Starting in the late 1930s, New York City began hiring photographers to document each and every building in the city. It did this to improve the accuracy of its tax assessments, and so every photo was taken with a sign board indicating the building’s block… Read More
I was on two panel discussions over the last week and, as is the case with all real estate panels, the topic of parking invariably came up, as did the impact of autonomous vehicles. There seems to be a general consensus that the advent of… Read More
One of the challenges that self-driving vehicles present is not about technology per se, it is about ethics. The typical example scenario is this one: If a pedestrian were to step out in front of an autonomous vehicle illegally, should the car be programmed to… Read More
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was in Toronto today, where he announced that the company plans to invest more than $200 million over the next five years to expand the autonomous vehicle research lab that it already has here in the city. The Toronto outpost of… Read More
Benedict Evans just published a great post on his blog about “Tesla, software and disruption.” I recommend a full read. In it, he tries to answer whether Tesla is really “the new iPhone” and if it will be as disruptive to the car landscape as some/many people… Read More
I discovered a company yesterday called CARMERA, which just raised a $20 million Series B funding round. They call themselves a “real-time, street-level intelligence platform” and their flagship product, called Autonomous Map, provides HD maps and real-time navigation data to autonomous vehicles. That’s the way AVs… Read More
This is an interesting piece by Bloomberg summarizing the current state of autonomous vehicles and in particular the (supposed) dominance of Waymo (Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle arm). Many believe they will be the first real entrant into the market. The company is currently running an “Early… Read More
Here is an interesting study by the MIT Senseable City Lab, which looks at: “the minimum number of vehicles needed to serve all the trips in New York without delaying passengers’ pick up times.” If you can’t see the embedded video below, click here. This… Read More
Benedict Evans raises a number of good points and asks a bunch of good questions about the “steps to autonomy” in his recent blog post. Right now we’re all talking about autonomous vehicles in terms of their level of autonomy – namely 1 through 5. L1… Read More
I am not convinced that autonomous vehicles will make “location” irrelevant. But I do agree with the following line from this recent Bloomberg article called, A Driverless Future Threatens the Laws of Real Estate. “The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human… Read More
