There has been much attention focused recently on what may be happening with regard to autonomous vehicles at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But no one is talking about what won't be happening.
In the first category are things like the outcome of the NHTSA investigation into the Tesla Model S crash, the contents of the agency’s upcoming guidance on state laws and autonomous vehicles, and the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications proposed rule. Something will be published in the near future on all these issues.
But that doesn’t make them the most important stories. That designation perhaps goes to Congress’s refusal to approve funding for the Obama Administration’s planned 10-year, nearly $4 billion investment in autonomous vehicle pilot projects funded by the Department of Transportation. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the funding request in January as part of the rollout for President Obama’s fiscal 2017 proposed budget. The 2017 budget year starts on October 1, 2016.
The DOT's fiscal year 2017 budget submission includes this:
• Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Program: Funds $200 million in FY2017 – and $3.9 billion over 10 years – in pilot deployments of safe and climate smart autonomous vehicles to create better, faster, cleaner urban and corridor transportation networks.
That $200 million in one fiscal year would be a tremendous boost to not only federally sponsored research into driverless cars, but also the money could help fund regulatory changes to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), some of which stand in the way to full realization of autonomous vehicles.
But half a year has passed and nothing else has been heard from Secretary Foxx in support of that proposed pilot program. And there is a good reason for that: Congress isn’t going to approve the money. Neither the House nor the Senate appropriations bills fund the pilot program. So it’s dead. What is worse, both bills, which have to be “conferenced,” meaning any differences ironed out, cut the budget for the NHTSA way below what the Obama administration requested and, in the Senate’s case, below the fiscal 2015 budget.
While the Senate drastically cuts the NHTSA budget, it at the same time includes language in its appropriations bill telling the agency to move faster on its V2V rulemaking “including expediting the testing to determine the feasibility of sharing arrangements to allow for the operation of unlicensed devices within the relevant band.”
While Congress won’t approve the $200 million Obama sought for autonomous pilots in fiscal 2017, in late June Foxx announced the department was handing “up to” $40 million – apparently in already approved fiscal 2016 funds – to the city of Columbus, Ohio, which won the Smart City Challenge Foxx announced in December 2015.
The challenge asked cities vying for the money, and there were 78 that submitted proposals, to include plans for V2V connectivity in their proposals to essentially rewire their cities' transportation systems so as to integrate traffic flow. Columbus has come up with $90 million from other sources and venture capital Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. is kicking in another $10 million.
There is nothing, however, in Columbus’ winning proposal on autonomous vehicles, at least not in the conventional sense. The Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research will be piloting a driverless golf cart used as a shuttle on the campus of OSU. Mobileye Inc. will equip 300 buses in Columbus with its Shield+ Collision Avoidance System, its collision avoidance systems designed specifically for buses, light rail and heavy duty trucks. Continental Corp. has pledged at least $1 million in the form of advanced sensing, V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communication technology to increase traffic safety at intersections and provide a platform for intelligent transportation systems of the future.
The “Smart Columbus” project is an example of what NHTSA could have funded on a much larger scale if Congress had approved the $200 million for NHTSA in fiscal 2017. If Columbus proves a success, that may encourage Congress to loosen the purse strings.
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