Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Welcome back to the guidehouse transportation insights podcast for May 19 2022. I'm Sam Wood wall Samad with the transportation analyst team here at guidehouse. And as usual, I'm joined by Scott Shepherd, Christian Albertson and Joe Janata. Scott, why don't we start with you this week? Scott Shepard 0:21 All right. Thanks, Sam. Yeah, so this week, I'd like to talk about Daimler Trucks is recent announcement that they're going to start series production of the Freightliner e Cascadia and a little background on the E Cascadia. It is the electric version of the Cascadia and that is basically a class eight, semi truck day cab configuration. At least for the E Cascadia version. It's a day cab configuration. So it's intended to do you know not your long haul semi truck routes, but more so your original deliveries, the ones that can occur within a day. But overall, you know, the, the development of this truck is been ongoing for quite some time. Freightliner first started are Daimler Trucks slash Freightliner the brand of Daimler Trucks first started deploying the truck for real world trials back in 2018. And since then, you know not only exploring trials with the technology, Daimler Trucks has also been one of the leading partners in the development of of the megawatt charging standard, which in the future, is likely to power vehicles like this. These would be dedicated charging stations, supporting charging sessions of over a megawatt or more for for these class eight trucks and would largely be deployed at at stations in sort of inner city arrangements. In the near term, the serious production that they're talking about starting in 2022, and delivery deliveries to begin shortly thereafter, would likely be using 350 Kw chargers in the app at in public charity networks, but athlete depots, you're likely to see them using something a little lower. Some of the specs of the vehicle that are important note are that the there are a few different options for battery size, going from about just under 200 kilowatt hours to about 440 kilowatt hours. And their estimated average range for the vehicle, which is going to depend on what battery size is built into the vehicle, they estimate that the typical range is probably going to be around 230 miles. So kind of in that mid range for battery capacity. Obviously, the 440 kilowatt hour battery would would likely produce a longer range. But there are a lot of variables to that, depending on how the vehicle is loaded as as well as what terrain it's going over. And in a variety of other forces. It's interesting to note that they, they don't provide ranges associated with each battery pack, but they do provide charge times for them. And so with the smaller battery packs, there's somewhat of almost no benefit, a little bit of benefit to how fast that battery pack can charge from. From basically zero to 80% or, or more to a relative full charge. They're reporting that for the near 200 kilowatt hour battery pack, it takes about one and a half hours to get to full charge, at minimum, three hours at maximum. And then for the 290 kilowatt hour apps option. It's two to four hours and then for the 440 it's also two hours at minimum to six hours, which is indicative of how the battery management system is basically monitor moderating the flow of power capacity into the battery with more power capacity being delivered for the larger battery packs. And that's that's to be expected. As larger battery pack capacities are likely to absorb higher charging rates much more easily or much more safely than smaller battery packs. So that'll make sense. But it isn't, it does provide an interesting preview, I would suppose about how these vehicles will likely be used, you know, the range and the specs on charging are indicative of, of a certain type of Route in the freight business, you know, it's either short runs kind of shuttle services between warehouses or, or short routes between certain nodes along various logistics networks like, like from major ports to warehouses that are not too too far from the ports relative to other competitors in the space. This is this is coming shortly after Volvo Trucks deployed their electric class eight truck to the market. And of course, is ahead of quite a few other options that are coming to the market. From from other suppliers. But ultimately, you know, we're starting to see more of the brands that are in North America adopting the technology and rolling it out in 2022. And 2023. So an important development for the electrification of logistics. Sam Abuelsamid 6:30 Yeah. And it's interesting. Just yesterday, or today, I guess, actually, you know, they just announced that Cisco, the foodservice company is going to be a major customer for the E Cascadia they ordered 800 of these that they're planning to deploy over the next four years. And as you're mentioning, you know, that's, that's the kind of business you know, a lot of what they do, you know, they do deliveries of food to restaurants and so on. And that's, you know, a perfect application for this kind of truck, you know, mostly shorter routes, you know, local more local and regional routes have, as Donmar given any indication of what the cost differential is between the E Cascadia and a diesel version. Scott Shepard 7:25 You know, I'm not I'm not sure about that we've done modelling on the cost differences between 40 ton trucks and diesel trucks more generally, with the, with the cost being somewhat in the range of I think it's been like I want to say purchase cost being about 50% higher, but don't hold me to that. But ultimately, while the costs of of the trucks are significantly more at the end of the day, whatever it is, the payback is is quite attractive, especially in today's oil price environment. Unlike the light duty vehicle segment, where you know, your purchase cost is likely paid back slower over the over, you know, a number of years due to how much you use the vehicle. With with this trucking segment, you just put on a lot more miles for the vehicle in general. And therefore the the payback period is much quicker. And the companies who operate these vehicles are going to be a lot more sensitive to the cost dynamics of these vehicles, the operating cost dynamics so they just in financial terms, they have typically a better discount rate for for operational costs, then do your typical customers. So you know the order by Cisco is is is a good sign. We've also seen a lot of those types of orders come out of Europe where the market has been a little bit of ahead of what we've seen in North America. So some of the major suppliers in in Europe have been making similar 100 vehicle type orders of the suppliers that are currently in or in Europe as well. Sam Abuelsamid 9:26 It recently, you wrote a white paper for the fuels institute that was published on decarbonisation of medium and heavy duty vehicles. And one of the things that that came out of that was that while from an environmental perspective, long haul trucking could be, you know, could gain a lot because the number of vehicles relative to the percentage the share of emissions that they produce is relatively small so that they produce a disproportionate amount of the co2 emissions. You You found that there probably at least for the foreseeable future, they're not necessarily very amenable to electrification. But But this type of application, I think, you know, definitely works a lot better the regional Hall, right? Scott Shepard 10:14 Yeah. And the regional Hall is, is a significant chunk of those emissions. It's not the greatest chunk. But it's certainly a significant chunk, and ultimately, electrifying, it is going to be critical to positioning electrification to compete for long haul, which is, at the end of the day, just significantly more difficult to electrify for a lot of different reasons. One being a lack of charging infrastructure. And by that I don't mean the deployment of, of chargers, around highways or in a network sort of format, but simply the existence of the charger, technology to deploy needs to be achieved first. So so there are our developments ongoing right now to take the momentum that is occurring within this segment, to build those that charging technology and then deploy it. So it's all part of sort of a long term strategy to to position electrification for that long haul market. But you know, outside of that infrastructure issue, there's also other issues tied to the ownership pattern of a vehicle serving that long haul market. So there are just generally a lot of challenges with that market. But ultimately, this is the first step in that direction. Christian Albertson 11:46 Yeah, actually, one on that one is, I live in the Savannah, Georgia area, so we have a huge port, here in town. And over the last four or five years, especially, there's been a huge increase in the amount of the, the warehouses being built, where stuff is taken from the ports of these warehouses by those day cap type vehicles. And I'd be interested to see if there's any orders popping up on the local companies here in town just to see what's going on. Because it's one of the biggest complaints of the people who live in these areas, is now you have all these big, noisy, smelly, smoky trucks running through neighborhoods they weren't running through before, because where they've put these warehouses, so I'd definitely love to see something like that come to this area, because we could really use those so. But Mike, you came up with one interesting thing, there was the the, the patterns for those who are the ownership, and the owner operators of these vehicles, you know, when you're, you're driving a semi for a company, whether it's long haul or whatever, you if you're an owner operator, you get to charge more per mile. Because you have to pay for your own fuel on that as well. If you are working for somebody, they you get paid less per mile, because you're not paying for fuels and stuff like that. So my question then would be looking at that, what kind of difference do you see on that per mileage per mile cost? For delivering? Whether it's, you know, how much or I guess what I'm trying to say is what's the difference between a a conventionally diesel fuel vehicle versus an electric on that per mileage cost? Is there a huge difference in that? Scott Shepard 13:51 Yeah, I mean, it's a little early to say and honestly, especially for for certain types of use cases for the regional case, which I think is is the safest one. It's going to be significantly lower especially in the current oil price environment. You know, the the general factors you you think about when it comes to this is that on a on a BT EU level, electricity right now is probably on par with with diesel once again on v2 BTUs per dollar per BTU. But then your efficiency your energy efficiency in BTUs miles per PTU is going to be significantly greater for electricity. So in terms of energy use, you know the factor there is anywhere from about two and a half to three and a half times more efficient on electricity. So you know I translate to that that to be quite significant savings for Were for electricity. And then there are also anticipated savings from maintenance cost reductions. But there are also other financial elements to the equation that just aren't well defined it, for instance, what is the battery life? And what's going to be the cost of battery to swap out? And when would that need to happen? And how would that be either more expensive or less expensive than swapping out a diesel engine, there's also issues about insurance and how these vehicles should be insured, or, you know, the premium for their insurance given that there's a little bit of uncertainty regarding the longevity of the battery, especially in these different use cases. So I think, you know, to your point where you have that owner operator environment, where your driver might be the owner of the vehicle, it's it's bit hard for them to adopt right now, because there is so much uncertainty and a lot of ways there's just not the technology availability. For them at this point, they can't take their truck to a public charging station, for instance, their their truck would just simply not fit in the spaces that are available for chargers today. So that all has to be developed. Or they'd have to charge it at the port where they're picking it up, which might be an option, or at the customer site, which would be likely less of an option. customer site being the endpoint of they're out there on so. So there are a lot of challenges for owner operators right now that the fleets like Cisco, or DFDs in Germany, are better positioned to handle because they have those depots where they can install charging infrastructure, or they can work with either customers on their networks, or, or nodes at like the port to establish charging infrastructure for themselves and other partner, corporations like themselves. Christian Albertson 17:12 Alright, yeah, I just started just thinking about that. You know, I've got a couple of friends here in town that own trucking companies. And I'm just trying to think their economics on that and how that would work for them. So Well, thank you. Sam Abuelsamid 17:30 Christian, you're up next. Christian Albertson 17:32 All right. So last few times, we've been a few times ago, we were talking about the veto aircraft, and the urban Air Mobility that's going to be taking over the world here soon. So Joby aviation, is looking to have their aircraft up and flying, and certified, certified being the key word by 2024. And then hopefully making about 26,000 of these aircraft per year here soon, and, in the first few years, hoped to be making 34,000 flights per day with these aircraft. So the problem is that certification. So how do you certify a Vitol aircraft and electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft? It's not an airplane, so it can't be certified as a standard airplane. And it's not a helicopter because it doesn't fly, like the standard helicopter yet may take off like a helicopter but it flies like an airplane. So it's kind of that hybrid type model. So the FAA is what there is looking into kind of a hybrid type of certification for these aircraft. And kind of what's really neat about it is they're kind of picking and choosing, okay, well, when it's an airplane, it flies like an airplane. So it needs these certifications. When it's a helicopter, it needs these certifications. So they're kind of picking and choosing and setting up their certification process to be under a special class of its own. Because the Joby aircraft is different from any other aircraft out there. They're all Evie tools. But they're still have they're still completely different. So everything that they're doing is going to set up a new special framework for these certifications. There's no set time on when this will be done. But they're looking at a as soon as this is done. This framework will then be presented to these aircraft manufacturers and say okay, these are the rules Do one from column A one from column B, one from column C that you have to fit into. And make sure your aircraft fits into those, then they can go through the certification process. We've mentioned the certification process before for the FAA, and if they move it at very slow speeds when it comes to these certifications. And from what I understand that a couple of the articles that I've read about this, the FAA is actually a little bit not scared, but wary about Jovi's timeframe. Because Joby wants these to be certified and flying, and, you know, like 2323, and interservice, and 2024. And because the framework isn't built and the certifications aren't completed, they can't even start the certification process of this. So this is a big step when they decided to, okay, it's going to be a special aircraft, it's going to be a kind of a, like I said, a hodgepodge of certifications for both aircraft put in there. So hopefully, if all goes well, FAA should have something set up early or late this year early next for the certifications, and start to being able to go through the certification process will process with Joby beta. A couple others that are right there ready to go GOP seems to be in the front forefront right now here in the US. So hopefully, if if all goes well, we will have new rules and regulations for the FAA. There'll be a C, it's, I'm not going to bore you with the it's 14 CFR Part 23 is for normal category or aircraft and 21.17. B is the special class for. So that's what we're looking at right now and keeping our fingers crossed, hopefully see some of these Joby aircraft in the air next year. Scott Shepard 22:14 So what's the typical certification timeline like for either your your plane or your helicopter? Christian Albertson 22:23 Okay, so there's no such thing as a typical timeframe. It moves at the speed of the FAA. However, if you're going to go from a brand new clean sheet design aircraft, so you start with clean piece of paper and build a new aircraft that can take eight to 12 years to get that aircraft certified. If you are if you're if you're taking say a 737 and making it a 737 dash two, for instance, I'm just throwing a number out there, there's plenty of extra dash eight, or whatever, you're allowed to use your initial certification for that aircraft, and submit the changes for that are those changes are what gets recertified and that takes a lot less time because there are fewer changes that need to be certified versus an entire aircraft that needs to be certified. So Gulfstream here in Savannah type of thing, the the latest 556 5500 407 5850 are all considered GeForce, it's a G four dash 10 G four dash 11. They're all under the same type certification. Therefore golf skirt Gulfstream can use that certification and make changes to the aircraft. Enough where it makes it a new aircraft, but it's still under the same type certification and they can get that done in three to four years. So it all depends on on how much you are actually doing to those aircraft. Now Joby has been working on these for years, and have been working with the FAA for years on this to figure out what they would need to make them airborne. So most likely, you've got Joby, you've got beta, you've got all of these other companies that are working with FAA to begin with saying what, what do we need to make it air worthy. And starting there, and then the FAA kind of will back into that and say, we told them this is what they needed to make an air worthy. Therefore, that's our rules to make it work. So they already met that one. Let's go to the next certification process. So it's your I still think it's kind of a tight timeframe to have the certified by next year. Scott Shepard 24:59 Right now If we were to think about the the timeline being eight to 12 years, we might think of it also is GOP or beta being pretty far along in that timeline and the introduction of these certifications as being maybe one of the final steps to to them launching. Christian Albertson 25:23 Yeah, I think with the FAA deciding to make them as a special case aircraft. Yeah, this is this is close to the final steps. The you know, Joby gave been flying their aircraft for a couple of years now, doing test flights, manned and unmanned. So, yeah, this is we're coming in on the homestretch when it comes to getting these aircrafts certified and air worthy, and actually out there in operation. Yes. Scott Shepard 25:55 I guess, you know, in terms of Jovi's goals besides the certification process, to deploy that many. I don't know. Should I call them claims, or EDI tools or EV tool? Was Sam Abuelsamid 26:12 there a draft? Yeah, that's a generic term. Scott Shepard 26:15 Yeah. There are other infrastructure systems that have to be in place, right, like charging and landing pads or whatever. So are their goals realistic? If, if there were, I guess this is the question is that is the development of this infrastructure happening ahead of time are they expecting it's, it's all going to happen at once once they're ready to deploy? Christian Albertson 26:44 Kind of so Joby has been working in putting trying to put into place operations for a while now. So the job is a little bit unique, they're not selling any of their aircraft at all, they are running the entire operation themselves. So they're working with parking garages in these large cities. So they have a Latin, they could put a landing pad on top of that parking garage. They are working with airports, they're working with, you know, a little bit of everybody to get these, the routes, they're going to fly in there and everything. Now the biggest thing is that urban Air Mobility, who's going to control the airspace for these aircraft. Now, over New York City, if you're a helicopter, you, there's certain routes you have to fly in, where you don't have to put in a flight plan at all. You just take off, you make sure you're clear, you fly the route, you fly back, those are the ones that are there, every day that the sightseeing aircraft out there are using are using those routes, and that those that airspace, urban Air Mobility is going to be a little bit different, because you're going to be looking at, okay, you have 40 Different helicopter pads in town that are all going to be launching these AV tools, they're all going to be flying towards the airport. What happens if you have 10 of them take off at the same time trying to take the same route. So that's part of the infrastructure that needs to be put into places who's going to monitor that airspace and who's going to control that airspace. Because standard air traffic control can't do that. They don't have the ability to take care of all of that. So yeah, it's a little bit it's a little bit pie in the sky, if he asked me to say a word, they're going to be making 34,000 flights per day, in 2025 2026. I think they're going to be flying that at that time. But if there's a lot of kinks that are going to have to be worked out, and a lot of lot of that urban Air Mobility, the airspace problem, I think is probably going to be the biggest one there. Because they're putting charging facilities out there. And they're gonna build those charging facilities at those those airports as well as at the on those parking garages. So it's the air traffic controls the biggest problem Sam Abuelsamid 29:20 you mentioned, you know, the certification challenges. I think in for companies like GLB and a lot of these other Evie tall startups, I think, you know, unfortunately for them, I think Boeing has kind of poisoned the well when it comes to certification. I think part of the reason why FAA is taking so long on this is they really got burned by Boeing on the 737 max. And now, you know, on the the triple seven, dash nine, you know, they just announced recently that they're delaying entry into service to that by another two years that was supposed to Originally scheduled to go into service in 2020, it's now been pushed out to 2025. You know, and then of course, there's the ongoing problems with the 787. So, you know, I think Boeing has exposed a lot of the gaps in FAS processes. And now you know, that maybe they're taking a much closer look at how they're going to do new processes for these new types of aircraft. Christian Albertson 30:27 Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, Boeing was was allowed to basically produce their own certifications, and certify those their own aircraft with minor FAA oversight, and that's what hurt your Gulfstream here in town in Rolls Royce when I was up there at Boeing, we still had FAA personnel on site. So now, if you're going to have another factory that's going to be building these aircraft, that means you have to have more FAA people on site. And if they're going to be building the numbers that they're hoping to build, you're going to have to have multiple FAA employees on site to certify those aircraft and make sure everything's right as it comes out. So yeah, Boeing definitely hurt a lot of the certification process. Sam Abuelsamid 31:21 So for me this week, big news, some some more expansion of driverless, automated vehicle deployments. First one is Argo AI, which is majority owned by Ford and Volkswagen, they're based out of Pittsburgh, they've been Ford's primary development partner for automated driving systems over the last several years. And now also working with Volkswagen they recently started testing their the automated versions of the VW ID buzz electric minivan, and Hamburg and Munich in Germany. They announced this week that they are ready to start running their vehicles without a safety operator in Miami and in Austin, Texas. So they started running some of their vehicles with safety operators on Lyft doing Robo taxi services, and they've been doing delivery services with a number of companies including Walmart. For some time now they started running Robo taxis on Lyft. In Miami and Austin back in December. They as of this week, they are running their some of their vehicles without safety operators, doing Robo taxi services for employees only. So the stuff they've been doing and Lyft is open to the public. So if you're in Miami or Austin, and you request a lift with the app, you'll probably get a prompt if one of their vehicles is in the area, asking if you want to use an autonomous vehicle. And if you select yes, you might see one of the Argo powered Ford escapes, show up. If if you are an employee of Argo, or in either Austin or Miami, they have their own app. And they've they've been building out their own platform as well. In addition to working with Lyft. And using the internal Argo app, employees can request a ride and that ride might be coming with a driverless vehicle so no safety operator at all. Argo now joins Waymo, who's been doing this in the Phoenix area for a couple of years now, running driverless vehicles, primarily in the Phoenix suburbs around Chandler. But this week, Waymo also announced that they're expanding their driverless operations in the Phoenix area into downtown Phoenix. For now, the Waymo operations in downtown Phoenix are again are only with employees in in Chandler, it's open to the public, so anyone using the whammo one app can get a driver can get a driverless ride if you're in one of the areas that's being served by those vehicles. And WeMo is hoping that within the next couple of months, they will expand the driverless service in downtown Phoenix from their employees to members of the public. WeMo also has driverless vehicles operating in the San Francisco area where they got a permit to start operating driverless Robo taxi services earlier this year, along with Cruz, which is owned majority owned by General Motors. Both Cruz and Waymo in the Bay Area are in the first they have the first phase of their permit from the California Public Utilities Commission that the CPUC Does their permitting in two phases. The first phase is essentially an evaluation phase where the companies can start giving driverless rides to members of the public, but they can't charge for them yet. The next phase after after CPUC approves the proven their safety is to actually allow them to start charging for rides. And so both WeMo and Cruz are hoping that sometime this year, they will get that permit and be able to actually start generating some revenue in California. So that's now three, three companies operating driverless operations in five different cities are 444 and four major metropolitan areas across the US. Argo in Austin and Miami Waymo in the Phoenix area, and whammo and Cruz, both in the San Francisco area. And there's also other companies that want that are hoping to do this, probably maybe by the end of the year, or early next year, includes Zooks, which is operating in San Francisco, and in Las Vegas, and motional, which is hoping to launch a multi city service with driverless Robo taxis sometime in 2023, starting with Las Vegas, where they've already been operating with safety drivers with on Lyft since mid 2018. And they recently also launched services with via in Las Vegas. And they plan to have work with both of those partners in various cities, beginning in 2023, with driverless services. So we're seeing expansion of driver driverless Robo taxis and delivery services in limited areas. In you know, in most cases, you know, some some various other limitations. Some some cases are, again, they're only carrying employees. Other cases are open to the public. But we're slowly creeping up on you know, this starting to become a real business, hopefully, sometime in the next couple of years. Any comments? Scott Shepard 37:20 Yeah, Sam is this, you know, in line with what you've predicted in the past or a little bit ahead. Sam Abuelsamid 37:27 The number of vehicles that we're seeing is fairly consistent with the forecasts that we published from guidehouse Over the last couple of years. And so when we're here in the US, we're talking about maybe a couple of 100 vehicles that are operating with members of the public in in various stages, either with safety operators, or, in some cases, driverless. That's among those four metropolitan areas Miami, Austin, Phoenix and San Francisco with with these various companies, and then in total, we're looking probably somewhere around 1000 vehicles in total that are operating in various ways either for as part of private testing or some interim pilot programs for across a couple of dozen different companies. And then in China, in addition to that, there's there's even more activity going on there. With a number of companies now having received permits to do some driverless Robo taxi operations in limited areas of cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and a couple of other cities. And that includes companies like Baidu, Otter wax pony AI, and we ride so it's, it's growing at a slow steady pace as they gain more and more experience with this and, and try to prove out the safety and, and work out the operational challenges of running these vehicles. Scott Shepard 39:04 Interesting, and what would you say? Is the the data to date on their performance? Like how have they have they done on safety? Are you do you have access to that type of data or a perspective on it? Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 39:19 so the biggest chunk of data that's available is from California, but in each of these places, where these vehicles are operating, they are required to file reports when they anytime that the vehicles are involved in any kind of incident, a crash or anything like that. And there have been a few incidents nothing major nothing where anybody's been injured, at least in recent years. And, you know, the captain California has the biggest chunk of data, you know, that's the one state where companies are required to help to report their their disengagements when safety operator is about to take over from vehicles, that's kind of the you the usefulness of that metric is limited, because there's no real standard for when company when a safety when a safety operator has to take over control. So some companies may be taking a more conservative approach, while and it also varies a lot based on exactly where you're testing and time of day. But they also do have to report crashes. And there have been a few minor incidents. But in most cases, the crashes that have occurred, have usually almost always been the result of another vehicle running into an automated vehicle, it's almost never been, you know, the automated vehicle actually being the cause of the crash. So that's, that's a good sign. Now, it's important to keep in mind, also, these vehicles are all operating in urban areas, where they're generally running at lower speeds. So even if there's a crash, the severity tends to be relatively low. And it's generally easier to avoid a crash, although, you know, there in many cases, especially in San Francisco, and Miami and Austin, it's, it's a more challenging environment, you know, then operating, say, in the suburbs of Phoenix, you know, where there's less traffic more wide open streets. So it's, you know, it's, it's hard, it's hard to judge, you know, compared to human drivers. One of the interesting things that, you know, artios partnership with Lyft, is that Lyft is actually agreed to share data with Argo, about their safety data from their human drivers operating on their network, you know, about where incidents have happened, you know, from, you know, from what they're able to gather from their app, the driver or smartphone app that drivers use with Lyft. They're recording things like accelerometer data. So they can, to some degree detect, you know, heartbreaking incidents, or other potential incidents. And so they've shared that data with Argo. And Argo is using that as a baseline to compare when their vehicles are operating in the same kind of in the same environments. And that's one of the criteria that Argo is using to make the decision about progressing from safety operators to driverless to commercial, you know, to full blown commercial operations with the public. Other companies don't necessarily have access to that same kind of data. So it's, I think we're still a ways away from really being able to say conclusively that you know, that these things are as safe or human safer than human operators. But given some of the given what the data that just came out of a NITSA report was published yesterday, it's looking increasingly likely that these things might be safer than humans. NITSA published preliminary results from 2021, showing, we've had the highest number of fatalities on us roads since 2007, almost 43,000 fatalities on us roads last year, which is a huge jump from 2019. And they saw increases in almost every environment, urban driving, rural highways, vehicle occupants, pedestrians, cyclists, there was increases across the board last year. So it's things are not looking good on the roads right now. Scott Shepard 43:57 That's fascinating. And did they, I guess, maybe we're getting off topic, but that is that tied to just a shift in driver behaviors resulting from the pandemic, for instance, just having fewer cars on the road might have led people to drive more quickly, and then they've had to adjust to the new environment. Now that it's more cars on the road. Sam Abuelsamid 44:23 Yeah, absolutely. Certainly, that was the case in 2021 and 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when we did see when when there was locked downs and a lot more people were working remotely. The vehicle miles traveled in the US did drop pretty significantly from prior years. But despite that, the number of fatalities increased, and the fatality rate increased significantly, from 2019 to 2020. And it was the biggest increase seen in decades. In 2020, or 2021. As the number you had a rebound in the number of vehicle miles traveled, but the accident rate stayed high. And so and we are seeing more more crashes that involve driving at higher speeds. And so driver behavior is a is a major component of this. Scott Shepard 45:23 It's interesting too, because we're we're seeing now in the new vehicle market, more of these lower level driver assistance systems or automation technologies. Are we just is it still too early to see the effective of these technologies on the market or have some been out there for a while and are just not proving to be as effective as we all might have hoped? Sam Abuelsamid 45:46 It's a bit of both, you know, the average age of vehicles on the road in the US is little over 12 years now. And according to the Fars database, the fatal accident reporting system has almost 290 million registered vehicles in the US. So the penetration of these ATS systems driver assist systems is still relatively low as a proportion of the entire fleet is growing steadily every year. And you know, most new vehicles now have at least some degree of driver assistance system on their their they typically have at least automatic emergency braking, maybe Lane Keeping Assist collision warnings, as a minimum on even entry level vehicles now. But the effectiveness of some of these systems is very much in question. Another report that came out this week, from triple A, they actually recently conducted, they've done this a couple of times now over the last several years, testing the effectiveness of these driver assist systems at the Go mentum facility in California test tracking California. And this most recent tests that they conducted with, they used a Subaru Forester, a Tesla Model three, and a Hyundai Santa Fe, with hands on level two systems. So these are systems that are capable of controlling both steering and speed, so acceleration and braking. And they the tests that they ran were, you know, approaching a slower vehicle in the same lane, driving in the same lane with a bicycle, having a an oncoming vehicle encroach on your lane, so crossing the center line and crouching in the lane, and then having the cyclist turn in front of the vehicle. And the first two tests were it was in the lane, either the cyclist or the slower vehicle in the same lane. The systems responded, okay, they all applied the brakes and slow down and avoided a collision. But the oncoming vehicles and the cyclists turning in front of the vehicle, they actually did very poorly. They all got into collisions, and all three systems got into collisions. in those in those scenarios. And there's a lot of other scenarios, there's been testing done by other organizations as well of these systems and, and found them to be lacking in their effectiveness. And I think, you know, the automakers recognize this. And policymakers are recognizing this in Europe, Euro Encap, who does testing evaluation on new vehicles, and does the safety ratings is updating their standards for 2023. And among you know, they're they're moving from just having these driver assist systems as checklist items, to actually testing them and evaluating the effectiveness of them before they'll give them top safety ratings. And similarly here NITSA is making similar moves with the with the US MCAT. net new car assessment program. And I HS the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who does the top safety pick evaluations, they're both moving to start actually testing these systems as part of their rating systems to to validate that they actually are useful and effective before vehicles can get those safety ratings. And I think that that's pushing the industry to move to adopt more capable sensors. So we're seeing more and more vehicles coming to them that are going to be coming to market with LiDAR, imaging, radar, thermal imaging sensors and all in an effort to try to make these systems more more useful in more conditions but especially at night, or in harsh lighting conditions where the simple camera systems that are most vehicles today Um, tend to be overwhelmed or just not work very well. All right, well, unfortunately, Joe had some technical difficulties and had to drop off. So I think we'll wrap it up there for this week. Any final thoughts from you guys? Scott Shepard 50:22 None for me. Sam Abuelsamid 50:23 None. All right. Well, we'll talk to you again in two weeks. Thanks, everyone. Scott Shepard 50:28 Thanks so much. See you guys.