A high-profile skirmish between prominent developers of self-driving technology begins next month in a California courtroom, when arguments in Waymo’s lawsuit against Uber over allegations of stolen trade secrets gets underway. Another one, which involves some of the autonomous-vehicle industry’s biggest players, so far overlooked, is already occurring in state capitals across the country.
Lawmakers in at least five states are considering legislation that, if passed in current form, could prohibit companies that are not traditional motor-vehicle manufacturers from deploying autonomous vehicles.
Just as the outcome of the Waymo-Uber lawsuit promises to play a key role in determining winners and losers in the race to deliver self-driving technology, the upcoming legislative debates are likely to have serious ramifications in the intensifying competition for a slice of an autonomous market experts say may be worth as much as $70 billion by 2030.
In Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee, and Illinois, lawmakers have proposed legislation that contains provisions that would limit the deployment of self-driving fleets to automaker-led or automaker-affiliated projects. At least three other states have mulled similar proposals, but resulting bills have not contained the restrictive provisions.
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“We don’t believe that manufacturers or any one industry, or any one company, for that matter, should have a monopoly on this.” – Chan Lieu, Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets
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“There’s a lot here that embraces one vision of autonomous driving to the exclusion of other visions, and that’s why you’ve seen some companies speaking out aggressively about their concerns,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who specializes in autonomous vehicles and new technologies.
The legislation worries the likes of Uber and Waymo (the company spawned from Google’s self-driving-car project). But it would be a boon for General Motors, which holds a $500 million investment in ride-hailing service Lyft. The two companies are currently testing autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs. That vehicle has become a central component in their planning for the era of autonomous travel.
It’s no surprise, then, that General Motors has been instrumental in pitching and promoting the legislation. There are slight differences in the bills depending on the state, but they’re all based on draft versions of a Michigan law known as the Safe Autonomous Vehicles Act (SAVE). Given the contentious nature of the legislation, GM’s role in the proliferation of proposed SAVE Acts popping up in state houses across the country raises questions.
Emails obtained by Car and Driver via a public-records request in Colorado show the company and the Capstone Group, a lobbying firm working on GM’s behalf, urging lawmakers to use the SAVE Act as model legislation there. In one dated October 2016, Hal Lenox, a GM regional director for state government affairs, thanks Colorado Department of Transportation officials “for your time and interest in GM’s involvement in autonomous vehicles in general, and the SAVe Act in particular.” Colorado later introduced an autonomous bill not based on the SAVE Act.
Further, the Associated Press details campaign contributions GM made to state lawmakers, who subsequently all sponsored SAVE Act legislation. Multiple lawmakers told the news outlet that GM lobbyists requested they introduce the bills.
The tactic seems to echo GM’s earlier state-to-state strategy of endorsing legislation that ensured only dealerships could sell cars, which has effectively prevented Tesla, which does not operate dealer networks, from selling cars in states that enacted the legislation.
Harry Lightsey, an executive director of federal affairs for GM, says the company has only presented the SAVE Act as a starting point for legislative discussions. He disputed the idea the company is attempting to elbow competitors aside and said GM is amenable to removing provisions that would render other companies ineligible to compete.
“There has continued to be this drumbeat of allegations that somehow we’ve been engaged in a public-policy environment not conducive to certain companies participating, and I think that’s disingenuous,” he said. “We do not support any legislation that would restrict who could offer self-driving technology.”
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“There’s a lot here that embraces one vision of autonomous driving to the exclusion of other visions.”
– Bryant Walker Smith, University of South Carolina
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Competitors are still crying foul. Fighting the legislation has become a key priority for the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, an autonomous-technology lobbying group of which Waymo, Uber, Lyft, Ford, and Volvo are members.
In Michigan, those efforts were successful. The version of the law ultimately enacted by Michigan lawmakers scrapped the provisions that restricted autonomous-vehicle deployment. Nonetheless, the draft version of that bill, complete with the provisions that have raised objections, has become the blueprint for the legislation in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Maryland, Georgia, and Illinois.
While the changes in Michigan showed the coalition’s efforts can reap rewards, Chan Lieu, senior legislative adviser for the group, says that’s no guarantee of success elsewhere, although potential compromises are afoot in Tennessee and Georgia. If anything, he says his job has grown more complicated as the number of bills has grown.
“The unfortunate thing is that maybe politicians or policymakers weren’t fully briefed on what the [anti-competitive] provisions or implications are,” said Lieu. “Maybe the initial thinking is, ‘This makes sense,’ but once you understand the industry and recognize there are a lot of major stakeholders who are not traditional manufacturers—they’re the ones coming in and disrupting this—then you have a greater appreciation for what this language means.”
The specific language varies by state, but it generally calls for “participating fleets” to be part of something called a “SAVE project.” That sounds innocuous, but it’s at the crux of what the Self-Driving Coalition finds alarming.
In Maryland, for example, Senate Bill 902 calls for autonomous and connected vehicles operating on state highways to be part of SAVE projects—which are owned and controlled by automated- and connected-vehicle manufacturers. In Illinois, Senate Bill 1432 would authorize “eligible motor-vehicle manufacturers” to make self-driving vehicles available for public use if they are part of a “SAVE project initiative.”
These SAVE projects govern autonomous operations in certain geographic areas, such as university campuses or certain downtown corridors or retirement communities—exactly the type of limited-scale deployments where most experts say autonomous vehicles will first be launched. By limiting deployments to traditional manufacturers, states could tilt the race to put self-driving cars on the road.
There are some ambiguities in the way SAVE projects are presented, but whatever the obfuscations, Lieu said it’s easy to read between the lines and see their intent.
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“We disagree with the idea states can just stand by and let people put vehicles on the road. We think that’s a huge risk.”
– Harry Lightsey, General Motors
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“If you look at who is advocating and supporting this and who’s against it, it becomes abundantly clear,” he said. “We don’t believe that manufacturers, or any one industry or any one company, for that matter, should have a monopoly on this. It should be about innovation and the technology.”
The SAVE Act–based bills are a small slice of the overall activity in statehouses working on legislation related to self-driving vehicles. Twenty-eight states currently have legislation pending on autonomous transportation technology, according to records kept by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Eleven states, plus the District of Columbia, have already enacted laws or regulations, while two have authorized autonomous testing via executive orders.
In recent years, tech companies and traditional automakers alike have been wary of any legislation that attempted to set parameters for self-driving deployments, and they have campaigned against much proposed legislation. Companies such as Google and Uber, for two examples, flocked to Texas, Colorado, and Arizona because they found it advantageous to test in areas that had no laws whatsoever rather than in states that had passed laws related to autonomous driving—even laws intended to encourage testing.
General Motors, however, takes exception to the idea that autonomous testing is best served by an unregulated approach. “We think legislators have an important role to play in making sure these vehicles are being put on the road in a safe way,” said GM’s Lightsey. “We disagree with the idea that states can just stand by and let people put vehicles on the road. We think that’s a huge risk.”
Safety may be GM’s stated reason for supporting the legislation, but USC law professor Bryant Walker Smith sees an additional motivation. He says the company’s new eagerness to push legislation is a signal that it’s ready to deploy.
“For a long time, automakers have said this should be addressed at the federal level, and in some ways, that’s legitimate,” he said. “But what it seems to say is, ‘Don’t do anything until we’re ready.’ At a point when a company figures out what it wants, that’s going to change. And now you have a company that’s seeking specific language for a specific deployment concept.”
In that respect, the significance of SAVE Act laws could lie not only in provisions that may be anticompetitive, but in the sudden rush to introduce the legislation itself.
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