous Vehicles have the potential to mitigate this. As a society we want them to be as safe as possible as quickly as possible but they probably wont lemonade all crashes and new safety risks particularly in the near term. Today i would like to describe several challenges that stand in our way of realizing safety benefits and mitigating safety risks and propose solutions. The first challenge is there isnt a practical way to prove Autonomous Vehicles are safe before they are allowed on the road. Second challenge is there is no consensus how safe they should be before they are allowed on the roads. This means we neither know what test Autonomous Vehicles to take nor what should constitute a passing grade. Resolving this is urgent because the real World Driving experience is crucial for improving autonomous Vehicle Safety. This presents a third risk. Learning a realworld setting present a risk to early adopters and other users from which late adopters would benefit. It is like allowing teenage drivers on the road. They may not be safe drivers yet but they need driving experience to become safe drivers and in the meantime they pose risks to themselves and others which we try to limit with age restrictions. We need similar policies for Autonomous Vehicles. There is a clear and essential role for sound policymaking. I first recommend we rapidly develop practical methods of testing safety. These methods can be done by industry, researchers and academics, federal regulators, but wherever they come from they need to be vetted rigorously, objectively and independently. Not enough for testing methods to exist. I recommend building them into a flexible and adaptive Regulatory Framework that specifies what level of safety performance Autonomous Vehicles need to meet before they are allowed on the roads. Vehicles needs to meet before being on the roads. A lower level of safety white be okay for demonstration projects in some environment but a higher level may be needed for uncontrolled environments. As for teenage drivers it should balance the need for real World Driving experience and the need to protect the public from undue risk and it should be revised as it evolves. It would likely fall under nhtsas jurisdiction and under industry and the state and federal lawmakers and public. The state already released rules for Autonomous Vehicle but they dont specify a Regulatory Framework like the one im proposing will take time and in the interim i suggest the regula strategic pilot studies and data sharing can help. Pilot study could with realworld testing in controlled conditions like operating vehicles in favorable climates have been to the demonstrated. Risk can also be lowered by designing and operating vehicle so if a crash does occur the risks are lower. For example, by limiting vehicle speed or ensuring our pilot study passengers buckle up. Oris buckle up. As for data sharing the develo Developers Already use the experience of a single vehicle in their fleet to improve the entire performance in the fleet. This could go faster if it is shared across the industry for technology. Theres certainly not trivial concerns about trade secrets and insuring the right data is shared and truly useful. These concerns should be addressed and could be for the balance of safe autonomous dr e driving. To conclude we cant predict the safety of this or impact on American Transportation safety. We can shape that with well designed policies. I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Thank you for allowing me to appear before you and i look forward to your questions. Thank you for your testimony today and the chair now recognizes for five minutes, dr. Pratt. Chairman and congresswoman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is gill pratt, the ceo of the Toyota Research institute. Before working for toyota, i was a Program Manager in the area of robotics at darpa, the u. S. Defense advancement projects agency. Tri focuses on Artificial Intelligence and related technologies formed in january, 2016, with a five year 1 billion commitment from toyota. Tri is located wholly within the United States with its headquarters in palo alto, california and additional teams in ann arbor, michigan and cambridge, massachusetts. Tri is intensely focused on the development of autonomous vehic vehicles, currently pursuing two paths to autonomy, a system called guardian and an estimate called chauffeur. Under guardian, the Autonomous Technology operates in the background and constantly monitoring the environment st stepping in only when a collision is imminent. Under chauffeur, it takes over the task from the mu man driver. Were currently testing both guardian and chauffeur. Because they have the potential to save lives our hope is to deploy these systems as soon as possible but only once we know they can be deployed safely and responsibly. Society tolerates a circuit amount of human error on our roads. We are after all only human. But it shows nearly zero tolerance caused by deaths in flaws in machines. The question is how safe is safe enough for this Autonomous Technology to be deployed. As we sit here today, it is not clear how this measure will be devised or by whom. Before we can deploy the technology, policymakers, such as yourselves, will need to answer this foundational question. Policymakers must also keep in mind testing is a necessary means to an end. The goal is to develop a vehicle that can save lives and improve the efficiency of our roads. We cannot reach that goal unless we test our technology in real world environments including on public roads. Testing is what will allow us to determine when our Technology Achieves a sufficient level of performance and is ready for deployment. One of the most significant challenges we face this is patchwork of policy initiatives at the state level. Many of the other witnesses referred to the same thing. Under a patchwork of inconsistent state laws, Autonomous Technology may meet performance requirements in one state and not another state. Such a situation will impede the ability of a developer to test the same system across multiple states slowing the development and deployment of the technology. Policymakers should work to promote in advance a single National Framework with appropriate safeguards. We believe the federal Automated Vehicle policy that was released by nhtsa was an important step incrementing federal leadership in this area, however, we also believe there are several areas that should be addressed before the policy ills fully impleme implemented. This includes clarifying in the favp itself that it . Sa does not intend for states to regulate vehicle performance, reconsidering the applicability of a safety assess document the testing of autonomous prototype vehicles by traditional automakers and the need to submit a new assessment for each significant update to a prototype. The reason for that last comment is we develop these systems very quickly and it will create tremendous red tape to submit that assessment every single time a change is made. There has also been growing discuss of need for data sharing. We support the goals of data sharing but also believe theres a significant amount of work to be done to ensure it does not create paradoxical incentives to avoid difficult test conditions which would worsen safety, not improve safety. We look forward to working with other stakeholders to determine how to share data in the most practical and effective manner. Before closing, i would like to provide a couple of additional observati observations. First, with regard to test, the truth is that millions of physical test driven miles are necessary but they are probably not sufficient to achieve the reliability that we need for autonomous Vehicle Technology, particularly if those test driven miles are through easy or predictable routes. All testing miles are not created equal and developers should be focused on testing scenarios where driving is challenging or exceedingly difficult. We believe with computer simulation, billions of test miles are needed to accelerate and expand the range of testing of these systems and these simulated miles, if theyre valid, should be an acceptable equivalent to real world te testing. Finally, its important that the federal government begin looking beyond testing to the deployment of these systems, this includes updating the federal motor Safety Standards to address a hand follow of stands inconsistent with or compatible to Autonomous Technology. I thank you very much for your time and look forward to working with you to advance this technology and most of all, i look forward to taking your questions. Thank you very much for your testimony today. The compare now recognizes for five minutes, mr. Opaku for five minutes and thank you for being here today. Thank you, chairman latta and Vice President dingle. Im the vicechairman of lyft. Lyft was the first to establish peertopeer ride sharing and currently the fastest ride sh e sharing company in the United States. It connects nearly 18 Million People per month for safe rides in over 250 communities across the country. Lyft was founded with the mission of improving lives by offering the worlds best transportation. In less than five years we have proven to be a powerful driver of positive change with respect to economic empowmt, enhancing efficiency of Public Transportation and connecting communities previously underserved by Transportation Options. The proof is in the data. Since our launch in 2012, lyft has worked to reduce traffic and congestion, reduce increase Mobility Options and reduce duis and provide opportunities to our drivers. This is only the beginning. Autonomous vehicles hold potential to improve the quality of life of our users but also save lives by increasing decreasing severity of automobile accidents. The safety benefits of Autonomous Vehicles should be affordable and available to all members of the mcregardless of income, disability or visibility. And the Ride Sharing Network will fundamentally transform cities and the way people move around them. The convergence of ride sharing provides lyft with a tool to provide a Transportation Network that will greatly reduce the need and demand for car ownership and significantly expand Transportation Options particularly for sections that have limited access due to age, infirmity or disability. As vehicle ownership rates decline and consumers continue to engage with the lyft platform we will see fewer cars on the road, less congestion and increased positive impacts. A world with fewer cars provides a tremendous opportunity to reorient, reimagine and redesign our urban fabric. Cities in the not too distant future could be built around people instead of cars and should and could be defined by communities and connections not pavement and parking spots. They could and should include common spaces where culture can thrive and new ideas can be shared in the very places where cars previously stood parked and empty. Lyft stands at the center of this coming transportation revolution as we believe the transition to an autonomous future will occur not only through individually owned cars but more practical and appealing to rely on Autonomous Vehicles when theyre part of a Ride Sharing Network fleet. To this end, it is our goal to operate a pilot in a major city this year that will permit consumers to enjoy for the very first time a lift in an Autonomous Vehicles. There are serious challenges to bringing them to market for mass consumption. The greatest potential obstacle is regulations. The greatest risk as some of the members have already stated on this panel is inconsistent patchwork of state, local, municipal and county laws that will hamper efforts to bring the technology to market. It is well on its way to becoming reality. Since the beginning of the year, over 20 states have filed 60 bills to regulate the testing and deployment of avs. While most bills are wellintentioned, it is our position states should not rush to regulate this technology. Its our view if a state does choose to take legislative or regulatory action with respect to Autonomous Vehicles, it should be to moving impediments and creating a pro competitive and Technology Neutral playing field. In order to facilitate the continued innovation testing and development of avs by all industry participants, i would urge congress to examine two potential avenues for action, first is the authority to allow for a greater number of Autonomous Vehicles to be on the road for testing and deployment purposes and the second is to have nhtsa begin a rule making process to update bms standards and deployment and introduction into commerce of avs at a commercial scale. Lyft looks forward to working with the members of this committee to insure avs can be deployed and tesd safely in communities across the country. The potential ability they offer to save thousands of live and reduce traffic and reduce congestion and reorient our communities for the better around people not cars is an achievable nearterm reality. With a collective effort we can all insure this potential is rea reached. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today and im happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you for your testimony today. We appreciate it. That will conclude the Opening Statements from the witnesses and the chair will recognize himself for five minutes to begin questioning of our witnesses. We appreciate you being here. Mr. Ableson, if i could start my questions with you, could you discuss gms timeline for dep y deploying selfdriving cars . Pull that mike right up there. We currently have deployed in three cities vehicles that are operating at a level 4 automation with drivers in them. We are collecting data on how the vehicles operate. When we have convinced ourselves that the vehicles are operating properly and are at a level that would inspire confidence in the technology, we will then make those vehicles available for members of the public to experience with drivers. At that point, we will continue to collect data on a wider scale. Only when we have collected enough data to convince ourselves were truly ready to go let me follow up. Cybersecurity is a huge issue out there, across what we deal with in this subcommittee and across congress today. Can you tell me, or go into some detail as to how youre lookingo at insuring against Cyber Threats . I can pick cybersecurity is an issue General Motors takes very seriously. We have of course had the Onstar Service for 20 years and so we are not new to the connected vehicle space. But specifically about cybersecurity, we were also the first automaker to appoint a chief product cybersecurity officer who reports both to theo ceo and to the board of directors. We were also a founding memberhe of the auto i sack, and industrd committee to share best practices and learning cybersecurity. Jeff is art cheese productss obscured officer and is also the vice chairman of the auto isac it isnt. Weve been very active in. F we work within companies from other industries, from the Defense Industry and Aerospace Industry to make sure the most current learnings come not justt any out of space but in industrial spaces wherever they are. Thank you. Herever mr. Pratt, in toyotas comments on its federal Automated Vehicles policy, toy to mention it would be deploying automatede driving systems in aa men stepbystep manner as the technology matures and becomes available. Would you walk us through whats the stepbystep process looks like and how long you thinkk would take for that technology to mature to a point where it might be ready to be deployed . Sure, id be glad you. First of all we have a number of Automated Vehicle technologies that are already in our cars today. Y. And these include the Toyota Safety since system and the lexus safety since system. Automatic emergency braking is one of the types of this guarding system i spoke about before where the autonomy intervenes when the human is driving in order to prevent an accident. So thats already happening nown we believe we are saving the life as a result of doing so. As you desire to have the human being take less and less control of driving and had the autonomy take over or control, you ascend at the sae levels that you may know about. And our plan is to be self timed in this regard. We dont have a specific date for when we will remove the driver from the car, very much like gm, but rather we are going to test to see when the system is safe enough to do so. And, of course, this doesnt happen all of the time. It happens at the beginning only some of the time. In certain areas, certain weather, certain traffic conditions. At the beginning with human beings supervising the autonomy and in the end where you can trust it enough so you dont need a human being. So theres no definitive date for the steps but a stepbystep process of gradually removing the amount of supervision necessary by the driver eventually with the goal that no supervision is necessary but checking each stage that the system is safe enough. Thank you. A large part of has been the safety. How does this impact volvo student for puts a selfdriving car on the street before testing and deployment . Yes, safety is coded a priority throughout the whole Development Process for these cars. We are targeting 2021 for this. In order to make the safety to come at the right point we are doing a number of different approaches when it comes to engineering. First of all we will engage fully in major part into computer simulations. We have a database of about 40,000 traffic accidents that happen in the past. We will take those, combined them with data from u. S. , dataho from germany, and so that will h be about 250,000 traffic accidents. We would put in the computer and asked the computer how can you avoid this accident when you have ahave a few technology . That is what input when we go forward here moreover, just to test this and public roads to learn about the behavior on how customers will interact with this. So we went stepbystep introduce to these drivers morec and more advanced technologies, so we plan to be ready by 2021. Thank you very much. My time has expired. The chair now recognizes the202 gentleman from new jersey, the Ranking Member of the full committee, for five minutes. Gentleman from the new jersey for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We have heard concern about the period before cars are fully autonomous the driver doesnt need to be active all the time. Even if the driver is in front of the steering while, if the car is dog most of the work we know its hard for the driver to stay engaged. Someone suggested we can say up dik tick with vehicles to reengage. Volvo said it would skip automation and go from level three to level four. Is it due to the fears i just mentioned. At level three the car is doing the driving but the driver is the fall back so you could end up in situations where the driver has to take back the control that could happen within seconds. We are concerned about the level three stage within sa and therefore we are targeting level four as the end game. Doctor kalra did you want to comment on that . I agree. Theres evidence to suggest level three show increase in level three, so it is plausible for auto makers to skip level three. But it does safety concerns that a lot of recognizing and tried to avoid. Volvo said it will take complete liability at level four can you explain that decision . It is really not that strange. Car makers should take liability for any system in the car. So we have declared that if theres a malfunction to the system when operating autonomously we will take liability. Researchers and investigators remotely drivers are shown losing control, so i want to ask how real is the threat of vehicle hacking especially in the autonomous context. Do you expect the nature of the threat to evolve as the technology develops . Also i think you kind of did you talk about this at all yet, no . Would you respond to that, dr. Kalra. Sure. It is a real threat. Transportation receives a lot of attack from hacking because its a way to disrupt Transportation System. Theres a great concern. Cybersecurity is not to be string wrapped. Its not only hacking for fun and profit but Autonomous Vehicles provided avenue for terrorist because theres a way to use the vehicles to the threat is no longer suicide bomber we have vehicles that can drive around. We dont want to over state it but we need to think about cyber threat as terrorists opportunity as well. I agree because of the cybersecurity threat, we need to design the vehicle with that threat in mind. In our case as we deploy the selfdriving chevy volt, they look like the one we sale to retail but we have begun through changes to ensure cybersecurity in those vehicles. Go ahead. I wanted to add to that too. Toyota connected is subsidiary of our company thats focused on this. Toyota is the chair of auto i sack before for share information. I think its important that as serious to understand as serious as this threat is theres mitigation we can employ. First of all, to make sure that the Safety Technology on the car does not depend on Wireless Network to operate. All the of the seventy function haves to be selfsufficient on the car itself. The Wireless Network improved to efficiency of the car. I agree with the speakers. I want to add approach you have to take encompass supplies and dealers. Thank you, mr. Chairman. The chairman recognizes Vice President , the gentleman from mississippi from five minutes. Thank you for being here. This is remarkable. Mr. Abelson, i have too technical question, lets say you have your driver out of the selfdriving car, it is selfdriving and im driving along and i honk my horn, will it do any good . We have not reached that point of deciding how and whether it would be appropriate for vehicles to react and can i could have to ask the technical folks. Theres scenarios on whats going to happen and whether a car with car driver comes awe cross a selfdriving car without a driver and they realize it will freak some people out. How they deal with that would be fun part in this process. Absolutely. This is so nice. We have a special son but he dependent on us for his ride. So the possibilities are so good in the Disability Community particularly those like my son with a intellectual disability. He social individual but limited in many ways to what he can do. So what this opens up for whether running errands or bookstore or getting too and from to work. As you look at that can you elaborate on the work gm is doing to provided this access in the future. You have discussed it. We have. I agree with you its an exciting opportunity for some of the communities. While we recognize potential benefits theres a lot of work that needs to be done. Inside of general mottors we have Employee Research group that are working with our Engineering Group for potential selfdriving vehicles going forward. We look toward to engage internally with our employees and with external groups on how to realize this potential for those communities. Thank you for that work. Dr. Pratt. Can you comment on your company is considering the needs of the Disability Community in the development and deployment of selfdriving cars . Yes. Our president decided to change the companys policy on autonomous as a result of meeting with a blind person. The company decided to change its policy. I want to add one more part. We cannot forget about ageing society. 13 of our population is over age 65. Because of the baby boom that franks will grow from 13 to 20 . This is extraordinary things. My sister and i had to take away the keys from my father because he is too elderly to drive. Our goal is to make that not have to happen in the future. Thank you, very much. Mr. Can you answer what volvo is doing for those with disabilities. We recognize every sunday i meet my father who turned 100 years and he ask when can have this car. We are targeting commuting. Thats great. Mr. Owe pack we recently adapted that process they dont even have to have a smartphone to request a mr. Chairman. We have seen and heard from a lot of disabled community about how much ridesharing has increased their quality of life come increased mobility. Same thing for the senior population. In terms of the potential toa t have that impact with Autonomous Vehicles, the role the ridesharing place is the abilito to bring avs to a scale that would address this issue in a broad and sweeping way. So lyft we do believe place a specific role and an Important Role in ensuring a Key Technology can be deployed and used by those who most critically need it. Thank you each so much. Its an exciting moment and we look forward it to the development. I yield back. The gentleman give back and the chairman recognizes for five minutes the Ranking Member of the subcommittee, the gentlelady from illinois. So even though we are sometimes the way i think for an fully selfdriving cars on the s road, but manufacturers had developed some very exciting Safety Technologies right now from line spot detection to rearseat notification to i want to focus for a few minutes on i wan this technology. Last year 39 children died from heat stroke in cars. These are tragic accidents and i have heard devastating stories from parents who will absolutely never be able to forgive themselves. Last year tim ryan, peter king and i introduced hot cars, a bill to equip new vehicles with rearseat notification to warn drivers that a passenger may bee left behind. May be so, mr. Abelson, what is deemed doing to prevent child heat deaths . As you said these are tragic circumstances. General motors has moved aggressively. Weve announced we are implementing 17, 2016, excuse me me 2017 and 2018 models. The rearseat reminder system that is monitoring when a rearen door is open on the vehicle, then when the ignition is turned off at the end of the journey, chimes sound any message is put up on the instrument cluster monday the driver to check the rearseat. Essage we think this is been a very effective system to implement and one that i would save already in production on many to models. Dr. Pratt and mr. Colberg, all your Companies Working onmo technologies to prevent child heat deaths . First of all, Consumer Education is very important in this field. However what we recently ed introduced as an optional in our cars is in vehicle motionecently sensor. It cannot sense heartbeat but it can sense if an animal or if a child moves. Its a first step to this and i animalbe happy to provide for the protocol later on exactly how efficient these technologies are to protect our children. The problem of course is often the baby is sleeping, and so there is no movement. Dr. Pratt. So i run the Research Labs i dont know the particularen details of the implementation but i can speak to what we are doing research on. Il so were working on this issue and in particular we are working on systems that monitor the insides of the occupants in the car for any number of things. Even if a person is sleeping it turns out there is research technology, again i dont know when it will be fielded, which can amplify the very small motions that happen as a result of heartbeat and changes in skin temperature as well. So there are ways within the future we might do it, but i would be glad to get you more information from the company in terms of when we are planning to field such things. We are going to reintroduce our legislation and i would really appreciate all the manufacturers to take a look at our bill that would first begin with the study and then moverece into regulation. Automatic emergency braking is another important Safety Technology. Dr. Pratt, your testimony you said automatic emergency braking will be standard in almost every toyota model. How soon will toyota get to 100 . Im not exactly sure. I believe its a small minority of models. Some of which are in unusual sizes, so large trucks and things like that. I dont know the answer but i would be glad to get a deep. Mr. Abelson, mr. Karrberg, what are your companies timeline for automatic braking . At General Motors we agreed with the voluntary rollout that was proposed last year by nhtsa and we are working to execute that. I dont know the exact date by when it is complete in our company but i would be happy to get back to our people and send you the details. To weve had emergency braking standards global since 2013. E and i are large platform new cars coming out, it is a very involved system that breaks are not only vehicles, pedestrian but also cyclists and large animals day and night. I had a couple of other questions about various technologies, but i guess the point i really want to make is about obviously some of these are available and one manufacturer not available in another manufacturer sometimes its optional, sometimes it standard, seems to me that it would be great if we could harmonize the safety features t and make sure if they really are saving lives that they are standard im not saying it always has to be exactly the same technology but the same goal at the end of the day so that we do develop the safety features. I yield back. Thank you. Day thank you. The gentlelady yields back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from new jersey. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And good morning to the distinguished panel. Mr. Karrberg, once automated driving systems are fully self driving automobiles are ready for use by the american people, how should manufacturers provid, instructions and education to consumers about the proper use and limitations of the systems or vehicles . That is clearly a priority and thats why we start to introduce these vehicles to supervise levels already this year to about 100 rural customers on railroads to learn how they react with cars to fully understand and we will design the cars accordingly how they interact with the cars. We design the cars accordingly. Would that require further testing of the public . Would i have to go back to the state of new jersey and be tested further in this regard . We will do tests of how people behave in different areas so in sweden and plan to move on to london and china and hopefully in u. S. Well. To learn how different types of drivers zi drivers interact with the cars. Mr. Abelson. In gm we entend to roll out in ridesharing need. In ridesharing. Yes, similar to lyft fleet. One of the advance is it gives you without having to buy or own the Autonomous Vehicle. Whether you book when do you estimate that this might be in use in gms vehicles . So as i said we are doing testing on public roads but to be honest pics exact date is going to pin on how quickly that data can be gathered. We have to, as i said to both ourselves and the regulators that we are ready before we go driverless. To the distinguished panel, do you believe that these automobiles will be used on all of our roads, or will they first be used on limited access highways, the interstate highway system, for example, or other similar roads . Dr. Pratt. First let me add on to the last question with regard to driver education. I think education is absolutely key. Some of the issues are having to do with how much trust the driver puts in the system and learning up to either under trust are over trust the autonomy that is in there. Whether or not it will need changes to the requirements for a license we dont know yet. We will still learn but also keep in mind we need to educate the public in terms of how to interact with his car to think of a pedestrian choosing to cross the road. What did they expect. We think thats very important as well. I was taught driver ed in gym class in high school, but the year i was taught that was a National Security secret. Id like to address your question about whether to expand to all roads. I believe over time you will see them used on all roads. We are starting with the urban environment. New jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation. This is of interest to me representing new jersey because of the congestion that exists in this most heavily densely populated state in the country. So i grew up in springfield new jersey so i know that. My congressional district. Darn glad to meet you. Wonderful place. I think that that is very important. It is important however to realize that the build of an Autonomous Car to go anywhere at any time about what the weather or the traffic is what we call level five. As an industry believe it will be sometime before we get to level five. Believe it or not there are places in the world that worse in terms of Traffic Congestion than new jersey, and so i think we will hit new jersey before we handle the whole world. It is going to be in stages with the easier cases coming first. Thank you. Before i yield back in my time i assume mr. Karrberg from that thing you did not go up in my congressional district. I yield back 10 seconds mr. Chairman. The gentleman yields back the balance of his time and the chair now recognizes for five minutes the gentlelady from michigan. Thank you, chairman. As i mentioned in my Opening Statement is critical to ensure that Automated Vehicles are truly safe before they are available to consumers. We also need to ensure that are not any barriers that would prevent lifesaving technology from bringing benefits to society as a whole. I want to be really clear here. We should never let an unsafe or unproven vehicle hit the road so that our challenges to congress at a strike the right balance between supporting innovation and making sure the consumers are safe. So i know all of my colleagues are asking all the questions on the other side so you want to just get the record here on some things. I have a few questions for all the members of the panel since i limited time and i would ask you to just answer yes or no. Do you agree that federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards need tu be updated in order to support the deployment of Automated Vehicles . Lets us go down the route. Yes, we do. We do. Yes. Yes. Yes. My understanding that it will making my nhtsa to update federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards will take several years. That will make you were to commence today, its likely not to be completed by the time made in industry have announced that you want to deploy Automated Vehicles, is that correct . Yes, thats correct. Yes. Yes. De im not sure. And the reason im not sure is that i would hope that nhtsa if the need for great enough could speed up its actions. What if they couldnt the answer is yes. Yes. Thank you. Love your faith in government. Understand nhtsa has the authority to exempt Motor Vehicles from Safety Standards based on a number of factors. But this Exemption Authority is limited by law in amount and direction. Could expanding this exemption b authority provided an interim a path to vehicle deployment during the rulemaking which is discussed . Yes, absolutely. Yes. May be. Its more collocated than the number of vehicles right now. Theres no reason to believebe that limit is going to be hit and equally important is to think about on what basis those exemptions would be granted given most of the time when one request an extension its on the argument that vehicles aree seeking ascension are just as safe or safer, and theres no way to show that. That would be an equal concern t with the number of vehicles. We have the same concerns as the previous witness. To meet the edge is yes. Very quickly i would say the development and expansion of the ridesharing industry in 2012 there were maybe only a few thousand rights being completede in the next year millions of lives shows at the man for four select yes, i would think it is a wholehearted yes. Thank you. This question is for all the panelists but you are allowed more than yes or no. We already drifted that way. Weve had a good discussion about a few proactive things the federal government should be doing here but in your opinion are there any specific things that congress should avoid doing that would stifle the development of Automated Vehicles . Speaking for General Motors, we wouldnt want to see the government taking steps to specify specific technology or specific solution. As long as we keep in mind the goal is to prove the vehicles are safer than drivers today, i think the nhtsa guidelines published lets you are a good step in the direction in that they dont specify technology but specify what the expectations are before vehicles are deployed in a driverless fashion. Mr. Karrberg, you all have b like a minute and nine seconds. Yes, we would not Like Congress to engage rulemaking because that would stifle development. That would take much longer time because this is where technology is developing quite fastly. As you know i agree with the gentleman from General Motors. Its Clear Technology Net Neutrality is important. It should not be winners and losers. That should be done by thees industry. Technology neutrality is important and so is developing relations adapted and flexible and designed to keep up in terms of what they shouldnt do i not specifically sure. I would agree with all the witnesses before that evidencebased approach is really the best one where the government sets with the criteria are for performance and thats done at the federal level but does not dictate what the ways are to me that particular level of performance. I concur with the general statement of the rest of the panel that you have to be veryry concerned about, even with the most well intended law inadvertently precluding or restricting potential innovation to make this Technology Even safer. Im out of time. G thank you. The gentle ladies of time has expired and the chair now recognize that the children from kentucky five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank everyone for being here. Its very interesting to me, i follow the Automobile Industry and i understand i can forget all this out people with a Driverless Cars if everything is standard conditions, everybody tried to speed limit, nobody blocks the left language up to wonder how its going to work if youre going to turn left and youre out in the middle of the intersection and oncoming traffic eases up on the yellow or if maybe this happened to some here, youre in the park would come up from the airport lined up to get on 395 like a good citizen and somebody comes at the last minute enforces their souls right in front of you because it dont want to wait in line. Nobody does that youre unsure. The question is, first mr. Abelson, does the car had to be perfectly to selfdriving cars have to be perfect to allow them on the highway . Advocate to the point where they are safe enough that we allow them on the highway . The point is there is no way to prove statistically something is perfect. We have to agree on the metricse by which we are going to use to show that the vehicle is better than human drivers and, therefore, it is appropriate to start deploying without drivers. Your point, thats why this testing in real world is so important because you will see those reallife conditions that we all deal with on a daily basis as human drivers and will make sure the vehicles can react appropriately. If you like a comet and tickling what is your view on what level of vehicles are saf . For example, and level three car, what about level three cars . What first id like to comment on the traffic conditions you initially described. Thats not where we go on initially. Those are complicated traffic conditions so were targeting commuter roads in the beginning because thats where the consumer interest is and thats where the technology would arrive in 2021. Sorry, next question was . Comment on the level three qt cars. As stated, at level three the cars doing the monitoring. However, the driver is still the fallback. However the driver may have to be able to take back control in very short time, and that is far less safe than if you go to a level for car where the lever district level for car to be able to put the car into a safe mode and unless the driver takes over control. Should be able to predict the traffic so that that can be done in a safe manner. Spirit i guess the nature of your business is picking people up and running them around town so it really wouldnt be the commuter and a people use on commuter i was a kid that but ii think what youre talking about, people commuting to work everyday and doing things, just not be distracted because the car is taking care of that is issue. Your guys are picking people up at hotels and dropping them off at capitol hill. Those of the kinds of things. How do you see this working with Driverless Cars in the kind of environment . Thank you for the question. Lets look at this from the viewpoint of the network. One of the things with expertise in is how to manage a literally thousands of cars that are transporting people around the city and making sure theyre doing so in the most efficient manner. For example, is a car that is two blocks away from you but going away going to get you quickly that a car that is four blocks away but heading in youre direction . Things of that age. Never one, thats one of the areas of expertise we can bring to the av revolution if you will is making sure that operate in most efficient manner and that knowing how all the vehicles can interact with each other most efficiently and most safely to get passengers where theyre going. Think about reductions in traffic, reductions in congestion i think the ridesharing will be very instrumental and ensuring that those benefits are gained. Dr. Pratt, my home state company, would like to comment on how save it has to be divisive . S this is a quench with thinking about extreme deeply now. Ow we feel there may need to be a safety factor multiplying human performance. To in other words, if an Autonomous Car is only slightly better than the average human driver, that may not be good enough because emotionally we can emphasizeze with the human drug that has an accident because that couldve happened to us. On the other hand, when the machine makes a mistake, our empathy is much less. We dont know what the safety factor has to be and what wewh would like is to work collaboratively with government to figure out what that answer is. But we worry that it may not be one pick it may be that the public will not accept lets say there are 35,000 pounds a year because of human driving, with the public except 34,999 because of a machine . I think the answer might be no. We dont know what factor needs to be there. I had more question. 99 im out of time and i yield back seven seconds. Thank you. The gentleman yield back in the chair recognizes five minutes the gentlelady from california. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to switch a bit here. Many of you expressed concern over the potential for a patchwork of different state standards for Autonomous Vehicles. N as our state often is, california has been a leader ink trying to develop a framework for safe testing and deployment of this technology. I do understand the need for laws and regulations to be flexible, and to encouraged the innovation and californias north star is always innovation. But at the same time i would be concerned about undermining safety and accountability standards which i believe ultimately what harm not only the driving public but consumera confidence in your products andh services. I think we could all agree we need some rules of the road. Er can each of you provide your perspective on where regulation might be needed at both the state and federal levels . Re starting here. I would say at General Motors we recognize that if the patchwork were to develop such beyond the technical side of the issue that would be an issue for the industry, however weve also seen some states have some great thoughtful legislator that supports the Development Like michigan did recently. We with nhtsa we recognize both the states and the federal government have a role to play going forward, and we look forward to working with the government at all levels in rolling out technology. The way forward we think is really the approach that nhtsa has now taken with the federal auto policy. Its flexible, not traditional making which will go very slow. Something in between. Its not perfect but i think that is the way forward. I think federal regulations are needed to set both testing methods and what thresholds of sager needed for Different Levels of the point of Autonomous Vehicles. Until those are in place, states are in the forefront of balancing needs associate with this technology and zoo in the interim for those federal regulations i think it would be important for the family, to provide support to states in developing regulations that are not contradictory and that paveo the way forward for those regulations, and a policy that were put forward last year take a First Step Towards that. Ederal i agree with some of the member of the panel that really the federal government, we believe should take the leading role. Cy to be very clear, we totally support very rigorous regulation of this, very high standards for safety but we think its important to be one standard, not be a patchwork of different ones. I want to give an example of rir what might go wrong and it comen from california where we have one of our labs. In california there is a requirement if youre doing Autonomous Car development, that you report to the government what your disconnection rate is every time that the car as a failure of a certain kind. Ig thats not such a bad idea but a that information then becomes publicly available. Ea. It creates a perverse incentive. The incentive is for companies to try to make that figure look good because the public is watching. And that perverse incentive then causes the company cannot try to test the difficult cases but test the easy cases to make your score look good. We think its important to be deep thought about this kind of issue before these rules are made and we think concentrating that in the federal government is the best idea. Thank you for the question. Cc if i could touch briefly on the patchwork of state legislation quickly. This is something ridesharing has experience in disappearing over the last three or four years weve seen the ridesharing industry go from unregulated to hold a regulated. What what we are saying were cities that were next to each other literally implementinge ordinances that conflicted withc each other where a vehicle could not pick up the passenger monsoon and drop them off any other city. A very real situation where facing for years. Thats a situation that has beei resolved. The concern that the members of the stellar expressing with respect to a patchwork of regulations is a very real one and one we experienced recently. To the heart of the question i agree with that gentle sentiment of this panel with some of the state bills and propose regulations that we are saying, we are seeing proposals that would infringe upon the federal governments realm and expertise in rightwing Safety Standards. Thats something that is dangerous. It i were going to encourage a state of local sony think it would be focusing on making sure that they were not infringing upon that which is of the province of the federalin government. Okay. I also understand what yourehe talking about but i always believe that states should bee the testbed for innovation to au great degree. Other than what you said audit any specific concerns about californias testing regulations . Regulations . On i live in sacramento so i live with when the governor list so it would be nice to have this information. The reporting of i think i heard that, yes. I just want to say i dont agree necessary with the reporting in california would reg encourage companies to do easier testing. We certainly are testing and afo very difficult environment. Making the data public anyway. Im not aware of the details of california, but it hasnt onerous reporting that it is aar favorite data sharing requirement, also i think ive heard you and one of the time. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. The gentleladys time has expired. The chair now recognized for five minutes the gentleman from west virginia. Thank you, mr. Chairman. As one of just two licensed engineers in congress, this is an intriguing process that were going to undergo. Im fascinated with that. Ive got a series of questions, i dont have time to get to all of them but one of them is, since ive learned that we are going to have this hearing ive tried t to do a little more reading about this and i dont see so far i dont see anything about thirdparty certification for Public Safety, putting Public Safety first over, overwriting competitiveublic pressures. Do we had some provision that would require a thirdparty that we have here before this process advances much further . Im not aware that theres any requirement at the moment for a thirdparty. Pe okay. The second, are they going to be Global Standards . Ive heard mention europe and china would be, are we going to adopt standards that are comparable . Is that underway so that well be able to sell american cars in china, avs over their . Of offenses that are experienced in the in the Automotive Industry over sometime is we dont get Global Standards, that the regulating bodies tend to move in similar e but differing directions. Directions. One thing i have not heard is im a little concerned about lack of global standard is cost. No one has mentioned cost up here. What is the projected additional cost per vehicle that could be i guess you could answer it depends on whether you go to level 2, 3 or 4. I understand that. What are some costs projections that were facing. Is the overall goal that it would be universal or it would be an option that i as a buyer can choose not to have auto mated. Dr. Pratt. The see in it and rideshare systems at the beginning is because there you can advertise the cost over a higher utilization of rideshare vehicles. However, we should keep in mind the incredible rate, increasing costs in the Electronics Industry particularly with skill. Think about your cell phones, which rivals some of the best cameras you can buy for personal or professional use in the past is now cost any instead of the telephone. We dont know the actual numbers, but we are confidentts the cost will decrease very rapidly. Maybe at the end, do you see this as something that is going to be universal, or is thiso always an option or your car . It will start and eventually it will be standard. You will be standard. Will okay. W i heard some very interesting argument, very heart wrenching and the like. Is the automobile this autonomous process, would that put us into Entitlement Program or is this something that the privilege to be able to have a car . Thats one of the reasons why again its really intrigued about autonomous Vehicle Technology because the only way to ensure that is really provided to all segments of society is to haveve rideshare in excess on the part 1. That list interests in this Committee Hearing today. He said in your testimony that everyone should have this available appeared that sounds like entitlement. My concern of course. I am in a very short time i have left is im curious, everyones been talking from 30,000 feet. I dont understand, is someone going to get in one of these cars . Lets say they are going toe level four or level five and it will go grab something and come it takes me to destination x and it gets you there. You sit back and enjoy it . Is that really happening . That is basically the goal. As we said, itll take a long time before it gets everywhere b for everyone. My curiosity, will you be able to interact with your power as you see this and you get a phone call or email and pick up milk on the way and you have to stop and get milk. Youll tell your machine to get into that. Villain of the safest place to get that. As i said, this is intriguing and one of the two engineers and how it proceeds of this, but also getting the cost down so it is affordable for more people. Just a comment on costs. Yes, the systems will be expensive and come down in cost. The cost on fender bender is their insurance is likely to go down and be improved. In closing, i hope youll take a look at fuel efficiency because i know from engineering perspective that people do use Cruise Control use more gas than otherwise and i would assume one of the fundamental focuses on this would be a form of Cruise Control and therefore questioning whether or not this is going to be fuel efficient. It may save lives. Is one of the reasons we are rolling out the technology and electric vehicles. Self driving technology. Ive gone over time. Neil back. The gentlemans time has expired. The gentleman from texas, five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you Ranking Member because a lot of us have heard about self driving cars. I think my wife might be the one who always complains about my se driving. Mp i guess we wouldnt have to use ways to find out where we need to get the closest milk. Ensuring our constituents is our primary concern. We used to be Science Fiction is fast approaching reality. But that is for the last 50 years weve seen so many different changes. While the massive benefits in society like any other m groundbreaking device, the risk and precautions need to be considered in a lower to talking about this. In your testimony, you talk about the many different approaches to testing these vehicles and the real World Driving experience may be one of the most important tools for improving autonomous Vehicle Safety. The sharing of data between large groups of vehicles can quickly improve overall safety of the group is on the knowledge accumulated by each individualel car. Y you mentioned test that calls this week learning. Can you tell us more about what fleet corniness and let it can f play in the role of improving ontime in this Vehicle Safety . Thank you for the question. The idea of fleet learning, what is fundamental to vehicles as they are approved by process of Machine Learning for computers are designed to learn better ways of behaving or performing without being explicitly programmed to do so appear to be back in a together enormous amounts of data and learn algorithms to improve performance. The more data one can see into Machine Learning committed under the performance and faster can improve. Companies like tesla used ae and celebrity experience and individual vehicle has this been fed back into the system and the entire fleet can be upgraded continuously. Most developers of technology are using that technique. The question is whether that is limited that kind of learning is limited to an individual developer or whether there are f opportunities for learningng across developers. I agree with dr. Pratt that needs to be thought through carefully, that the Aviation Industry has shown us sherry nix and this can be an essential tool in improving safety quickly. You compare risk of the earl Autonomous Vehicles from the real world experience of teenage drivers. They may not be good drivers that have the experience in practicing good drivers although i would probably submit today with our distracted driving, wel could all be fit in my 16 year olds trying to drive. We have so many options today. Restrictions on learners permits and minimum age driver requirements to mitigate the risk of teenage drivers. Similar requirements for early Autonomous Vehicles. You imagine some of the safety requirements or restrictions would look like when it comes to self driving cars . It doesnt necessarily need to be a requirement. T. Lf many think my colleagues here have described, for example, limiting their driving to commuter roads or at low speeds. There are many ways to reduce risk beard either reducing ther likelihood which means restricting operation to good weather. Using the consequences of a crash. These can be industry developed adsm choices or it may be something done through regulation to say these are the ways in which we will start rolling out. Thats an open question. Essentially reducing risk, even if we cannot quantify right now is an important stat. In your mind, what does the history of the airbag regulatiom in bits and pieces about safety regulations for economists vehicles. Obviously, we share the creative bureaucracy that may not be a fact that may take a long time to get the correct things. Corre if anything can airbag regulations tell us its extremely complicated. Its difficult to get right, but its also very important. Airbags were developed and patented. He there were first introduced in the 70s and it wasnt until the 90s that they were first required in 1999. That took a long time. One can argue that some mistakes are made along the way because airbags were not smart. The airbags we have today were designed to protect a nonbelted passenger and the force of doing so would have killed someone like me. And now we know better. The difficulty is that was learned through experience and deployment and Technology Available at the time. There is this conflict between getting Safe Technology on theme road and so airbag regulation is instructive and that we should temper our optimism and we need to be very careful aboutsafe. Believe. E. By one second left, and problems that are airbags. I yield back my time. Thank you very much. The gentlemans time has expired and the chair now recognizes thc gentleman from florida for five minutes. Mr. Pratt, weve heard a lot about vehicle to vehicle communication. In previous hearings on this subject of Autonomous Vehicles, or does the work you all are doing iv to the communication into the overall blueprint of self driving cars . Vehicle to vehicle as well as vehicle to infrastructure communication is of critical importance to Autonomous Vehicles. Of course we drive, but the potential is there on the vehicle itself, but neighboring vehicles in order to see the world better. For sample, going around a corner and there is sad but true Story Building that is blocking the view, vehicle to vehicle communication can give you the equivalent of xray vision because you see not only your view, but the view from other cars as well. It is going to be pretty hard to make a vehicle that is safe in all conditions. Thats the level five vehicle we keep talking about. The standards may be very high because it is a machine running thats not a human. G our ability to empathize and be forgive will be low. We have to give ourselves everyy possible tool in the tool chest in order to solve this problem. The vehicle to vehicles of toolastructure is extremely important in saving the spectrum for that uses also very important. Thank you very much. Mr. Okpaku, sorry if i missbl pronounce your name. We have already talked about the potential benefits the Disability Community which coulb apply to the alternate community as well, especially in the community i represent the tampa bay area in the state of florida. Nd there are many veterans and elderly individuals that could benefit from this technology and get the things maybe they want to get to the medical appointment. T. So i can see a lot of benefits they are. What are some other societal and economic benefits we could expect to see from the deployment of self driving cars . Thank you for the question. We often talk about the benefit the left in its current form have financially drivers. One thing that gets lost in the conversation is how important transportation is for economic upward mobility on the passage cited, meaning one of the biggest factors for econom opportunity is access to reliable and quick transportation. We party scene for the impact weve had on the customer side, just by providing reliable options to jobs to get to and from work that makes sense. If you apply that concept across the grand scale to provide comedy Economic Opportunity that it compares is really significant and can really help a lot of people in economic need to get to and from their jobs that otherwise would take an hour or two to get to because they have to rely on Public Transportation options. I would also echo what you mentioned in terms of the ability for nonemergency medical transportation. Brad Sharon Parker and with organizations already. The ability to do that at a greater rate and more efficiently expand once you could autonomous Vehicle Technology. Thank you. Mr. Carper, it has been mr. Karrberg, it has been suspected that need to welcome action and show federal leadership and may contain guidance as im in tended consequences of delaying Development Testing and deployment of self driving cars to the United States. Can you comment on that and howc ubiquitous the ambiguities in the guidance is to be resolved. There are a member of the issues. First of all the patchwork does not deter sufficiently on the patchwork or so a requirement report on hardware and Software Changes here in the course of the testing. N that is difficult because in engineering you do it all the time. He reported every one of those. So these reporting requirements should be limited to major changes. There is also a waiting period for your change and thats also onerous. It also calls for preapprovals. We are procertification. Its worked for 30 years and we see no reason to change that. We also think that its a passive expertise and also staffing to cater for and be able to judge on the developed and said that it will not be a part of potential delays. Thank you very much. I know my time has expired. Dr. Pratt wanted to say something. I will make it short. We agree very much with what he said. Thank you. I yield back. The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from california for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We talk a lot about the need to prevent statebystate patchwork of laws and regulations for Autonomous Vehicles, which would inevitably slow innovation and support technology. While we appreciate that about california regulations, i think we need to consider the negative impact on the state regulations. My entire life, i have seen my state of california and a silvea regulation. The tenures in in the California State Legislature ambassador for productive business for more family stays. Within the last few months, the trend was extending what uberdl advocates testing to arizona after california take action to make the regime less hospitable. The ironic thing is i can think of few states that would benefio more from technology he considering its promise congestion, mitigation with products inland from the last quarter. Even at the federal level, ntsa suggested regulations are cited as the cost of subsidies welcoming regulatory environments for ap. Mr. Okpaku come it can give me a practical example for state or local law list testing . Thank you for the question. I can give you examples of what we are concerned about the ability of local legislation and local regulations. He for example, great al in california there is only one explicitly allowed a proposal that would make testing limited to one part of california. If the legislation were to pass and the ability to test a different environment in different situations were extremely hampered. Thats one example. That is cause for concern. We are not at the point when the legislation we are concerned about has been enacted by the listing on the proposed legislation across the country whether its massachusetts,ll california, it does raise the concern that if enacted it would unintentionally but that will inhibit our ability to roll out, test and deploy. Thank you very much. I yield back the balance of my c time. The gentlelady yields back the balance every time. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania for five minutes. Thank you to all of you was testified here. Its been a fair amount of time reading on the subject. I feel that your testimony, which ive had the time to read through really does lay out the issues that are in front of us as policymakers in a very thoughtful way so that we can go about facilitating this technology with you to the public benefit. Each of you i think the layout of various benefit that a year from this. Each of the loss of layout a little bit differently but nevertheless the central a question here as being a rear rack to further regulatory barriers for is the regulatory facilitative for your type knowledge is to be tested so that he can expedite increasing safety producing carbon emissions, et cetera, et cetera. My first question, which i will sort of layout to you is similar to ms. Walters. A little bit differently and that is with respect to the state patchwork, which i think most of us think would have been the wrong direction and mindful that i think preemption occurs here, but perhaps the regulatory language baby is a little too and enable states to stick their heads a window which they are not allowed to stick their head into the windows because they should be focused on drivers, not on the vehicle. Are you aware of any reciprocity students between states to facilitate testing or deployment of self driving cars across state lines . Thats the first question. I think that its because ofon some of the testimony house reflect it, you need to test the technology in a lot of different topographical climate and urban rural circumstances in order to know how effective it can be. And if you have not engaged in reciprocity agreements, something that would be helpful to develop the new technology. Go ahead and junk on the first. Speed packet finite answer first, we have three sites in the United States. When california, michigan and massachusetts. Ch we do most of our testingmichig, initiative and the reason we do that is a different regulatory barriers for the three states. The answer is no in terms ofegur utilization of any sort is reciprocity. We also tested locations earlier in San Francisco, scottsdale, arizona and michigan. Im not aware of any arrangements from the states to work for the individual state to make sure we have the understanding. A does that mean its not been limiting . So if so far weve not had an issue in conducting the test and in three locations. We are unaware of any reciprocity between state. Also, it would be very beneficial to test across state lines for would be beneficial. That would only come about if he did have a patchwork. If he didnt have a patchwork, we wouldnt have to address that. I agree with that. It becomes a problem if patchwork is developed. What congress do to facilitate the deployment of self driving cars . That can be directly related to the ntsa language or insurance states dont get in the way. It could be related to the data sharing double edge sword if you love that i think was part of the analysis that can be laid out which i find to be compelling. It could be things unrelated toe those two exceptions. I think to begin with as we spoke before, the federal government gives out the states understand its not in their selfinterest to try to make their own rules and they should leave that to the federal government. The second thing is the ntsa guidelines were put out his guidelines. They were not put out as rules be fully accepted yet. They still needs to be some work to improve the guidelines. I think we spoke before about particular areas that we feel could be improved. A lot of this has to do with understanding difference between development and deployment. Development is there be blood red tape way of making changes during deployment where you might have to be more official. Ensuring we do not barriers on the development side. Exactly. My time is up. Thank you very much. The gentleman yields back. See no further witnesses. Members asking to question witnesses. [inaudible] absolutely. Generally it is recognized. Thank you. The best way to keep defective vehicles off viruses to prevent the sale of the use of cars under recall until the recall is repaired. Mr. Abelson, am i correct General Motors has committed to not knowing used vehicles and certified preowned when they have open recalls . All vehicles for preowned program have been updated for all recalls. S. Mr. Karrberg, is that also true . I could not comment on that. Id be happy to submit. Id like to know weve been looking at that, dr. Pratt. I myself dont know somethina ahead of the research lab but research lab and got to find out. We certainly want to makef te sure that also often have some sort of statement that has been prechecked, there really also have open recalls are permitted for resale. I would love to hear from that. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And witnesses. Thank you very much. Again can see no further members asking i ask unanimous consent to put comments from Ford Motor Company and the record of this hearing. Thank you very much for unanimous consent. T the objection. Again, thank you for witness vey today. You can see from the folks over here in the audience today, itit is a topic on everybodys mind in seeing where technology is going from a safety, making sure folks out there come a Senior Citizen for folks who might have a disability for more mobility to get around that people are looking forward to in the next a few years seem vehicles on the nead. And also, i would like to submit the following letters for the record by unanimous consent as a letter from the National Association of Insurance Companies cover letter for the National Council on disability, letter from Ford Motor Company, letter from global automakers, the care association, letter from a big, letter from competitive care association, letter from advocates for Highway Safety and matter from safe. Members have 10 Business Days to submit additional questions can i ask the witness for their response within 10 days uponus receipt of the question. See no further business before the committee, the committee was adjourned. 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