Road travel is going to be much safer, or at least there is a promise, when fully autonomous vehicles arrive. You can go much longer without fatigue and with minimum risks. Even local commute would be much safer and less frustrating, probably making the whole world more efficient. But all that is still a while away. Google has been testing its self-driving car for years now and every month there is a report on the project.

During August, the Google vehicles travelled 126,000 miles in autonomous mode, close to what an average human driver drives in 10 years. The number of miles driven have been doubled over the last year to prepare the system with as much learning as possible. They are now being subjected to testing in new areas including dusty desert conditions.

But the most important thing to watch for are the collisions. Minor accidents are inevitable for any vehicle and with more time spent on road, it is more likely. We have been observing the accidents that Google shares in its monthly report and on almost all the occasions, it is the human driver at fault. Over all these years, there have been one or two incidents where the driverless vehicle failed to understand the situation and got involved in an accident. While the incidents involving human errors are just far too many. Even this month, there were two incidents of slow speed crashes, in both the cases the car was rear ended while standing. Another crash in manual mode involved a vehicle that ran a red light.

The Google self-driving vehicles are performing much better than an average driver in the region already. And this while also dealing with the different response the Google vehicles get from other road users. Earlier this year, Google highlighted how people are leapfrogging in front of these vehicles. Another crash that month was because a disoriented driver rear ended a Google vehicle.

These are all minor incidents and it is very likely that many of them would have gone unreported. However, this reinforces the idea all the self-driving car projects begun with. We really need them for a safer, better ground transport in future.

You can find the report for August here.

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No, Google isn’t introducing a cab hailing app, yet. However, Google is planning to introduce a car sharing service. The service is being launched to allow commuters in San Francisco to join carpools, diving into a competitive market. The pilot program was launched in May around its California headquarters to allow workers at specific firms to use Waze, the navigation app, to connect with other commuters.

While on first glance it might not appear like a real competitor to Uber, it is worth mentioning that Uber is betting big on pooling. On top of that, in some markets, personal vehicles being operated as Uber vehicles form a significant supply volume. Waze could pose a threat to the pooling by targeting to minimise the fares, reducing the need to use Uber’s services, thereby discouraging drivers from working as taxi drivers. The pricing goes to a peak of 54 cents for a mile which is lower than most Uber and Lyft rides. Google isn’t taking a cut on this right now.

While Google invested in Uber in 2013, the two brands are competing on many fronts now. Uber has been extensively using Google Maps for a while however, last year the ridesharing company announced a partnership with TomTom to use their map data for driver facing app. The company is also said to be developing its own maps.

Along with this, both the companies are pushing aggressively to develop autonomous vehicles. Google has been testing the cars for few years now however Uber stepped ahead with commercial test of self-driving vehicles by picking up actual rides. This initiative with Waze is another indication of Google’s interest in ground transportation space and maybe a peek into the long term plans.

Source: WSJ

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This has been an exciting year, for the travel industry as well as for us and that means we had plenty of stories to share. Newer brands made as many headlines as the established names and there were many highs and lows.

Looking back at this year, we have created a round-up of our most popular stories to refresh the events just in case you missed them.

#1- Plenty of investments

Many travel startups got a strong start to the year 2015 with heavy investments by both foreign and domestic investors. While the investor activity slowed down near the end of year, there were some newsworthy investments earlier. We compiled an infographic of the funding raised by the popular travel startups in different categories. Read full story.

#2- Twitter lessons from AirAsia India MD & CEO

Mittu Chandilya is the young Indian at the helm of AirAsia in India. While working his plans to make India operations the largest of AirAsia subsidiaries, he also actively engages with the customers on social media to ensure quality of service and customer satisfaction. We spoke with him to learn a thing or two about using social media right for an airline brand. Read full story.

#3- Year of budget stays

Budget hotel startups were the highlight of this year. This segment saw the entry of multiple players trying to revolutionise the way we look at the low cost hotels but at which some of them picked up pace, it was clear that the OTAs won’t be happy. They were gaining the power to leverage volume to their advantage, something that wasn’t seen in the hotel space at this scale until now. Read full story.

#4- OTAs hit back

Like we said, the OTAs didn’t appreciate the idea of letting the budget hotel aggregators feed on them. Before the startups could do serious damage, some major OTAs blocked them cutting one of their major source of bookings. Read full story.

#5- TripAdvisor takes a swing

It is not at all easy for the OTAs. The hoteliers don’t like them even when they drive large share of bookings. Not only the budget hotels but their friend TripAdvisor also entered the same playground. Lower rate of commissions and better visibility were enough incentives for smaller players to skip their name and shake hands with TripAdvisor. Read full story.

#6- Conversation with Winnie Tan, Tripzilla

The Singapore based company started in 2010 and quickly went on to become the favourite of outbound travellers in the region. Along with that they are also a good example to look for on how to use content right to inspire travellers. Recently they also launched a flight metasearch engine which gives the OTAs a pass and offers only direct deals. Read full story.

#7- Stayzilla shifted focus to alternative stays

India based accommodation booking platform Stayzilla took a strong focus on homestays and other alternative stays options this year. With the message of ‘Make room for something new’, they are actively inviting the people to start adopting the fast approaching shared economy trend. Read full story.

#8- Marketing lessons by the industry experts

There is something seriously wrong in following the patterns. There is no one strategy that can fit all brands and the marketers should stop pushing the same buttons. Marketing experts like Taranjeet Singh, Country Business Head, Twitter India and Terrence Voon, Director, Marketing Activation, Singapore Tourism Board shared some strong pointers for promoting a travel brand. Read full story.

#9- British Airways social media blooper

British Airways made lot of news this year, social media campaigns, new Dreamliner place and more. But one social media mistake made the strongest headlines for them. British Airways got strong backlash on social media after they sent a predrafted tweet to cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and stayed for quite a while in the twitter trends. Read full story.

#10- Technologies for the road

Driverless cars, especially the Google ones were also in the headlines every now and then. If and when they come in, the travel industry will see major transformations. While we were waiting for these autonomous cars to arrive, we also listed down some other technologies that are coming to our cars soon. Read full story.

We have got lot of exciting things lined up for the year 2016 and for a start, we have already announced Startup Knockdown Mumbai and there will be more coming soon.

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Love it or hate it, the autonomous cars are coming. While there is a whole community of passionate petrolheads all over, cars still are nothing more than a tool for a large number of people and these people will obviously love the change. These cars will change urban mobility as well as long distance travel. This will have a huge impact on the way we travel and it will go way beyond the automobile industry.

Shelley, the autonomous Audi racecar

(Image: Shelley by Cblue98/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

In an interview with a magazine, an Audi strategist recently suggested that when the autonomous cars go mainstream, we will see a significant drop in use of hotels and domestic flights. Business travellers, who would otherwise book a hotel or early morning flight, will let the car drive them to their destination while they relax. Volvo recently showcased an example of what such a car cabin might look like.

Now we have learned about another development in this space. The Washington Post reported about a new patent Google has applied for. This patent details how the self-driving vehicle would deal with pedestrians. When we drive, eye contact and hand signals play a large role in communicating with the pedestrians but that can’t be the case with autonomous vehicles. That is why Google plans on mounting displays around the vehicle to communicate messages to the pedestrians. This is to make it less defensive to the outside elements.

Not only that, but the patent also includes possibilities of other options like a speaker on the outside that would play alerts out loud. Another interesting possibility is a robotic arm that can communicate through gestures. Details on how it will look aren’t available as the patent doesn’t reveal information about it but we are eager to have a look.

Google and other manufacturers working on autonomous cars are taking every step required to ensure they are as safe as possible. Governments are still trying to work with the regulations and the manufacturers know that any mishaps can result in major setbacks to the project. Google recently released the monthly report which shows some good signs. You can read more about it here.

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Only a while back we talked about how the cars of future will change to make things better for the travellers (Read: 5 car technologies for the traveller of future). Apart from safety features like V2V communications and biometric entry systems, autonomous cars are seen as the major upcoming trend. Many manufacturers are taking up the challenge and are trying to build cars that take the effort out of driving for travellers as well as urban commuters.

Google Lexus RX 450h Autonomous Car

(Image: By Driving_Google_Self-Driving_Car.jpg: Steve Jurvetson derivative work: Mariordo/ CC BY 2.0)

Google has been on the forefront of this and their autonomous cars have already covered thousands of miles on public roads. Recently they released the monthly report for their self driving car for the month of October and there haven’t been any reported crashes. The cars have covered a total of 1,268,108 miles in autonomous mode since the start of project in 2009. For the month of October, the numbers are:

• 23 Lexus RX450h SUVs – currently self-driving on public streets; 19 in Mountain View, CA, 4 in Austin, TX
• 25 prototypes – currently self-driving on public streets; 21 in Mountain View, CA & 4 in Austin, TX

According to them, Halloween has also been of help as the software learned to identify people dressed up in different colours and crazy dresses.

Halloween’s a great time to get some extra learning done. This week, lots of little ghouls, superheroes and even robots were running around Google with their families, so we asked them to hang out around our parked cars. This gives our sensors and software extra practice at recognizing children in all their unique shapes and sizes, even when they’re in odd costumes.

The report really hints at good days for the autonomous cars. Some concerns like keeping driver engaged still remain but they will be ironed out slowly by the time these cars come out for public use. Of course it is highly unlikely that travellers taking roadtrips will even consider driverless cars as an option but they could make for great local cabs or rental vehicles in a new destination.

Tesla has also been rolling out its partially autonomous technology on the Tesla Model S and the internet is full of videos showing how it saved the day. The Tesla Model S received the Autopilot feature via software update a while back and it requires occasional human intervention. Users are reporting that it has been learning with the inputs quickly and adapting accordingly. The data is uploaded to a central fleet learning network so that all the cars can learn. Other major car makers like Nissan and Mercedes Benz will be soon joining the league.

You can find the full report here.

While it all looks good for the autonomous cars, will the speeding tickets be issued to the car or the driver now?

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