Eben Brown on the newest self-driving taxi program

Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Everybody.

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Evan Brown joining us now a Fox correspondent in Miami. Oh, Fox,
got a little news on some tech news. What's happening
you're Evan, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
So I see that now these big companies are jumping
into these self driving taxi programs. Tell us more.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, this is a deal between Uber, the ride hailing
app that everyone is quite familiar with at this point,
and a electric vehicle company called Lucid and a self
driving tech company called Neuro excuse me, and the three
of them are going to work on deploying twenty thousand

(00:39):
autonomous taxi cars over the next couple of years. So
taxis will be built by Lucid with the neurotechnology, but
halable for rides using Uber. And they promised to debut
these in a number of cities, at least one US market,
probably more. And this will really be a shot in

(01:01):
the arm to the you know the Ford, you know
the Ford deployment, if you will, of this kind of
technology and having it become a bit more normal and
a bit more commonplace.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, they do have some self driving vehicles out there now,
and every once in a while you hear how the
computers go lit and it all of a sudden doesn't
work right, maybe a crash, you can't slow it. I mean,
computers fail. We certainly know that in our business world.
So you got a car loaded with computers. I mean,
would you get into one of these self driving taxis?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
I might take one to go to the grocery store
or something. I'm not sure I want to go on
the freeway just yet. But then again, I drive in
South Florida and I take a lot of chances doing
that with human drivers who just really are terrible. So
I don't know if one is any better than the other.
To be honest with you, Look, I think this technology
is coming. It's not going to go away. It's not

(01:55):
going to stop. It'll get better over time, as these
things always do. And for especially for urban settings where
people take a lot of short hop rides anyway cabs,
this provides another opportunity to do that for a less
expensive experience. So I think you know this is happening

(02:18):
no matter what I think.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
You're right, I'm not sure I'm getting in there and
going seventy seventy five miles an hour down the interstate.
But you know, for people like in congested cities like
Manhattan where there's so many cars around that if in
fact the car does malfunction and crashes a little bit,
you're never really picking up enough speed to do any
serious damage. So I might try it around for a

(02:40):
few blocks, to go from Midtown to Upper East Side
or something like that. But yeah, I'm not getting any
long trip with seventy miles.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, yeah, I'm not ready for you know, speeding through
the toll pass lane, you know, that kind of thing.
So yeah, that's that's where I'm at. But other people
may have different ideas or feelings about it, you know.
But again, this is happening no matter what, and as
younger people grow up with it, it becomes more normal

(03:09):
and more accepted, and you know, people like us go
away after a while.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Well what's the expectation of this actually, you know, unfolding
and becoming a real thing. And how much will it
cost the riders?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Well a lot of that's going to be up to uber.
Uber right now is a very well used app. It
uses a lot of human drivers, of course, but there's
a cost for the ride based on distance and time
of day and the availability of the rides and whatnot.
So I imagine these types of cabs would just fold into
that system to a degree. And other companies are already

(03:42):
deployed in some cities like San Francisco and Austin and
are testing other places. Google's Way mo Is, I know
testing in Miami. I've seen their cars around. They have
what they call engineers in the driver's seat, you know,
monitoring everything. But they're testing this out and mapping so

(04:02):
that they can deploy here in Miami in a couple
of years.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
All right, Evn, thank you for the update on that one.
Appreciate you having a great weekend.