♪ >> thanks for watching. announcer: next, a discussion on the future of self driving cars in the united states. automotive and technology leaders joined government officials to talk about efforts to establish a framework for -- a safety framework for autonomous vehicles. at this event, hosted by techfire, in los angeles. this is two hours.

>> good afternoon, everyone. thank you all for coming. my name is david murphy. i am the founder and ceo of techfire. we have done over 30 events over the years, and this is the one i'm most excited about. i think it is tremendous to have such an incredible lineup of speakers joining us from washington, d.c. to everywhere in between. we are so honored to have all of you. we have people who up flown in to attend. we're at the moment now, this moment is equivalent to the horse and buggy and automobile. this is a true revolution and it is going to be coming sooner than any of us realize.

things are going to be changing for the better in ways that affect us and in ways we have not even started to think about. we wanted to bring people together to not only think about the benefits of self driving cars, but also the implications of how we need to think about redoing the urban landscape. rethinking about the economic needs of workers who will be displaced and all of the benefits and problems that come with this incredible revolution that is going to transform our society. we are so excited to have you here, and thank you for coming. i wanted to give you an overview of the day. i wanted to acknowledge the fact that this event would not be

happening without the los angeles mayor. you joining us from outside of los angeles, you may not know what a special mayor this man is. he is someone who has been a bit like obama or bill clinton in l.a. in that he has hired the best staff, a lot of smart people, who are expanding la's horizons in new and interesting ways. without any further ado, let me welcome to the stage jason crockett from the mayor's office of economic development. jason. [applause]

jason: good morning, everyone. i guess it is afternoon now. thank you so much for hosting this event at city hall. for the next round, focused on -- you should , kick it off with your rendition of is change going to come? have the choir behind you. that would be a great start. on behalf of the mayor, it is my pleasure to welcome you to los angeles city hall. the city of los angeles has sought to be at the forefront of transportation. in a city where 70% of the community drive to work, 90 hours of traffic spent sitting in their cars and nearly $3.7 billion in parking costs paid, we are ready to forge a new

path here in the city. one that brings together leaders in the auto industry, tech innovators, planners from the city, and policymakers to solve mobility challenges brought on by population growth and population density spread across our region. just last year, the department of transportation released its mobility plan, making l.a. the first city to actively address policy around self driving vehicles. the future is now. you have a leader among this administration that wants to -- you have a leader, along with this administration that wants to serve as a partner to you, ready to explore the capacity of technological advancement of autonomous vehicles to solve one of the regions most pressing challenges.

thank you to techfire and david for all the hard work you have done to bring this day together. thank you to all of the honored guests, including councilman mike bonin. thank you to you all for joining us today. we are excited to be hosting. thank you, everyone. [applause] >> thank you to everyone with the mayor's office and they have been fantastic to work with. i want to pick on what just i want to pick up on what jason said. big thanks are due to the southern california association of governors.

i was so scared by the numbers put into the report years ago, realizing how things were already quite bad in l.a. scag plays a critical role in supporting this event today and leading us to think big. i would like to invite up a board member. [applause] >> thank you and it is an honor to be here to talk about the future of transportation. i get to represent not only scag but also san bernardino county. it is the largest county in the united states. it is important the government leaders are working hand-in-hand

with tech companies and transportation companies, because you need that infrastructure to be planned, along with the future of what transportation is all about. scag is very honored to be part of that. we want to be your partner going forward, to make sure we, as government, is there. thank you for having me. [applause] david: thank you very much, mr. supervisor. i want to acknowledge our partners as well. mobility 21, they do incredible work. they haven't -- they have had great panelists. events on autonomous vehicles over the years we're

, honored to have them helping out. i want to take a moment before we launch into our lineup. just reflect on this moment, where we are. we have all had our own experiences over the years, on the road, in los angeles or across the world. we sometimes forget what a dangerous thing driving is. driving is something we have to do. we have to put up with it. we humans are not perfect at the wheel. we have come to accept what maybe is not acceptable. when you think about the number of deaths because of highway worldccidents around the is 1.25 million, 2.25% of all deaths globally. "the financial times" had an column suggesting maybe driverless cars we kill off the

greatest killer invention. it is like an airplane falling out of the sky every day. for those of you who flown out here, imagine an airline coming down every day. we would say, this is too dangerous, it is immoral. yet, that is what is happening on the roads. when, very soon, it becomes possible to have self driving cars take away these deaths because they will be much safer than humans. as much as we like to think we are adept, we are not very good drivers at all. maybe someday we will be at the point where it becomes immoral to allow humans to be at the wheel.

maybe it will be like a pilot's license where it is not something everyone has to do. it may be something we look back on mike cigarettes, how did we allow that? it is going to be fascinating to see how society changes. not only through deaths, but all the suffering that is caused through injuries, costs involved in accidents. huge impacts. they're going to be challenges that come with self driving cars. we have already seen incredible political problems in this country because of automation. it will have great impacts to truck driving, taxi driving, even uber will not need drivers anymore. we will not need any more er -- we will not need as many er doctors perhaps, or as many police or firemen. perhaps car dealerships will scale back.

we want have used car salesman or body shops. it is like looking back and saying, sure, we have the horse and carriage industry go away. all these new areas came to fill the market. we have to be sure, as a society, that we take the time to think about how we are going to help each other across the nation, people who lose their jobs and the incredible economic disruption happening across the nation. this is like universal basic income. we tend to not able to have these deep policy discussions right now, but we have to find a way to do that and to realize, this is coming, sooner rather than later. and if we think things will be disrupted, there is a lot on the road ahead.

a lot of things to think about. i don't mean to be too negative. i'm incredibly excited about the benefits autonomous vehicles will bring. not only traffic safety but convenience. warner bros. just announced a partnership with intel. obviously, wouldn't it be great to watch a movie instead of just sitting on the 405? take a nap. our parents or grandparents who aren't able to drive. all sorts of benefits. cost comes down for delivery. new startups that will transform society with services we cannot imagine. it is incredibly exciting. angeles, we make sure we have the self driving car companies come down and test them.

car culture, it is time to make sure los angeles is in the forefront of the revolution. without any further or do, i wanted to introduce someone who is more so than anyone in the world, responsible for driving this revolution. no pun intended. chris urmson was the former director of google's self-driving car project. it is now called waymo. they are already announcing they are hitting the streets of phoenix with the technology. this happened superfast, and some people believe that because of the work that google did, we may see 2 million lives saved because it is happening faster than it otherwise would. it is incredible. it is incredible betterment of humanity. saving 2 million lives by

bringing autonomous vehicles more quickly is changing the world. chris urmson is leading a secretive startup. you will be as excited as us to learn some of those secrets. this is an amazing company, which has engaged not only chris, but also top minds from uber, from tesla, and from others. chris has a great history. we will get into that in our discussion. we're excited to have him down here. without any further ado, let me ask all of you to give a warm welcome to chris urmson. [applause]

chris, thank you so much for being here in l.a. take us back. 10 years ago, you were here for the darpa challenge. tell the audience what that was? how that was the kickoff for the modern self driving revolution. chris: sure. thank you very much. before you start, just make you for the invitation today and to the mayor's office for hosting us, and for the introduction. it is not clear if i will be able to get my head through the door after all that. 10 years ago, even longer, 14 years ago, the defense department announced the first grand challenge. the idea was to drive a car from los angeles to las vegas across the desert without remote control, without a midget hiding inside. the idea was, can we help men

and women that are in harms way driving supply convoys in unpleasant places of the world? it was announced as the grand challenge. it was akin to wennberg crossing the atlantic. no one believed we could do it in a timeframe that was meaningful. we went out for the first challenge. it was about 150 miles. we went about seven miles. the team i was the technical director for got stuck, burst into flames, and that was it. that was after we drove through three fence posts. it was an awesome day. we did drive 40 miles an hour across the desert with nobody on board. while the media said this is a disaster. those who were part of it felt

the same way. the defense department said no, this is a big step forward. come back in a year and see how you do. in 2005, they had the second challenge and five teams met that challenge. we said, this stuff is coming and we can do something meaningful with it someday. david: over the years, across the areas challenges, didn't you have experiences where your car would flip over the night before? chris: i see. you give to the ego and you take away. absolutely. this was one of the tougher parts. we were out and the desert on some of the rough roads and this , was experimental. the first year we were out there, we were trying to get the vehicle to drive 150 miles for the first time. we had it on this oval track, and we did simple math. we said, if we drive 30 miles per hour, it will take five hours. if we drive 50 miles per hour,

it will take three hours. we picked 50 miles an hour, because that seemed better. about two laps in, it hit a soft patch of dirt and rolled over. we work graduates didn't and we got the thing turned the right way up. we entered it into the competition. it is probably part of the reason why it rode through three fence posts before bursting into flames. we did this again a year later. we got smarter in many ways. this time, the vehicle finished a 150 mile loop where we could not chase it with suv's. we had to chase it with humvees because the ground was too rough. it finished the 150 miles. the team that was testing it said it is going so well. why don't we have it drive itself back?

part way through that, it hit a ramp and did a barrel roll. we have come a long way. we haven't parked anything on the roof in a decade or so. at least my team. things are looking good. david: you guys won a million dollar prize as part of that, right? chris: yeah, that second challenge, a team from stanford won. i was at carnegie mellon. they got a giant, million dollar novelty check. a year and a half later, they had a third competition out at victorville at the old airbase. this time, the vehicles had to drive on their side of the road. they had to stop for stop signs. they paid a bunch of stunt drivers to drive cars around to

create traffic vehicles had to interact with. this was exciting. our team did win this. we one $2 million actually. on dollars -- we won $2 million actually. we came first that year. we also got to witness the first robotic car crash. cornell and m.i.t. crashed into each other. it was a historic day all around for self driving cars. david: in that academic environment, did you have any sense that you would be at this point where we're seeing these things, not just in the role of academics,ealm of but something that is about to transform the automotive industry? chris: it is tricky. back then, we did not understand the implications of what this would mean for improving lives and safety on the road. the visceral benefit will happen to folks who do not have to sit

in traffic or who can get from a to b when they could not before -- when they never used to be able to. quickly,appened very but when you started this you do , not understand how hard it is. our aspiration was to do this even more quickly. looking back, that was naive. it turns out, this is a hard problem. it has been incredible to see how the world has changed over the last five years. david: to go from that world of academia to the commercial world, tell us about how you got approached by google and how this got started and maybe how long you are doing things the hind the scenes before the public announcement? chris: i was a professor at carnegie mellon. this was back when google was a just -- was just a search engine and did not have android and the other amazing things the company does.

i was approached and my reaction was, why? you're a search engine, why would you do anything in this space? after spending some time with them and understanding they are an engineering company and they want to solve problems, i joined the company in 2009. we did not talk at all publicly until almost 2011. over that seven and a half years, from 2009 to 2016, we pushed the technology and change the perception of this technology, of when it could happen and what it could mean. now, i am on a new venture with a new company helping the automotive world come to terms with this and advance their ability in this space. david: i am so glad you

mentioned it. tell us about aurora innovation and the solution you will be providing. what secrets can you reveal? [laughter] chris: not sure what secrets. it has been amazing to see the way the automotive industry has started to embrace this. for many years, this was perceived as science-fiction, as something that could not happen. bran was one of the early people to really understand this and to understand why it was important to move forward. over the last five years, it has gone from, that is silly to i think that is interesting to i think that is really important. we should do something about that. the automotive industry is really amazing. there is a lot a popular press about the battle between detroit and silicon valley.

the new eating the old and that kind of a thing. it is just garbage. the magic that goes into actually making an automobile is incredible. the amount of technology and process and engineering required to make that happen is mind-boggling. it requires a very specific type of processes and specific type of commitment to make that happen. that kind of commitment to process is not particularly compatible with software. -- with a new, innovative software. that is where aurora can help. we have an immense amount of respect for what it takes to build an automobile and ship those products. the fact that a thing comes off the line with that many parts, sorry -- basically, once every two minutes and it works for 15 years, i cannot imagine an app from silicon valley doing that. we would like to bring that

innovative, software side of the house that understands how to after these complicated software problems and partner with automotive companies. our company will be providing the software that will work with those vehicles, and they will deliver those vehicles to their customers to realize these benefits of safety and mobility. david: as you think about that culture that is required, it is something where these two cultures are very different. we do see the public conflict talked about. isn't it fair to say that it has been tough for some of these big automakers to attract the engineering talent that you had been able to attract at google and now that people are eager to break down your door and joined the team? -- and join the team?

chris: that comes down to that process you have to have in place. it leads to a certain type of culture that is productive but it is not a culture that lends itself to software talent that we need to have to solve the problem. by building this independent company, we are able to attract this kind of talent. we are able to lead it, guided, compensated in a way that makes it exciting for those people to be there. then, we can marry the best of both worlds. we can marry the genius of automotive industry and the incredible capability we can harness in the tech sector to make this happen. david: i am curious to tell the story of how you came together with sterling and drew. how you guys decided to do this. been leading and you have been cto. how did you come together? what is that story? chris: it is actually pretty exciting and fortuitous.

the company aurora was founded by the three of us through sterling anderson. it turns out drew and i knew each other for 18 years. he spent the last 18 years pushing the state of the art in machine learning and robotics and reinforcement learning. when you think about the core technologies for self driving vehicles, it is that deep understanding of machine learning applied to real world data. sterling anderson went out in the consulting world and he was pulled off to program model x for tesla. they put him back on autopilot.

he has experience of shipping something. it is the closest thing to a self driving vehicle out there in the world today. when i was trying to figure out what to do next, i was not clear when i left google if the right thing was to start a company. their experiences complimented my own so well. it seems like an amazing foundation for a company to build from. since then, we have been able to attract an amazing group of talent that buys into this vision of what this can mean for the world and white is important. david: hopefully, you will be opening an engineering office here on the west side of l.a.. we have a lot of great talent out of caltech. our next speaker heidi king is a caltech graduate, herself. speaking of l.a., here we are in the city famed for its park -- its car culture.

you look outside and you see parking lots everywhere. can you talk a little bit about how self driving cars are going to remake the urban landscape? chris: i think behind the massive safety and mobility benefits for people who might not otherwise be able to get around, that opportunity to reclaim our cities is profound. if you look in a city like los angeles, 30% to 40% of the space is parking space. -- is car space. part of that is roads, but a lot of it is storage for vehicles. today, there are basically three spots for every car your there is your parking spot at home, at work, and at a shopping center. if we can come up with shared mobility systems that are enabled by self driving technology, we can start to reclaim that landscape. we can deploy them as part of smart transportation networks.

we can use light rail, rapid transit buses and feed the last mile with smaller vehicles that are cost effective to operate in both provide better transportation at a lower cost and take those urban eyesores -- parking is important, but anyone who really loves urine-soaked concrete is probably a sick person. if instead we can turn that into park space or residential, commercial space imagine the , social good and the financial implication and the opportunities for our cities to be that much more productive and livable. it is profound. david: california, we're infamous for traffic but also infamous for our housing crunch. silicon valley, san francisco, l.a., unaffordable housing crisis. an opportunity for more housing and more parks and everything else we need.

talk a little bit about what excites you most right now about what is going to change, be transformed, because of this revolution? chris: i am going to dodge a little bit. one of the most exciting things for me is, we kind of grasp that this is important. about think transportation, it is so fundamental to our society. anything you are wearing, eat, or use today was dug up out of the ground and grown. and then it was put on a vehicle. transportation is fundamental to our society. if we can find ways to reduce the cost and improve the safety, it is hard to imagine the implications, how broad the implications will be. if you look at a similar kind of reduction in another space, at

an order of magnitude reduction in the cost of communication, a came through the internet and his notices that boomed. we look at the convenience in our lives, we benefit from that and access to information. think about that happening in the physical world and that gives you an idea about how profound the change will be. -- the change this will be, that we are moving through. was a great podcast you were on recently talking about some of the economic impacts to workers and jobs. you had an eloquent answer you gave her. but any further thinking about how we do navigate the disruption that will occur? it is a very difficult social, societal problem we face. we faced it through globalization. if you take a step back and take a worldview, globalization is

-- has done an amazing things for the global economy and reducing conflict around the world by tying communities together through commerce it has , had a profound impact. but, at the same time, it has left behind pockets of our country and other countries. we are seeing some of that in the politics that are playing out today. i think that is not because globalization is a bad thing. it is because we did not succeed as a society in managing it well. that is where we have to have folks in government and legislation, folks in technology, and others, getting together to think hard about this. how do we manage the introduction? it is easy to talk about the job losses. but if you look at the cost of those losses in terms of lives

it is probably something like 10 , jobs per life lost. that is, in my mind a socially , unacceptable status quo. we need to attack that and think about it broadly. david: i am so glad you mentioned that. thank you, everyone for bearing with us with the av challenges. we're i had perhaps on the other av. thank you all for bearing with us. that safety issue. that is something i don't think we have wrapped our minds around. these numbers, the amounts of death, injuries, are too hard to imagine. our next speaker is going to get into all of that. she is the top person in the nation on that. won't you all join me in giving a very big thank you to chris urmson for joining us? we look forward to hearing you

again here in l.a. thank you. [applause] again, i want to thank heidi king for flying out here from washington, d.c. she is the deputy administrator of nhtsa and has been tasked with leading up this most important of issues, the safety of all of us, on these roads we have in l.a. and across the nation. she has also in her first few months been responsible for that and as acting administrator as well. very busy role. very important role. the role of regulation is crucial for protecting the safety of all of us. it is also something we are hearing folks talk about, it is

so important to have the federal government play a role and coordinate across the country so we do not have conflicting state regulation or laws which make it even more complicated. we are all eager to hear the update about the leadership. we're glad to have you back here in los angeles, where you went to college. won't you all join me in giving a warm welcome to heidi king? [applause] heidi: good afternoon, everyone. it is difficult for me to find words to describe how happy i am to be home in california. i am a native californian. like most californians, i fell in love with cars. and with innovation, both. i could not ask for a bigger honor than to be here. thank you, techfire, for making me welcome to talk about this

ourerful time we have, for love of cars and innovation to come together and unlock opportunity for us. technology, and an opportunity to save lives. theavid mentioned, i am deputy administrator for the national highway traffic safety administration. we're responsible in our mission for saving lives due to traffic collisions. we're responsible for reducing injuries that result from traffic crashes and we're responsible for reducing the economic cost resulting from traffic crashes. automotive crashes took the lives of 37,461 of our friends and neighbors last year. i look this morning at some of the populations of towns in california and it is stunning when we think about the number of people lost in one year to

-- there's something as simple and necessary to all of our lives as transportation. one has to wonder why. as many of you know, studies have shown that about 94% of these traffic collisions result from human error, human mistakes, human bad judgment. things like drinking and drugs and driving distracted , driving, failure to put on seatbelts. human decisions and human factors contributing to 94% of 37,461 deaths last year. the increase in deaths last year from the prior year was historic. the last two years, we saw a larger increase, proportionally, in traffic deaths in the united states than we have seen in my lifetime. i am not young. that is a significant factor.

i am new to the job of deputy administrator at the national highway traffic safety administration with the burden on my shoulders on all of our , shoulders, to address the increase in traffic fatalities safely technology that can help us unlock economic opportunity and help us reduce the deaths, to bring mobility to more people, to bring back more useful time in our day. i don't know about you i think , all of us hate 405 southbound on a friday afternoon trying to get home. or to the beach on the weekend. the national highway traffic safety administration has begun the journey through a series of guidance. this past september, nhtsa published a vision for safety. it is a voluntary guidance that asks that manufacturers provide

a voluntary safety self assessment. it helps individuals, policies, each of us, policymakers, their neighbors in manufacturing to , address 12 safety design features, including cyber security, human machine interface, host crash ads behavior. and a number of other factors. it has guidance and best practices for state and local governments. it is a voluntary guidance. thathey ask from nhtsa individuals involved in the manufacture and preparation of automated driving systems for our roads begin to prepare these assessments and make them available for all of us to understand this journey together. the technology is changing rapidly. communication with one another is a key part of understanding the risk -- both the risks that

we are going to be reduce scale -- reducing with the new technology, but the risks that may emerge. we won't know them until we see them. as david mentioned, this is a regulatory agency. so why voluntary guidance? the answer is simple. we all have thought quite a bit about analogs and technology development, all of us having the blessing of watching the internet grow and emerge and become a big heart of our lives. as for myself, i think back to 2000-2001. i was employed as a research scientist. it was part of the old bell labs. this was the software component. fairly smart people, used to dealing with emerging technology. in those days, you and i, if we had a mobile phone, it was a cellular technology in a flip phone. if you wanted to text someone, you had to push the button three

times to get the number to enter. you did not have much on the way of internet access on your phone. we looked at the emerging technology in wireless and we saw that 3g, 4g technology was right around the corner and thought, what would our mobile phones become in a world where we had such great broadband wireless technology? we imagined cameras at our front door, so if i were at my door and could get an internet signal on my phone and know somebody was there, i could look at the camera and see who was there. maybe there would be an apple where i could unlock the door and let someone in because i had a appointment and was at work and busy. we imagined, and i thought it was a silly idea, we could order food take-out food. ,i thought, why would anyone do that? you could just call a restaurant why would i need an app for , that? we imagined there would be refrigerators with a camera

inside. you could look and see, do i have something deed for dinner, before you drive home. all of these things are things that you and i either have in our homes now, or could have. they are products that have come to market. they are products i take for granted. there was a lot that we missed, in talking about what technology could bring to us. i don't recall any of us understanding the enormous explosion in online commerce we would see, the fact that much of our shopping would happen on our phones. we did not anticipate the impact of the social and otherwise associated with being able to text and communicate in real-time with friends in other and neighbors in other languages around the world, instantaneous. to be able to get a text from europe or asia, photographs from my brother in hong kong. we did not anticipate crowdfunding, many of the things we take for granted now, the fact our phone is very much a

part of our person. i don't carry a wallet anymore, i carry a phone and a credit card. with that experience, that being my own experience i know each of , you has your own experience with changing technology. how it has affected your lives. what do i take away? i take that i have learned that consumer adoption matters. as i mentioned, we were thinking about refrigerators with cameras inside and the apps they could order dinner. it is the apps where you could order dinner that mattered because we come home tired from work. i know we are to see refrigerators with cameras. they are on the market now, but have not taken off. consumer adoption matters. consumers attest roddick's, they see ways for it to work in their lives that sometimes we do not anticipate.

i also learned that perfect foresight is unlikely. we need to be flexible and adapt. although we plan and dream, especially those of us in the engineering community, what would be great and cool -- there may be others who are not engineers who might find creative uses or social benefits that we do not yet imagine. it is important to be flexible and to be adaptable and to not anticipate that our own forecast of where the technology will go are the only answer or the right answer. at nhtsa, in issuing the voluntary guidance, we are trying to address those points, by asking for voluntary safety self assessments. we're seeking to create a community in the united states that offers transparency in developing technology, that allows for consumers to explore and learn how safety is designed into autonomous vehicles technology how it is a part of , our thinking. we would like to open a dialogue

between policymakers, at state, federal and local level, the communities that may have varying degrees of enthusiasm adopting the technology. consumers, manufacturers sharing best practices. a voluntary guidance system, voluntary self-disclosure, one step in opening this is dialogue as we step forward on this tremendous journey. as for foresight, guidance is a flexible approach. it allows us to evolve our policies and how we think about the risks and adapt to the risks in step with technology. step by step, we will identify emerging technology and its opportunities. step-by-step through the information we disclose and share with one another we can foresee and anticipate risk before they emerge, find new ways to mitigate the risk, and see the technology deployed safely. to see it developing safely.

it allows us to learn from one another, in a coordinated approach, by fostering a dialogue. david and chris mentioned some of the promise of developing technologies. we're all excited not to have to sit in traffic on 405. or the beltway, where i now live in washington, d.c. we have all been very happy to think about the access that a.d.s. technology would offer to the elderly and those who have been underserved, particularly in communities in the west, where neighborhoods were designed and built after the invention of the automobile. some areas of the country are not as walkable as others. the opportunity for people who have impairments that prevent them from driving normally or at certain times of day, to lead lives that allow them to spend more time with loved ones, to work, to play, to be as mobile as anyone else.

the economic benefits, the time regained. i will touch for a moment on the environmental benefits. again, it is a long ways off. but imagine a world in which cars do not crash into one another. not only are we saving lives, reducing injuries and economic cost but imagine the fuel , efficiency gains if the cars do not have to be these big, 8000 pounds chunks of metal. cars they do not crash into each other do not have to be that strong. we can improve fuel efficiency. we can reduce emissions into the environment. the benefits are stunning and well worth investing in. while we walk this journey towards safety and emerging --hnology in an evolving and in an evolving way, nhtsa remains on duty. we're asking for the voluntary self assessments. we do still have the traditional

authority in place. nhtsa is still on duty, we assure safety in the united states. at the same time, we're working on the next round of guidance. we are already writing our guidance 3.0. we received comments on this guidance and we are reading those comments now, taking them into account, and preparing the next step in the dialogue, assuring a path that is safe but still allows the technology to develop in ways we probably do not even understand yet today. what is happening? at nhtsa we are implementing a vision for safety. we encourage folks to work on their voluntary safety self assessment. the first one was submitted by waymo. we very much appreciated to see the first one out of the gate. we look forward to seeing more as manufacturers, developers,

work on their voluntary safety self assessments, we stand ready to offer advice or guidance. although the public comment period is closed, we look -- comments are still welcome. it is a journey, it is exciting, worth it. frankly, it is fun. hearing yourrd to comments and other comments either at public meetings or in writing or call us. meanwhile, you and i will be working together, dreaming about the future before us, a future in which we do not have to talk 7,461 deaths in the year for people just trying to get to work, see their friends, get to the doctor's office. the promise of safety, the promise of economic gains, makes this exciting future well worth the time and work ahead of us. and the disruption david describes, i look for to working

with all of you, hearing from all of you, and the exciting years we have before us. i could not be more pleased to have the honor to be in front of you today and to be at nhtsa at this very exciting time. thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much. we're so grateful to have someone at the wheel on this important issue. we have heard today from the top private sector leader in self driving cars. next we will hear from the man who i think is the leading visionary on transportation issues in america's a city, los angeles. it is councilman mike bonin. he has taken to heart this vision of safety for all of us

on the roads and has a vision for zero deaths and injuries. importantthat is so and something in a region where we are so famous for our car culture. i have had a couple of cases, where i was biking, and i was hit by cars. i know our former mayor himself was hit when he was biking on the mean streets of l.a. here in l.a., we have had a tough record sometimes. councilman bonin, i admire you much, foradership so leading us toward a safer tomorrow. , you with your leadership are an important member of the city of los angeles city council transportation. you have led us into having the mass transit system, which the region deserves. as well as improvements on our

roads, highways, and everything else. i just want to say, we are so lucky to have such a visionary mayor and his team and thanks to the deputy mayor and his team. just fantastic. when you have someone who makes it their mantra, to represent us constituent,d as a and so many tech companies are in his district, when you have someone who has become the leading expert and visionary in leading l.a. on transportation issues, we often don't see enough experts leading the way. won't you join me in giving him a warm welcome to the podium? [applause] mike: thank you, david.

good afternoon, everybody. welcome to los angeles. before you leave, please step outside and get the 360 degree view of this amazing city. thank you for being here for this conversation. thank you for the introduction as a visionary. i have bad visions and good visions. this is a subject on which i have worked. as a local elected official here in the city of los angeles i represent -- and i look at the decisions we make from a granular and very human level. as we deal with the local level with the promise and the potential of autonomous vehicles -- i look at it, from the perspective of not so much , technology, but people and places. as we wrestle with the policy questions and regulations that

must come, we ask ourselves a number of different questions. what is this going to mean for our streets? and for our neighborhoods and families? what is this going to do and mean for our gathering places and environment, and our national -- natural environment? how we answer those questions and the decisions we make from those answers and how we implement what we decide will really make the difference theeen whether or not promise of autonomous vehicle's are realized, or the peril of autonomous vehicles are realized. there is genuinely both. it depends on whether we have this technology work for us or we adapt to this technology. we have done technology and transportation wrong in the past. and this car culture city is a

glaring example of that. when the great revolution of the internal combustion engine came about, we decimated some of our communities in order to accommodate the automobile. we destroyed many of our public gathering places to make room for four lanes of traffic which were in previously quiet neighborhoods. we built an interstate freeway system which literally ripped some cities apart and displaced people. it contributed to the phenomenon of urban sprawl which has caused , so many environmental problems in this country. that is because we let cars dictate what we were going to do. as we wrestle with autonomous vehicles, and they are coming we , need to make sure what we do have is have them working for us

us redoing everything we do, the way we live, communicate, interact with each other based on the service of that technology. at the local level, there are four questions that we ask ourselves. the first is, will self driving cars solve our problems? the answer is, some of them, yes. some of them, no. it will also create additional problems we cannot anticipate. we all hope that autonomous vehicles will help us get out of gridlock. we're fairly certain that autonomous vehicles will help us be liberated from the frustration of being in gridlock. we can watch a whole season of game of thrones during a long commute to work someday in an autonomous vehicle. we are not absolutely certain yet about what the impact will be on gridlock. the rosy scenario is, because we are not getting into accidents,

the cars are self-regulating, they can drive closer together, everything will flow much more smoothly. that is the rosy scenario we also desperately dream for in los angeles. we also have to worry about the potential for induced demand. are more and more people going to be adding more and more vehicles to our freeways and streets? will people no longer have the disincentive to drive because they don't have to deal with the frustration of driving? will that add to more sprawl in los angeles? we have the predicted benefit of giving access to seniors and disabled. we have the predicted impact which i certainly hope comes true that we will have much less of a need for parking. but if we have everybody taking their own vehicle and not using it as a service, but as a possession, do they go to the local market and say, you are a

robot car, please keep circling around while i am in here? which brings us to the second question. are autonomous vehicles going to be a possession or a service? is it going to be something where everybody will have their own vehicle? i represent wealthy parts of los angeles. are people going to have several vehicles, the party autonomous vehicle, the office autonomous vehicle? or are people going to share these collectively? if the majority of them become possessions we will have more , problems than we have now. but if we can adapt the technology to use for us and have it implemented in a way that chris was speculating and hypothesizing and having them be a service and something that is shared use, it will help us solve a lot of our problems. it will give us that opportunity to free up the parking space.

to create affordable housing. to create micro-businesses or neighborhood serving retail. to create more open space, more places where we can gather like , they do in latin america where every three feet people are gathering together in this wonderful communal place. that is what our parking could be. here in los angeles county we have 200 square miles of parking. 200 square miles. if we use shared use mobility as a service, that stuff that can be repurposed. if we also use autonomous vehicles and this technology to provide a service in a shared use way we have the ability to , help address one of the most pressing problems we have here in los angeles. that is the incredible inequity between neighborhoods and between subgroups of los angeles and income. i serve on the metro board. most of the people who use the

metro system, 2/3 of them live in poverty. they cannot afford a vehicle. but if they have access to shared use mobile -- mobility autonomous vehicles that are , shared use their lives can , change. right now you can get to 12 times as many jobs by an individual car, then you can buy -- by mass transit in los angeles. shared use mobility if automated can help us address that. it also gives us the opportunity to shift how we think about the cities we live in and the roads we drive on. right now everything is geared toward the driver. we have signage on the sides of our streets indicating how people should go when they go. that is relevant to the driver, not to the passenger. everything is set up from the mentality of the driver. the speed of the road, everything.

if we begin to think of things from the perspective of the passenger or the nearby pedestrian or the nearby cyclist, then we have a different and holistic way of looking at what happens in cities. another big question for us is who pays? , who will pay for the implementation of this technology? if this is done right, and the vehicles are sharing the data with cities and vice versa, there will have to be a significant investment in technology. we will have to do a lot more than we are doing out. that is something that will have all sorts of untold benefits from all aspects of society but it is an investment we need to make. our roads and design differently and we have to reconfigure them and address who will be paying for those changes as well. a not inconsiderable thing for cities like los angeles is, if the rosy scenario comes true and

we eliminate tons of parking, and we do hope that happens, we will have a deep hole in our budget. cities rely on parking revenue. either from private tickets, people paying at meters, we get a lot of revenue also from moving violations. that will be a big hole in our city budgets and how we're going -- how are we going to deal with that? one of the things we may wind up doing, if we have a proliferation of vehicles as a result of autonomous vehicles and some are shared use mobility and some are people having their own possessions, this may be the kind of thing that in los angeles puts us in the tipping point of congestion pricing. we are allowing vehicles with lots of people into the central core and maybe telling people who are driving with single occupancy, they have to pay extra if you want to come in there.

the other question we have to wrestle with is who makes the , rules? i was very encouraged to hear the focus on safety from heidi. it is so vitally important. we have an epidemic of death in los angeles, leading cause of death for children under the age of 14 in los angeles county are traffic fatalities. the people who tend to get killed are seniors, kids, disabled. people from lower income communities and immigrants. this is a huge opportunity to address the problem. if local governments are denied the ability to make their own rules and govern the use of autonomous vehicles, we are going to have a lot of problems. we are the ones who send fire department officials, paramedics, police officers out to respond to crashes. we are the ones that have to design the roads. we are the ones that do planning and land use around streets that will make mobility succeed or

fail. we need to have a role in the rules. david seemed eager for not having a different collection of rules from municipality to municipality. but there is a real value in us having that, as this technology rolls out. the title of this is the self driving car revolution. after a revolution you need a , constitution. some revolutions work out well. ours worked out well for 240 years until about one year ago. [laughter] no offense. [laughter] the french revolution did not work out so well. the russian revolution did not work out so well. we have to be very careful about how we implement things. our needs here in los angeles are very different than fresno or topeka or new york or boston. historically the rules for

regulation of transportation and automobiles have really had much more of a prism and mindset to them for suburban communities than for urban communities. los angeles is a place on the cusp of a transportation transformation. we are really trying to prepare ourselves for the new world of autonomous vehicles. and for a multimodal type of city. right now what we have in los angeles, i imagine almost everyone in this room is an advocate of net neutrality. we want every service provider, every service to be able to have equal access to the internet and for us to have equal access at an equal speed. what we have done in los angeles is, we have designed a system that we do not have mobility neutrality in los angeles. we have one service provider we exalt above all others. the automobile.

if we do not approach autonomous vehicles as if these added to a multimodal future, and we continue to use it as an opportunity to exalt the single occupancy vehicle, we will continue down a road that will lead us to more induced demand and inevitable gridlock. autonomous vehicles are a key to getting us out of gridlock. we absolutely have to do it right. the way in los angeles we hope to do it and we are trying to do it, we are investing in a system that relies on connectivity. we and the automobiles will communicate with each other. we will get crash data from them and they will get traffic data from us and we will share information back and forth. we are banking on this being a shared use opportunity. this is value added to mobility systems by getting people to not

be in single occupancy vehicles. we are desperately hoping to be an electric system so we can reduce emissions here in los angeles even further. those are three underpinnings of what we are trying to do, connect, share, electric. in order to facilitate that we , have approved our vision zero document to eliminate fatalities. we have approved our mobility plan and our urban mobility l.a. plan, which sets us up to prepare for this and to prepare for shared use of all types of mobility. mobilityla.com.an we have a bike share that we have launched we have launched , the first in the nation, shared electric vehicle car sharer that is being targeted specifically for piloting in low income communities to help us address equity.

it is going to be a big challenge here in los angeles. it will be a contest for us between cultures. not a pat buchanan war, but a war between the car culture and the innovation culture. if we continue to worship single occupancy vehicles, we are screwed. if we allow our innovative spirit to be unleashed and we allow that to lead us into a connected, shared use mobility system we will be much better , off. i'm banking on innovation winning in los angeles. thank you everyone for being here. [applause] david: didn't i tell you he was a visionary? thank you. we are lucky to have someone steering us and thinking about these issues. it is important when you have the right people leading the way that you have the regulatory or lawmaking power. we want to make sure interests are looked out for and this is

not something we are doing just for the sake of corporate profits or anything. this is something ultimately for all of us to trust our government to regulate the way ahead to safety. thank you to councilman mike bonin for putting these into action. through laws here locally. or on the federal level. clearly we need safety considerations and everything else to be in place. i want to take a moment to go back to northern california for with randyeaker, iwasaki, from the contra costa transportation authority. they are one of 10 federally designated proving grounds for autonomous vehicles in the nation. usdot designated them.

and their facility has been used by quite a few of the major automakers already read they also have some other interesting projects in the works. rather than me telling you about them i will let him come up here , and share slides with you on the screen. i want you to give him a very warm welcome, randy. [applause] randy: i am savoring the moment. i don't get invited to l.a. very often. thank you for the invite, david. i am from northern california, i used to work for caltrans for 27 years. and now i've worked for the contra costa transportation authority for almost eight years now. i wanted to give you an overview of what we are doing to try to innovate mobility or redefine mobility in contra costa county. wherever i go in the world, i promised our board i would tell you about who we are and what we do. we're a sales tax authority we , manage a multibillion-dollar suite of products and programs with a staff of 20.

when people ask quite often, why do you have a test? we're a congestion management agency bite law. we measure congestion at 140 different intersections because we want to make sure our investments are paying dividends. i will talk to you a little bit about the planning process, as well. there we are, northern california, we are one of nine bay area counties. we are one of 24 counties that uses the sales tax to fund transportation. of 1.9 million people, we're the 43rd largest in the union behind rhode island. , we have a diverse population. these are some of the things we do. so when the board asks you, that is what we do. on construction, we manage the planning, environmental clearance and design and the construction on the state highway system and interstate system in contra costa county. we also fund a number of different initiatives in cost

-- in contra costa county. we have a bus pass program for underprivileged kids. we fund bus passes for kids, they can get a free lunch along highway we fund local streets 84. and roads, potholes, our constituents don't like potholes. i will talk to you a little bit about our polling process. we fund bart. we want kids to get to school. we want them to bicycle to school, walk to school. we have a suite of different strategies. it is not just build, build, build. we are trying to manage our way out of congestion. not build our way out of congestion. we are aa plus on wall street so we sell taxes and municipal bonds on wall street to accelerate our construction program. we delivered 25 years of construction in 10 years. we don't gain any benefits -- you don't get any benefits from us talking, you gain benefits when we build the project or

fund the service. we are also a very lean organization. we are capped at 1% for our overhead. our last bond sale, $100 2.71%., pretty good interest rates out there. as was mentioned before, we have a very innovative mayor. he coined the term city leveraging technology to reduce 3.0, the cost of services provided to citizens. that is what the l.a. mantra was, hopefully still is. what we did is we went back and want to remind voters why transportation is important. cities were formed around ports, river ports, ocean ports. why? goods, people. it is important to remind the voters about the things we maintain and operate.

we are going to build and interstate system that will be a defense tool to open up the midwest. of the united states grew leaps and bounds in those days. it was a fantastic era for highway building in the united states. johnson,cetti, mayor city 3.0, a connected city, they are excited about this. we said in contra costa county, if we could place a subscription-based transportation system within that community, we would get city 5.0. the reason we skipped 4.0? i love hawaii 5.0. [laughter] randy: it sounds really good, right? technology is coming our way and has a lot of promise. lower late fees, less dropped calls widespread connectivity. , we are excited about 5g. we are excited about dedicated short-range communication, 5.9 gigahertz for safety measures.

there have been political issues in washington, d.c. on that, but we're still pushing that, hopefully with 5g technology. i want to add that for the deputy administrator's perspective. imagine a day when your city provides you, your communication system provides you with better , information to make better decision. that is what we want to do in contra costa county. these are the schematics. instead of southern california edison driving around -- smart buildings, hvac systems will go out. smart mobility. why autonomous vehicles? over and over, safer roads less , congestion. 50% of the congestion in california is not recurrent. meaning, there are special events -- whether, the first rain, a lot of accidents.

a big cause of congestion is accidents. the system will get more efficient if cars refused to crash. air quality was mentioned. i have a slide on increased accessibility. we are focused on that. that was mentioned before we throw that in. it has to be true. you are all safe drivers so i appreciate that. the highest percentage increase in the fatality rate, if memory serves me is bicycles and , pedestrians. forre asking people to walk their health and bicycle for their health and yet the , fatality rate is going up. we need to do something about that. we need to protect the vehicles, but protect the bicyclists and pedestrians. a study was done by the texas transportation institute. they studied an autonomous vehicle carrying four passengers self-driving versus a single , occupancy vehicle taking three

trips a day. the study shows it gets rid of 9.4 vehicles. you will get less congestion. if the regulatory environment is correct, you will get less congestion and better air quality. we are bullish on that. i have a comment on that. there was a study done, it showed that if you don't have accessibility to mobility, your outlook for economic vitality is not too good. we are trying to get to the underserved with this technology. as mentioned before the , handicapped, old people like me that can't walk as far as fast anymore. we're changing the way we plan the future. if you think in terms of your long-range transportation plans, generate 30 year plans, 25 year plans. if you model the future and look at 29% population growth, you have a problem. what we have done is broken our county into four subregions. deputy director is here, she

has done a great job. we gather the way information. when we have a public hearing here, you get 20 people, 10 consultants and 10 people angry at you. you don't get a lot of good information. this cycle she did she used , social media. she used facebook, websites, she gave you an allocation of contra costa and you got to choose. we went out to a telephone town hall. normally a telephone town hall is i will run for governor , -- governor. i'm not but let's say i was. i would call one million people. this is my message, please vote for me on november 2. we inverted that. we robocalled 15,000 people in the subregions of our county and we asked them to tune in and call in on a friday evening at 5:00 and we will answer questions live. through that process we got more comments in this one cycle than

the previous 25 years combined. we did polling questions. we knew this already but voters don't like red lights or potholes. b.a.r.t.t a better the fourth thing was interesting. we want to use transit, but we can't get there. the last mile issue. we think we have a solution. i will not give you the number we used. we are increasing the standard. by 2040, your roadways will be more efficient. you want to make sure you are investing your dollars correctly. that is what we are trying to do, changing the way we model the future on capacity. how many of you took the day off on columbus day? three of us get the day off. a small percentage of they do

not go to work the same day you do. columbus day. we're also modeling greenhouse gas reduction. in contra costa county, by the year 2040, 58% turnover to get to the 80% reduction by 2050. we also need a slight reduction per capita of 15% to read what are we doing about that? a 58% fleet of zero emissions vehicles. a master plan, a grid of electrical vehicle charging stations. otherwise, no matter how many electric cars we have, there won't be enough infrastructure to support it. are just questions, i do not know. ,magine trucks on the outside now you have three eighths. you just increased capacity on your roadways because cars will stay centered. we are trying to use the offside shoulder for buses to keep those

buses on schedule in contra costa county to make them more reliable, more lovable for commuters so they are on time. we also worry about bicycles and pedestrians. safer.aking sure it is five years ago, one of our board wrote assembly bill 1592. she also wrote the uber insurance bill. she said randy, you need to go and figure out a way to create smart jobs. i took a ride to the naval station, 5000 acres. it is about 1/5 the size of san francisco. this facility is about seven

miles by 1.5 miles wide. we have a permit from the u.s. navy. it opened for business renovation. what you see in the bottom part. let's see if i can do this. that is bunker city. you have 1.2 mile long roads bisected with roads, four-way stops, lights, intersections. hondas are testing there. they are running a circuit about a temporary signal. there is a mini city with buildings, trees, fire hydrants. perfect place for testing. the reason why we created it? smart jobs. we wanted to bring a few of the smart jobs from silicon valley to contra costa county. your system will get more efficient.

safety is our top priority and a healthy environment those were , mentioned before. namingou to the usdot san diego here -- our archenemy. [laughter] randy: we have agreements with other countries. we just signed a four country agreement to look at shared autonomous vehicles. those countries are singapore, australia, new zealand, contra costa. that was a joke. [laughter] what sets that apart is the pavement is old. if you want to test your vehicles, sensors sometimes get fooled because weeds are coming up to the pavement. we have to mold the testbed. the striking is not that good. american roadways, the condition is not that good.

do you want to test on new pavement or old pavement? the contracts can be brought up to standard easily but it is difficult for a contractor to build a road like this. we don't have any tunnels -- that is not true. we have two 1400 foot long tunnels under state route 4. there steel arch tunnels. but you lose sensors. under crossing, no guardrail, that is not standard. you might have that somewhere where you drive your vehicle the , striping is worn out. skid testing, smart parking. you won't have to open the doors in the future so parking will be more efficient. skid testing -- it does not snow in walnut creek or concorde. we have to go norway or michigan to test snow. because i understand it snows 10 months out of the year in michigan. so we are good there. these are our testing partners, we have aaa, aaa northern california. we love southern california as well.

we love you guys, just want to say that. mile. amber, mobility as a service. we will roll out 50 electric cars guaranteed on demand , services. we are about 30,000 truck driver shorter per year. uber freight is trusting. baidu and toyota research will test their ai as well. this is the shared a taunus vehicle project. thank you to nhtsa for giving us a waiver. we are little heavy, but we are under the 2500 production units to average over two years at a speed of 35 miles per hour. this is the vehicle we are testing a mission branch. we are working with the dmv to operate on public streets. they are worried about parking and connectivity. stantec is our strategic consultant, city of concorde is

our partner. ranch, that is where we are testing. we have cities open for business. come to test your technologies. we do have a redefining mobility summit. chris will come and speak. i am asking you now, it will be in san ramon. thank you very much for your kind attention. [applause] >> well, thank you very much. for startups in a late that need a spot to test yourself driving vehicles, we have a good spot in mind and there are companies in southern california that are attending. julie's company was acquired by

gm. southern california is already a part of this scene. we may not have our own testing ground quite yet, so we know where to go when we are ready. i would like to take a moment now to have us step back. we have gone to the granular here. we have explored different aspects from how this revolution has been done technologically and what the regulatory and safety considerations are, but the city level impacts and what the testing process and transportation policy implications are. i want to step back and think really big picture. how is this revolution going to transform society for the better? what are the problems we haven't talked about yet as well? who here, like me, has already watched the ted talk?

people have.ion i think it is a response that people are waking up automakers several years ago and how this revolution is coming. today we are extremely lucky to have him joining us. he actually spoke in our talk -- in our burbank tech talk series. and he's one of our favorite speakers that we've ever had. he is the former president of the r&d to his work now advising clients and companies from general motors to probably ones that he can talk about. he's been on the advisory boards for national security agency and u.s. strategic command and just about every other agency out there as well. fast company named him one of the 100 most creative people in business. we are so lucky to have him be a part of the business community here in southern california, bringing his insights to bear

all across the world. today he's giving his insights to all of us. , pleaseany further ado >> it is a pleasure to be here to terrorize you today. [laughter] it's a little like deja vu evangelizing about this stuff. i remember my first job in this town 25 years ago or so, in the late 1990's, trying to get executives at companies that i was at such as disney in the community to take seriously this thing called the internet , because believe it or not, it might have some value to the entertainment industry. [laughter] i can only suffice to say that it was a little like imagining yourself at kitty hawk on a cold

december day, trying to give -- convince the right brothers that frequent flyer miles was the secret to their industry. [laughter] their focus was getting a tomato soup camp to function as a carburetor. that is where this notion -- and i say notion, because it will be an industry and it is not an industry yet -- is now. it is changing. as chris pointed out, executives are going from "don't care, not in my career lifetime," which is generally the way executives look often at things, especially in public companies, to "looks like something is happening and will need to incorporate this at some point, and where are we going to get the talent to do it?" it's an interesting challenge because this is the first fundamental change in the automobile in 100 years.

it affects everything, especially because our cities are designed for automobiles. our lives are designed for automobiles. our work habits are designed for them. many of the speakers have talked about this, but it's traditionally lonely to get people to be serious about things which they think are far enough in the future that it doesn't affect their lives. i would like to talk about that. quality of life what's the good , news and what's the bad news? i think it interesting transition for the automotive companies is the heart and soul of automobiles for 100 years has been the driveline. it has been the engine and how you get power through the driveline's down to the wheels, down to the road, then performance and how the car handles it. manyember once, of the i commits internationally, i was in germany and talking to them

about how i wanted to put the electric power plant in an eight wheel vehicle for special application. you could see the look on the face pointing out that one of the early employers was rudolph diesel, and they invented the diesel engine and they're not interested in continuing the conversation. you are sort of the product of are you tend to hiring a , company that agrees with you because the others are annoying. all those companies end up being a product of thinking the same. the future of the automotive industry and i know a lot of friends talked a number years ago is software and not drive train. they are completely unprepared for that. the software in your vehicle is the most complex part of your machine. it has the most moving parts. it is the hardest to test. it is the hardest to find talent to develop in the hardest to integrate in a way that doesn't make you crazy at the same time it's trying to keep you alive.

think we have to think carefully about what we are trying for in cars. to fast -- i don't think the future of cars is about multiple people. i think that's a feature of cars. it's not a black and white future. personal empowerment has always been a portion of what cars are , and the fact that you just want to get from one place to the other without having a bunch of people with you. there's going to be a driver in the future just as it was in the past. we have to accommodate that. we cannot take a monochromatic view of the future. those of you who have had a particularly unpleasant experience of taking the car keys from one of your aging parents understands the feeling of disempowerment that creates, let alone disability getting older. i think we don't think often about, well, it's nice you can watch a movie in a car and so forth. the fact that you cannot waste

minutes, hours, days of your life that you are never getting back, that's not an insignificant factor. as a kid, you don't think about that. about 15 minutes before you drop dead, it takes on a whole new meaning. [laughter] we've built technologies and institutions like hospitals that give you that in exchange for money. that's what hospitals do. they give you more time. and as we think about this, we have to think about it not just about a single driver but at a system level about societies and cities and how they work and function. it's nice to say that electric vehicles are zero emission. this is nonsense. they are remote emission vehicles. the same energy has to be put into it. the electricity is just a way of storing energy just as hydrocarbon fuels are a way of storing energy. some how, you have to make it. whether you're making it with nukes or solar, what is it take

you to make the solar cells? did you make them with solar energy? the answer is no. the stuff is complicated. when we look for easy solutions for complex problems, we seldom end up in a good place. face illenge that we think is significant, because this is really important stuff. getting the whole self driving thing more right than not -- and self driving is a terrible name. it's not just about self driving. i happen to like driving and i think it's fun to drive, but i don't think it's fun to sit in traffic. and i'm perfectly happy to have xt, thankwhile i te you very much. part of the challenge is having flexibility in empowering people's lives and understanding that cars are not just about basic transportation. they are about passion. they are about self-image. they are about empowerment. if you ignore those things, you are going to have a hard problem

here because that's the way the community is feeling. -- the communities view them. many young kids, millennials , don't feel that way. they think it's about transportation, which is why big automakers are thinking about transportation services as one part of their future or perhaps their entire future. i look at the idea that if cars can't crash, that doesn't mean they can't be crashed into. the idea of this nirvana that cars will never crash is nonsense. but if they crash in order of magnitude less, that's really important and within our grasp to think about achieving. on one level, that says i can make the car later so it is more energy efficient. i can maybe have a car drive at 90 miles per hour with 10 feet in front, and one driving behind. getting the intensity up on the roads.

think, we won't fill all the garages. now we need to design garages. we need to design autonomous parking garages that have four inches between the vehicles and pack themselves solid, so you can get six times the number of cars in the same spot. there is no simple way of looking at complex systems that's meaningful as a roadmap. all we can do is the best we can we really wait until ask ourselves all the questions and move forward. we are in a feeding frenzy at the moment where everybody is interested in moving forward so quickly, but they're not necessarily asking the right questions. this includes cities. that's life. that's the way it's going to be. the good news is the technologies will be extraordinary in how they impact things. we start by talking about need . the needs of society and

transportation. what about desire? our lives are not just based on need but on desire. i remember a kid i went to m.i.t. with. we were having a conversation, we were kids but he was thinking , about having a family and got married. we were talking about what car he was going to buy. he said, well, we're probably going to have kids and this is when minivans just started out. the fuel economy is important. he took all those things together and left to his own devices, which he was, he bought a porsche, a perfect family car. [laughter] that's because desire usually wins. why does one spent $1000 for a cell phone when one for free will do what you need? because you desire it. desire has always been a part of civilization and it will continue to be so. by the way, this revolution has been powered by it, too.

if you do not have to design safe, survivable objects, then decorate them to look ok, which is how we design cars now, and we can go back to designing beautiful cars because they can be impervious. all the plastic cars we look at the say, why don't they make them anymore? because we don't know how to make them safe. all of a sudden now we do. when we are thinking about this, it is a multidimensional space. the empowerment of autonomy is not just going to be about saving lives, which is critically important. at the same time, let's have some societal context. in the same year we lose 37,000, car00, 50,000 lives from accidents, we lose hundreds of thousands from smoking. atpoint is we have to look society and technology at a

systems level. these things are all interconnected. you can't solve the problem for one narrow element. the fact is you can, but you'll get a less desirable result. if you look at some of the great accomplishments of these -- this country, for example, it has been in system engineering and design. it is what got us to the moon. it's what dana holding just things. bunchs what did a whole of things. the future of intelligent cities is looking at them as a system cars are aiving subsystem as part of it. you do not have to put all sensors in the vehicles because the sensors will be shared across a whole variety of systems and services as will be communications. is this a perfect nirvana moving forward? we talked about the impact on changing cities and redesigning them.

that's great. will there be problems? of course. sometimes they will be things we intentionally put in the vehicles because we think it makes them safer. for example, you probably won't -- don't want a vehicle to run you over. that would be a bad thing. time, if you are on a street on a dark night and someone is trying to rob you, and the way they do is by having their friend stand in front of your car while they rob you, you probably don't think that's a great feature as compared to being in the car and driving it yourself and being able to get out of harm's way. are these problems solvable? they are, but they are complicated. we are urge us as thinking about this to look at the human dimension, think about the passion, the art, the beauty, the design that has brought us to where we are. the cities that have evolved as the result of passion, sometimes as a result of economics, but

the best -- and this is a wonderful city. this is a great city. i've lived here for 25 years. i enjoy it. i think it's thoughtful, i think it is a very apt view of the american city of the future with cultural diversity and all forms of diversity. i think this is an exciting place to see these things develop. the challenge, though, is not to take a monochromatic view. it's not just about mass transportation. now, will personal cars be where we see autonomy happening first? i doubt it. i think it will be about transportation and about taxis and buses. trucks, deliveries, all of that. except think about a truck. it is a very big high energy system. with something weighing 80,000 pounds traveling at 80 miles per hour and it has significant impacts. you need to be thoughtful about that and understand the kind of damage that system could do if it behaves badly.

are they solvable? of course. what does it take to solve it? in my view, there are two kinds of people in the world -- people that think there are two kinds of people and people who don't. [laughter] bran: there really are two kinds of people that are driving this revolution. on the one side, there are requirements people. their view is that we have to set out a set of rules, regulations, requirements that will establish the roadmap forward and then we will all follow those and we will reach an optimal solution. in the film business, we have these kinds of people. in industry, we have these cuts -- kinds of people. the notion is let's get together , let's talk to the customer let's gather information. ,let's look at the research and see what other people have been doing. develop a set of requirements. requirements of organizations tend to be metric oriented so

let's set some metrics by the -- which we will evaluate our progress. you put it down on paper. you continue to evolve forward. you generate something, produce it, and launch it into the world and wait to see if it's a success. along the way, requirements organizations give high points for freezing requirements early because the terms of our requirements creep when you allow things to change over time and they make things expensive. you kind of punish bad behavior changing requirements all the time. you end up with something that you take a long time to do it because these organizations tend to be risk-averse and want to be sure they get it right and have a process in place. they are process oriented. that's how 90% of the world works. that's how most of the automotive industry works, the aerospace industry works, and how all government works.

there's another process which i would call big idea people process, which basically says i forget all of that, i just have a vision for the future, and i'm going to do it, and try to stop me. in the film business, which i came from, it's a big idea business. you don't go to the audience and ask them what kind of movie they would like to see. you can. people do that every so often. a bean counter arrives on the scene and says let's go find out what were the highest grossing films of all time? what do they have in common? a boat blue people, leonardo dicaprio, so we get a list of all the things like that. special effects and all that. great. go ask the audience what they want to see. you get exactly what you would find if you ask them what do you , want in a phone? how many expert blackberry users think would've said take away all the keys, give me one third

of the battery life, make sure the battery isn't interchangeable, and what i really want is apps. [laughter] and you say, what are apps? and you say, i have no idea, but i'm going to be desperate for them. [laughter] want him so badly, that you should build a store into the device so i don't even have to go somewhere. you don't get a lot of people who you ask because you're not going to get by asking a lot of people who are the users and designers of current vehicles where the future of vehicles are. the way these things happen is you pick people with a track record of succeeding. you back them. it's just like a movie. you have a director. it's the director's movie and they are empowered to make it happen. they attract an aggregate great talent and put it out there and if it's a hit, it works. this town knows a lot about big ideas thinking. it has anchored a lot of its

past, including the triumphs in the aerospace industry, the entertainment industry, the gaming industry, etc., on the ability to do big ideas and thinking. the guy whose name was on the door at my earlier job was walt disney. walt disney did a pretty good job of inventing a future that nobody had anticipated and seen and created an entire industry. i would put forth to you that to succeed at this vision of self-driving cars -- and i'm humbled by the people assembled here together at the great event -- that we actually need to do big idea thinking because you can't do this incrementally. you have to dream about this in -- a vision of the future how it , will change people's lives and how it will instill passion. gee, iwill not be about, really want a steering wheel, but it's going to be about how will this change our lives? and at the same time, you're deliberate,d a very requirements-driven process for the regulatory and manufacturing

and to ensure quality. what's the problem? from thisidea people side and the regulatory people from the other side of the room. what's the problem? these people hate each other. it's as simple as that. [laughter] the requirements people think the big idea people are babies, unrealistic, overpaid, dress funny. there's an endless number of things, but basically they shouldn't be trusted with any important jobs. suffice to say the big idea people think the requirements people drain the light force out of the room by showing up. [laughter] they don't even have to say a word. i put forth to you that we need to get both working together. it's starting to happen but not enough. there are still separate groups . visionary plan, but it's unrealistic and we can do it. retirement plan, but we will all

be dead by the time the third draft of that requirements document is written. if we get the two working together, and one of the things that's great about california is that it has groups of skill sets together and works with detroit and other areas. put a process in place where there is mutual respect. so why would they do this? people who have a different dna in the way they think about the world? simple -- because they will both fail if they don't. once you get scared enough to realize that your future depends upon collaborating with people who have a different way of thinking about the world than you do, then you have the basis to move forward. what's exciting to me is that it's starting to happen now, which is a good sign for the future of self driving cars. i was out last weekend with my perfect eight-year-old daughter and we were driving out on daddy and daughter day to get pizza, , which is our usual ritual.

coming back sitting in the car, i said, "sweetheart, would you like me to teach you how to drive and what all these controls do?" she said, no, that's ok that. i just have to wait for my feet to reach the pedals. i understand how to do all that. apparently she is ready without any further input. however, when my daughter gets in her first car, i sure hope it's an autonomous car with active safety systems that know how to keep her safe, keep her where she should be driving and not get lost, have her not get herself in trouble by traffic accidents or by texting or by any of the new technological come aheadt will that will distract people's attention. thinking about self driving is the wrong way to think about it. you have to think about it as if

you are in a car with an intelligent partner and this partner is very aware and a very sensate partner. they are very smart. they know a lot. they have encyclopedic knowledge of the world and everything around. they know you and they know your desires. they know your capabilities and where you're getting yourself into trouble and how to backpedal. they are your partner. you can ignore them. partner sit in the seat and we , will have a drive in the mountains and have a wonderful time with our daughters as we always have in the past, or it's going to do it for you because you just had a long day at work or you want to text or whatever combination. when it sees a hazard coming that you don't, it will take control and will save your life and it will save my daughter's life and her friends life in a way that you can only dream of now. this is not 20, 30, 50, 80 years away. if the people in this room agreed to talk to each other,

come up with a common process and mutual respect on how to get both ways of thinking together, i would argue it would be ready about the time my daughter's legs are long enough to reach the pedals. thank you so much. [applause] david: thank you so much, bran. i think we can all agree that the off -- arthur c clarke foundation was right when they chose three awardees last night -- year. amazon and jeff bezos, truly a and bran ferren. truly a visionary, so honored to have you bring it home for us today. thank you all so much for coming. those in the room, thank you all. those watching on c-span at home, i hope that you all have come away inspired by our speakers. we are so grateful to all them for flying in or joining us locally. we are so grateful to have all of you here as well.

i hope those of you in the room will enjoy the reception that will follow downstairs, a chance to reflect on what we learned together and work together as , bran said. i just want to encourage those of you watching as well to check out techfire.co to learn about more upcoming events. i was just up in silicon valley meeting with some folks. we have an exciting initiative for self driving cars that we will be announcing later on so stay tuned. it's a secret for now. we just hope that all of us can come away ready to lead our cities, our nation, our startups towards this revolution in a safe way and a smart way that brings the benefits that is also mindful of the challenges and leads us ahead to a better tomorrow. thank you all for being here and thank you again to all of our speakers. how about one more applause? [applause] david: thank you.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] the second session of the 115th congress gets underway this week with the senate returning on wednesday. we will see the swearing in of two new democratic lawmakers. doug jones of alabama and tina smith of minnesota. the house returns the following week on monday. faces new year, congress a government funding deadline with temporary spending set to expire on january 19. also on the calendar, this year's state of the union with president trump before a joint session of congress. you can watch house on c-span and see the senate on our companion network, c-span2. cities weekend, c-span's

to her takes you to springfield, missouri. we are working with media, to explore the literary scene in history of the birthplace of route 66 in southwestern missouri. saturday at noon eastern on book author jeremy neeley talks about the conflict along the kansas missouri border in the struggle over slavery in his book. brown, havinghn left kansas, comes back to the territory and begins a series of raids into western missouri during which his men will liberate and help them escape to freedom. over the course of this, they will kill a number of slaveholders. the legend or notoriety of john brown really grows as part of peopleruggle that locally understand as really the beginning of the civil war. >> sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv, we visit

the nra national sporting arms museum. >> theodore roosevelt was probably our shootingest president. he was a great advertiser. the first thing he did when he left office was organize and go on a large hunting safari to africa. this particular rifle was prepared specifically for roosevelt. it has the presidential seal and gave -- engraved on it. of course, roosevelt was famous party, andl moose there is a ball moves engraved on the side plate of the gun. ofwatch c-span cities tour springfield, missouri, saturday at noon eastern on c-span's book tv. and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on c-span3, working with our cable affiliates as we explore america. >> next, a recent debate on the merits