AS HEARD ON NH Today with Jack Heath WGIR-AM 610: Self Driving Cars Kill, GM Car Rentals and the Death of Uber

Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath this morning discussing How the logic in self-driving cars can kill. General Motors Car Rental plans and Coronavirus and the Death of Uber. Here we go with Jack.

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

2020-08-10-wgir-uber_problems-todays_self_driving_cars_can_kill

[00:00:00] Craig Peterson: Companies like general motors is betting the bank on not selling cars to individuals, but selling basically renting fleets of cars.

Yeah. If you're like me, I'm really disappointed about this new AAA study and our self-driving cars. Of course, this is Craig Peterson and I was on this morning with Mr. Jack Heath. We got into it this morning and a little bit about the problems we're facing and how some of our US automakers might be going down the completely wrong road.

Jack Heath: All right. Hey, with a tech talk update, we go to our own Craig Peterson, his show airs on the weekend's Tech Talk, Craig joins live on the AutoFair listener lines.

Good morning, Craig.

[00:01:00] Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning, Jack. What do you have? Did you hear the latest? About the parked cars and some of these automatic driving cars. There have been some tests that have been conducted here lately, showing that in recent years, some of these car companies like Tesla, for instance, have these driver assistance systems.  The whole idea behind them is to stay in the lane and they have these adaptive cruise controls. More and more companies are starting to come out with them. Well, there's an interesting study that is just happened here. A report from AAA has found that they do not stop or divert themselves for cars parked, even in the lane, in front of them. In other words, if there's a car broken down in front of you on the highway, these self-driving systems, none of them were tested, will avoid the car. They just ran right into it. And it has to do with the logic in the system saying, well, if it's a fixed object, if it's not moving, it's probably off the side of the road, so I don't need to worry about it. So there go my hopes for having a self-driving car in a couple of years.

[00:02:00] Jack Heath: Yeah. It might take a while.

Justin McIssac: It sounds like self-driving cars were designed in Massachusetts.

Jack Heath: Hey, we haven't talked about this in a while, but you know, before the quote-unquote COVID-19 thing, Uber was just coming into more places, more available and places like New Hampshire. How has the whole pandemic and the whole Uber thing? I mean, they, they weren't even profitable, to begin with, but I mean, Where's Uber at? I'm just curious.

Craig Peterson: Yeah. Uber is an interesting problem. They just lost. What was it? Like two, almost 2 billion. It might've been just over $1 billion, right?

Jack Heath: Just a couple of zeros. It’s a rounding error.

[00:03:00] Craig Peterson: Yeah, exactly. Compared to the US budget. So now they're in really bad shape. I just got from Uber this last week, three rides at 50% off offer. Now I haven't used Uber in probably a year, but they are getting very desperate.  Many of these companies like General Motors, is betting the bank on not selling cars to individuals, but basically renting fleets of cars.

So GM would have a car show up when you want it to show up. All automatically. I think all of these guys are going to be completely, really rethinking what they've been doing because frankly, a safe self-driving car, it’s just not here. It's not in the near future. So, this is really going to upset all of the manufacturers in cars worldwide.

Jack Heath: Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's, it's just one of these trends, people are not out and about not doing as much business travel and it's just interesting that it's going to all shake out. All right. Thank you, Craig Peterson. I appreciate it. You have a good one tech talk.

Craig Peterson: Thank you, sir.

Hey, take care. I'll be back Saturday at 1130.

Jack Heath: Alright, thanks, Craig.

Craig Peterson: Hey everybody.

[00:04:00] Thanks for so many kind comments here. I got dozens and dozens of them. We've been through a lot. And if you've been listening, you know, I kind of dropped the hint about my having had this whole WuHan virus and the COVID-19 symptoms and how that has knocked me on my but here.

I still have that muscle soreness. I feel like I just finished a big workout, which is kind of crazy. But anyway, that's the only thing left. Apparently, that residual of, I felt like I just worked out like crazy, last weeks or sometimes even months. They're saying. So, I have that to look forward to, I guess as well. But we did get a newsletter out and there's a little note in there from me and Karen helped a little bit with some of that, too. Of course, she put together all of the stuff on the articles that I had selected for this week. So, thanks to her as well for all of her help.

I will be back tomorrow, of course, on with Jim Polito on two powerhouse stations down in Mass that actually cover parts of Vermont and Rhode Island and Connecticut as well.

[00:05:00] I'm still doing all of this stuff. We're still reworking things in the studio. I'm meeting with my video guy this afternoon. Again, we've been getting together multiple times a week sometimes just trying to get together so we can do a lot more training for you guys. So have a great day and. Thanks again, guys, for all of those kind words and well wishes and prayers. I really do appreciate it.

Back tomorrow and visit online of course, as well.

Craig Peterson out.

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