Welcomethat will soon all people interested in the automobile. Generatesbile trillions of dollars, supporting 7 million jobs across all 50 states. This industry is not standing still. It is hard to believe, but the Auto Industry spends more on research than that airs aerospace industries. New technologies such as Automated Vehicles and new Business Models offering mobility as a service are poised to enable substantial growth. Key benefits include improved safety, new jobs, new transportation opportunities and reduced congestion. Automated vehicles offer perhaps the largest potential gains in all these areas. More than 37,000 people lost their lives on u. S. Roads, a troubling increase from the year before. Many crashes were the result of human error. Asleephich cannot fall or become distracted, could potentially save thousands of lives every year. May spur economic activity. The wide adoption will spur a new passenger economy worth 7 trillion over the next few decades. To they will provide access many americans, such as the elderly and those with disabilities, some of which may be unable to drive today. Policymakers must take a careful approach to these technologies. We must allow innovation to thrive while also ensuring the technology is safe and reliable. We must also refrain from favoring one type of company over another, so as to avoid locking in technology before innovation and market choices can take place. The bipartisan av start act, which senator peters and i introduced, accomplishes these goals by building on the existing Regulatory Framework to prioritize safety through increased reporting and oversight, thus promoting Public Safety and Building Public confidence and trust. At the same time, the av start removes unintentional barriers to innovation and existing law and promotes a level Playing Field so that neither traditional auto makers, tech giants, nor new startups are unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged. If u. S. Regulators are not able to foster safe testing and , theyment of Av Technology rest of the world will not said by. America currently leads the way innovation, but many countries, including china, are catching up. We want america to see new jobs and new growth. The av start act is just that, a start. As avs become more widespread, there will be tough questions we must Work Together to answer. Av start contains formal processes to start answering some of these questions. Such as those relating to data. Some of these questions, such as those relating the data and how Law Enforcement will interact with avs. This committee will remain active and will build upon the Strong Foundation established by the av start act. I want to thank senator peters and all the members of the committee for their great work on this landmark piece of legislation and look forward to seeing it pass the full senate soon. While Av Technology is approaching quickly, the Auto Industry is innovating in other areas with immediate benefits. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems such as lane keeping assist and automatic emergency braking are available in an increasing number of vehicles on the road today and are already saving lives. And new developments and few technologies such as hybrid and all electric vehicles and increases use of biofuel boost fuel efficiency and reduce pollution. To explore these issues, we have a great panel of witnesses today, representing organizations that are leading the way in many areas of automative innovation. Mr. Luke snider, president of audi mobility u. S. Mr. Mike, president of robert bosch of north america. Mr. Tim kentleyklay from zoox, inc. And dr. Randy aven. I want to thank you all for being here with us today. I will turn now to senator nelson for his opening remarks. Senator nelson right there. Are you live . Thank you, mr. Chairman. There you go. Mr. Chairman, i was almost one of those traffic statistics this morning. Coming down one of the northself streets. Going this be limit. Suddenly, a car in the right lane to my front suddenly does a in the entire street, right in front of us. To which we commented, if we were an Automated Vehicle, and he was an Automated Vehicle, that wouldnt have happened. So, there was a demonstration, for me, early this morning. I, like the chairman, am very hopeful about the prospect of selfdriving cars. I appreciate the efforts of senator peters, who has made this a signature issue. Its appropriate for him, because of being from michigan, and he has been dogged in his pursuit of this legislation. And i thank you, mr. Chairman, that you have arranged to be down here at the auto show. It seems to have gotten a good bit of interest. I wonder how many here for the hearing and how many are here, really, to go to the auto show. But youre planning was youre planning was enormously successful. And im very excited about my state of floridas role in the development of autonomous technology. Im pleased that a part of our panel is dr. Advent, who is the president of Polytechnic University in florida. And it is working in partnership with the Florida Department of transportation to develop and operate a 42 million 475acre Autonomous Vehicle testing facility at their campus. And i want to congratulate you for this achievement, dr. Advent, and im confident that your world class facility will, in fact, play a vital role in the Ongoing Research that were going to do. This technology is advancing rapidly. Just two weeks ago, at the Electronics Show in las vegas, General Motors announced a plan to put fully Autonomous Vehicles, without driver controls, on the public roads as early as 2019. Now, whether or not that occurs depends on us and our legislation. And General Motors is not alone. Countless other auto makers, technology companies, and suppliers are rolling out innovations that have the potential to completely transform our sense of mobility and as the chairman mentioned, to cut down, and as i experienced, on a lot of traffic accidents. In addition, these vehicles may bring significant environmental benefits through reduced emissions, increased efficiency, productivity, the improved transportation opportunities for underserved communities, and seniors and people with disabilities. While these benefits of selfdriving vehicles are numerous, its crucial that the congress and the federal government exercise responsible oversight to ensure the Safe Development and deployment of these technologies. So, the av start act, which was passed unanimously by this committee in october, its an important step. The bill enhances safety by requiring Autonomous Vehicle manufacturers to submit safety evaluation reports to the department of transportation. And that is to demonstrate how they will address system safety, crash worthiness, and Cyber Security among others. And additionally, this act reinforces the traditional existing roles played by federal, state, and local governments pertaining to vehicle registration. So, i look forward to continuing to work with you and senator peters as this legislation advances. Thank you, senator nelson. There we go. Thank you, senator nelson, and again, we want to welcome our panel. Thank you for being here, well start on my left, your right, with dr. Randy avent whos president of Polytechnic University of florida. Mr. Tim kentleyklay from zoox, of menlo park, california. And mr. Mike mansuetti. I said that wrong the first time, my apologies. With robert bosch, llc, in northville, michigan. Luke schneider from audi. Audi mobility. If you could confine your oral remarks as closely as possible to five minutes, well make sure that all of your testimony gets included in the written record and will maximize the opportunity that we have for members to ask questions. So, dr. Avent, please proceed. Welcome. Dr. Avent mr. Chairman, Ranking Members, german nelson, members of the subcommittee thank you , for the opportunity to address you today on this very important topic. As many of you know, the vision of Driverless Cars has been around well over 50 years, but very little progress was made in that area until 2004, when darpa created a prize competition called the darpa grand challenge. Since then, theres an exponential growth in the underlying Av Technology that mirrors the Development Trajectories and other disruptive markets, such as computing in dna sequencing. Today, id like to briefly touch on three dimensions of connected and Autonomous Vehicles. The market impact, the technical and regulatory challenges, and the potential role of the federal government. As you all pointed out numerous , papers abound, outlining the promises of Autonomous Vehicles. If developed and implemented correctly, the primary advantage of Autonomous Vehicles centers on significantly lowering driverrelated deaths. As you pointed out senator thune last year alone, there were , nearly 40,000 fatalities in the u. S. At a cost of over 410 , billion. And more than 90 of those were due to human error. But there are many secondary advantages that are also significantly important. For instance, Autonomous Vehicles can improve access for the elderly, children, and poor and can make Public Transportation more effective by solving the last mile problem. It can significantly increase the utilization of automobiles, which is less than 5 now, and with higher utilization of fewer cars, the capacity of our transportation infrastructure would naturally rise. Beyond the transportation sector impact, Core Technologies underlining autonomy will impact other markets, such as agriculture, logistics, National Defense and manufacturing. In fact, it would be hard to find any technology with a more disruptive impact on both the u. S. And Global Economy than connected and Autonomous Vehicles. I often say, pistonpowered vehicles driven by people and built by traditional Car Manufacturers may soon be replaced by interconnected computers on wheels, scheduled and controlled by autonomous algorithms and developed by i. T. Companies. U. S. Car manufacturers will need to look more like i. T. Companies as they already are. , insurance markets, Law Enforcement, hotels, real estate, lawyers, auto repair, and health care will all be affected just to name a few. But while the promise of Av Technology is noteworthy, there are still substantial barriers to its widespread adoption. For one, the Av Technology core relies on what i call the sensor and signal process and chain. And theres still significant work that needs to be done on the edge cases to improve performance. A strong Regulatory Framework is paramount to safety and consumer acceptance. But an overregulated market is likely to stifle innovation and give our global competitors an advantage. To this end, we need a datadriven approach to create policies and legislation thats modeled after successful verification or certification approaches in other industries. This framework must integrate the full spectrum of tested approaches, ranging from digital simulation and hardware in the loop emulation to closed circuit and public open road testing in urban areas. Lastly, there will be a rapid shift in Transportation Technologies towards Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and analytics as a sensor and signal processing chain matures and vehicles interact with the civil infrastructure. Both the Transportation Industry and their regulatory partners will need to prepare for this shift. States such as florida have taken a leadership role in enabling this market. The federal government can have a very constructive role in enabling this Transformative Technology through research funding, through safety consortiums that investigate and provide factual data around av accidents, much like the ntsb role in aviation and through creating quasigovernment organizations much like the department of energy and department of defenses federally funded research and Development Centers and universityaffiliated Research Centers that provide independent, unbiased Technology Expertise to the government. Finally, florida poly is working with its partners to Research Solutions to these challenges. This includes a deep partnership with the florida turnpike, enterprises, world class av test track called sun tracks, and a partnership with the Orlando SmartCity Initiative that provides open road testing in an urban setting. These two test complex combined with floridas advanced Mobility Institute is focusing on addressing many of these vexing challenges. Thank you for your time today. Thank you, dr. Avent. Mr. Clay. Mr. Kentleyklay . Mr. Kentleyklay chairman thune, Ranking Member nelson, senators, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. When i arrived in the u. S. From australia just over three was just azoox dream. It is indeed an honor to be business and respected leaders. I want to share with you the journey of zoox. The safety opportunity offered by Autonomous Mobility and finally the opportunity we have as a country to set the best policy foundation on which to build this technology and get it on the road. My journey with Autonomous Mobility began in 2012. While in melbourne, australia, watching from afar, what google was doing, attempting to drive, develop a selfdriving car. My insight at the time was that such technology is about much more than incremental adaptation to the automobile. This technology correctly understood, is going to transform how we move everyone and everything on this planet. The belief we hold at zoox is that ai and mobility will take us from the age of the automobile into the next mobility age. And we think thats the age of robotics, fully automated transportation. Thus, zoox was founded to ask the question, what is the full realization of autonomy and mobility . Can we imagine that . And if we can, lets not build it in ten years. Lets build it now. At zoox, we have gone to this founding vision to today augmenting cars that work as Autonomous Vehicles, driving in downtown San Francisco. We are driving during the day. We are driving during the night. In heavy rain and fog. We are also driving autonomously on freeways. In short, zoox is driving autonomously a complete set of urban road and weather features as we speak. Beyond this, because we believe the full realization of this technology is not retrofitted cars, we are also creating a vehicle from the ground up without traditional controls thats purpose built for the needs of our cities today and tomorrow. This means shared, on demand, zero emission, safe, and wonderful mobility. This represents a phenomenal effort by a highly Interdisciplinary Team that is fast growing at zoox. Expertise ranges across fields of Artificial Intelligence with over 70 ph. Ds, product design, safety, vehicle engineering. The teams come from organizations such as google, tesla, apple, ferrari, nvidia, nasa and ntsa. Along with academic institutions such as stanford, m. I. T. , oxford, princeton and carnegie , melon university. The very real safety opportunity that Autonomous Mobility will offer drives our work every day at zoox. Autonomous Technology Holds out the promise for a whole new safety paradigm, one that allows us to prevent crashes in the first place. The number of people we lost as a result of car crashes in 2016 went up, despite our best efforts. That number represents nearly 2000 more loved ones lost. In fact car crashes are the , leading cause of death of young people in this nation. This should be unacceptable to us. It is our view that only Autonomous Mobility offers the opportunity to make irrelevant the safety risks associated with driver impairment and error. We should act on that. Finally, these paradigm shifts in both mobility and safety innovation what, then, is the policy opportunity . First, it is important t