Category Archives: motor vehicles

23 States Ponder Fee on Hybrid of Electric Cars. Gas Tax Revenues Down. Fees Up.

The states that are moving to a fee based transportation funding system:

  • California fee on electric and hybrid cars
  • Tennessee fee on electric or hybrid cars
  • South Carolina fee on electric and hybrid cars
  • Oregon shifting to a road use fee

States considering a fee on electric, hybrid cars to offset gas tax reductions:

  • Maine, Alabama, Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, and Massachusetts

States that increased registration fees on electric or hybrid cars:

  • Colorado, Georgia…

5 Issues Tech Companies have with Driverless Car Regulations and Laws

California is revising its driverless car regulations. Read the proposed regulations. 

California’s proposed driverless car regulations prompted the following concerns:

  • elimination of language that holds the driverless car manufacturer liable for any crash its vehicle causes on a public road.
  • allow paying riders in test cars
  • rules should also cover the testing of freight trucks
  • rules should be expanded with protections for proprietary information
  • remove a requirement that data recorders…

Lege Trend. Heavier Loads on Trucks. 5 Reasons Industry Supports it.

SB 1524 allows for heavier loads on big trucks when:

  • $5000 annual permit is purchased
  • traveling on a dwsignated corridor
  • within 30 miles of a port of entry/border

Supporters say:

  • anticipated 500,000 TEU increase in annual containerized exports of plastic resin
  • $100 Billion in new or expanded plant capacity along Texas coast
  • the rise in plastic resin is due to cheap natural gas feedstock
  • American Chemistry COuncil warned that without allowing for larger loads would harm the economic…

Business Trend. Meet Policy Trend. Self Driving Car Crash. 2 Lessons.

  • The statement from police said the car’s view was blocked. 
    • Don’t self driving cars use sensors? Can you block the radar or sonor or whatever it might use?
    • How do rules and laws address blind spots in self driving cars?
  • The intersection was one of “the hardest decision making” for self driving cars
    • a witness said the self driving car sped up to beat the light
    • how can rules or laws handle these hard driving decisions?

Wallstreet Journal | Uber Self-Driving Car Crash Detailed in Police…

Lege Trend. All Self Driving Cars Must Be Zero Emissions. Also Known As–Can a Snail Move Faster than Zero Emission Cars?

Why does California need all self driving cars to be zero emissions?  California must cut greenhouse gases 40% by 2030

A handy side effect of a bill like this? to help the zero emmission car industry, whose sales have flatlined at 3% of market share in California 

Is this just  a California thing? No, Massachusettes is proposing the same

The Recorder | Calif. Lawmaker Pushes Zero-Emission Driverless Vehicles

Caliornia SB 802 (2017)

Local TREND. Solve Transportation via Tech.

Examples of cities solving transportation woes with tech:

  • France’s cities are using smart trains
  • Los Angeles is using smart meters
  • Toronto is also turning to Internet of Things (IoT) technology to ease its traffic congestion 
  • New Delhi is  partnering with Google India’s transit unit to “provide free train schedule and route information to commuters through mobile devices with Google Maps
 
 

6 States. New Electric Vehicle Fees.

Considering implementing an electric vehicle fee in 2017 are:

  • Indiana 
  • South Carolina
  • Kansas
  • Tennessee
  • New Hampshire
  • Montana

How does this compare to the current electric vehicle fees? 10 states have electric vehcile fees which range from $50 to $300

Utility Dive | Report: Six states propose new electric vehicle fees

Sierra Club | Flurry of State Bills Introduced, Likely Backed by Oil Industry, to Penalize Electric Car Drivers

FASTR. New Kid on the Block. Connected Car Data Security.

What is FASTR? The Future of Automotive Security Technology Research

What are FASTR’s goals? 

  • deliver precompetitive technological building blocks
  • to assist automotive manufactures across their supply chains
  • to offer multilayered security throughout vehicles to preserve data confidentiality, system integrity and system availability

What companies are members of FASTR?

  • Uber
  • Intel
  •  internet of things (IoT) provider Aeris
  • Rambus
  • Karamba Security

FASTR.org

SC Media | Uber, Intel and IoT…

5 Elements for Connected Car Legislation.

What elements do these groups need to consider in their recommendations for regulation?

  • identify what’s necessary to isolate critical systems in a vehicle from the rest of its software
  • relevant standards for firewalls and anomaly detection systems
  • techniques to prevent or discourage malicious intrusions
  • best practices for storing the data generated by connected cars
  • timeline for implementing all of this

Where did these criteria for connected cars come from? The  Security and Privacy in…