San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Robo-car firms hit new speed bump
DETROIT — The latest challenge for the autonomous vehicle industry: How to assure passengers that the car they are getting in is virus free, even if it doesn't have a driver.
Widespread use of autonomous vehicles already had been delayed by a March 2018 fatal crash involving an Uber test vehicle in Tempe, Ariz., forcing the industry to pause to make sure its vehicles are safe.
Now it has to deal — just like other ride-hailing companies and traditional taxis — with passenger anxiety over getting into tight spaces with people who may have the virus, or after infected people who rode in the vehicles before them.
An executive with self-driving car company Waymo said that the coronavirus pandemic forced it to put its limited ride service in the Phoenix area on hold to make sure human backup drivers and passengers were safe.
The passenger-carrying service hasn't resumed yet, but testing restarted last month. Some of the rides were shifted toward delivery, Patrick Cadariu, Waymo's head of supply chain operations, said on a webinar.
Waymo, a unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., has been running the service with selected riders since 2018, sometimes without human backup drivers. Waymo and outside supply companies are now focused on putting technologies in place to clean vehicles between rides, Cadariu said.
The technologies, which he did not identify, have been ready for the last few years, he told the Society of Automotive Analysts' webinar.
Waymo is looking at what to do between rides when there isn't time to return to a depot for a full cleaning, Cadariu said.
“Those are the sort of questions that people are thinking through both at Waymo and outside of Waymo right now given how the pandemic has affected us and also our anxieties around germs,” he said.
The Arizona vehicles have been delivering school supplies, protective equipment and food for nonprofits in the meantime.
Waymo, seen by many as the leader in autonomous vehicle technology, is a ways from running a large-scale ride-hailing service with its Chrysler Pacifica minivans and Jaguar I-Pace electric SUVs, he said, without giving a target date. $20.57, a drop of about 71 percent.
There are signs of improvement. Last week, occupancy stood at 42 percent and revenue per available room at $33.17, STR reported.
Visit San Antonio recently launched a marketing campaign aimed at locals and visitors driving to the area. Hotels, restaurants and attractions are offering special deals and discounts.
“When the travel industry does begin to open up again, we feel that most folks will be making their initial trips very close to home,” President and CEO Casandra Matej said recently. “We know that year after year more than 70 percent of the leisure travel to San
Antonio comes from inside state of Texas.”
The campaign focuses on “those folks who will be avoiding the busy transport hubs and instead stay closer to their own backyards,” she said.
Business travelers are expected to return after leisure travelers, but conventions and meetings will take more time to come back.
“People are just not ready to be in group settings yet,” Binford said.
Another set of projections suggests travel for conventions and business may pick up by the end of the year, though attendance will probably be lower.
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But it may take until 2022 for the number of travelers going through San Antonio International Airport to return to pre-pandemic levels, economists Jon Hockeynos and Steve Nivin recently told City Council members.
Room rates could take six to eight years to rebound. Because of lower rates and fewer conventiongoers, revenue from hotel occupancy taxes could bounce back in five years.
“The pandemic's just not going away,” Nivin said. “So it's going to take time for consumer confidence to come back.”
The national hotel industry's recovery depends on how long the pandemic lasts and when a vaccine will be widely available.
Texas is seeing a spike in coronavirus cases, and hospitalizations have increased about 190 percent since Memorial Day.
Health officials in San Antonio have warned that the area is entering a second wave of COVID-19, and urged residents to wear face coverings, practice social distancing and wash hands frequently.
On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered bars to reclose and cut restaurants to 50 percent capacity. A day earlier, he ordered four of the state's largest counties, including Bexar, to postpone elective surgeries to preserve hospital beds for COVID-19 patients.