Good Morning Warren and Friends – It’s WAPO carchat time!
We drove the Infiniti QX 60 all week. Another great 3-row CUV that starts around $43,000 comes in AWD. The V-6 EPA fuel economy is stated at 20 city / 27 highway.
A fun week for me! Stretch and I went to San Francisco to the C3 Connected Summit. All the fun a person could have talking about autonomous driving and smart cities.
The panel we focused on was the group for smart cities that included Bosch, Continental, and a small company called HERE. A ride-sharing group called Chariot was there as well. You can see the full 40-minute panel here.
Ford’s Principal Researcher, Sudipto Aich, started the conversation by announcing that Ford will have a high volume level-4 SAE capable autonomous vehicle for ride-sharing/hailing in 2021.
Think about this – Nine million miles are traveled, 125,000 taxis or Ubers are on the road (they probably meant to include Lyft as well, but since it’s partially owned by General Motors…) 60,000 shared rides, 450,000 bytes of data from connected vehicles, 500,000 gigabytes of data transmitted and 350,000 cell phone apps downloaded
Bosch and Continental are working on smart city solutions; in San Francisco for example, the old Navy Shipyard is being resurrected into a smart city. Bosch is working with the developer to create efficiency in the homes and eventually through autonomous driving and parking. Jiri Marek talked about the smart city project for Smart Cities.
Here is an open-source company that maps the entire city using data from infrastructure and moving cars such as Audi, BMW, and Daimler. HERE has a collaboration with those three companies. Monali Shah showed us a mock-up of San Francisco and how HERE uses the information.
The best thing we figured out last night was how to get a tour around San Francisco for $5.75. Our taxi ride to the event cost $12.00 (including tip). We ordered an Uber pool on the way home. Uber pool is like a carpool that picks you up and goes to another spot and picks another person up. We were picked up and went by the baseball park, through downtown and back by the park, and then to our hotel. If you don’t have the time, you can use Uber or Lyft.
I drove the Kia Cadenza, a great sedan that is on the North American Car of the Year list. The Cadenza starts at $32,000 and the EPA estimated fuel economy is 20 city/28 highway/23 combined.
Let’s chat about cars
To read the rest of the Washington Post Real Wheels car chat click the picture below:
