For AV testing, there's less mess in Texas

FRISCO, Texas — Texans don't take kindly to sitting in the shadow of that other overachieving big state, even in the tech sector where California has a head start.

So the mayor of this Dallas suburb relished taking a call from executives at a Silicon Valley automated-driving startup, Drive.ai, who were shopping a cutting-edge pilot project last year.

"I said, 'You're a California-based company,' " Mayor Jeff Cheney recalled last week at the inauguration of Texas' first on-demand, self-driving taxi service. " 'Why are you calling me?' "

The answers he got eventually sealed the deal: Drive.ai was looking for not just the right driving environment to test its suburb-focused taxi service, but the right regulatory landscape and government support network.

They are emerging as key selling points for Texas, and the area around Dallas and Fort Worth, which were also selected last year as the first partner cities for Uber's flying taxi service, Uber Elevate. The region and the state are pushing to draw alternative-transportation companies to help solve traffic problems that come from their car-centric culture.

The linchpin was a state law passed last year that creates a legal framework for those companies to operate. One key provision: "An automated motor vehicle may operate in this state with the automated system engaged, regardless of whether a human operator is physically present in the vehicle."

Tom Bamonte, senior manager for automated vehicles at the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said the law is getting the attention of automated-vehicle developers as Texas cities band together to attract pilot projects.

Texas is a big state with a lot of resources and real-world scenarios for testing AVs, Bamonte said in an interview. The transportation community is looking at work done in leading states such as California and Michigan, but Texas is developing its own "full package" to draw developers: supportive local governments, an eager private sector, an engaged public and top-tier universities.

"The purpose of these pilot programs and experimentations is to kind of figure out transportation for the rest of the century," Bamonte said. "Responsible risk-taking is encouraged and rewarded. We're willing to venture into the unknown."

Texas isn't alone in pitching its communities as testing grounds for the billions of dollars flowing into automated-driving technologies. This month Ohio passed a law opening the state's public roads to autonomous vehicle testing, and several other states have a mix of regulations.

With the fatal accident involving a self-driving Uber vehicle and a pedestrian in March in Arizona, there's new scrutiny on the technology developers and the communities that let them operate.

Sameep Tandon, CEO of Drive.ai, said the company likes the clarity of the Texas regulations and the engagement of the Frisco government to educate residents about autonomous vehicles, which will make the vehicles safer to operate.

"If you look at Drive.ai, we could almost go anywhere," Tandon told Automotive News. "There's some states that have no regulation. You can basically do whatever you want and that's that. There's some states that have regulation that's ambiguous. What we really liked about Texas is it's very clear."

As for safety, Drive.ai is taking a measured approach. Its vehicles, Nissan NV200 vans of the type used as New York City taxicabs, are painted bright orange and communicate with other drivers and pedestrians through electronic signs that display the robodriver's intentions.

Some of the messages that can be read on the front, back and sides of the van: "Waiting for you to cross" — for pedestrians — and "Leave more distance please" — to ward off tailgaters.

About 10,000 residents, mostly office workers, will have access to request the service through a smartphone app. The vans will operate in daylight hours and move along a geofenced route to a retail area with shopping and restaurants.

The six-month pilot program begins in July and is free to users.

In the first phase, the vans will have a safety driver. In the second phase, they will have only a "chaperone" in the passenger seat to educate passengers about the project. In the final stages, there will be only passengers. (Drive.ai released a video this month of a test run, showing a vehicle navigating part of the route with no one in the driver seat.)

Tandon said, though, that remote operators in Drive.ai's Frisco command center will constantly monitor the vehicles with an array of cameras and sensors, and will be able to take control of the driving if needed.

The company, founded by graduate students from Stanford University's artificial-intelligence lab in 2015, raised $50 million last year as it prepared for the Frisco project, which the company sees as its breakthrough moment.

"Our goal as a company is to engage Level 4 and Level 5 self-driving cars all over the world and really make this an option for transportation," Tandon said. "I think we're going to look back at this in a couple years and say it started in Frisco."