Self-Driving Cars On Ramp As Feds Tax Oil In New Obama Budget
Autonomous cars, self-driving cars, robot cars — not only are they far along in development, now they can read dollar signs. A $98.1 billion federal transportation budget proposal came out Tuesday as the White House announced President Barrack Obama’s final $4.1 trillion budget proposal, which would slap a $10.25-a-barrel tax on oil. The transportation budget plan allocates $3.9 billion over 10 years for “large-scale deployment pilots” to develop a framework for how connected cars and autonomous vehicles will inter-operate across states. Regulators had penciled in the autonomy figure in an announcement at last month’s Detroit auto show, after President Obama alluded to plans for a “21st century transportation system” in his State of the Union speech. The president’s overall budget proposal is sure to fire up controversy and roadblocks when considered by the Republican-controlled Congress. “To speed our transition to an affordable, reliable, clean energy system, my budget funds Mission Innovation, our landmark commitment to double clean energy research and development funding,” Obama said in his budget message . “It also calls for a 21st Century Clean Transportation initiative ,” he said, “that would help to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work modernizing our infrastructure to ease congestion and make it easier for businesses to bring goods to market through new technologies such as autonomous vehicles and high-speed rail, funded through a fee paid by oil companies.” The Department of Transportation plans to test autonomous cars in “corridors throughout the country” to accelerate development and adoption of “safe vehicle automation through real-world pilot projects.” “We are on the cusp of a new era in automotive technology with enormous potential to save lives, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transform mobility for the American people,” DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said in the auto show announcement, speaking alongside executives from General Motors ( GM ), Tesla Motors ( TSLA ), Alphabet ( GOOGL )-unit Google, Ford Motor ( F ) and others. “Today’s actions and those we will pursue in the coming months will provide the foundation and the path forward for manufacturers, state officials, and consumers to use new technologies and achieve their full safety potential.” Electric car maker Tesla and several mainstream automakers have been developing autonomous vehicles. So have Alphabet’s Google and, reportedly, Apple ( AAPL ). Monday, Tesla expounded in a blog post on the safety aspects of the new Summon feature , in its Autopilot software, that lets the Model S and Model X come pick up their owners in a driveway and park themselves in a garage at night. “Summon lays important groundwork for an increasingly autonomous world. One where the convenience and safety of transport vastly exceed what we are used to today,” Tesla said in summing up Summon. It added that semi-autonomous features like Summon can reduce the occurrence of accidents relative to conventional driving. From @POTUS , @WhiteHouse a #budget that moves #transportation forward https://t.co/MOlt0ZPK8D pic.twitter.com/kY09OE1nww — Anthony Foxx (@SecretaryFoxx) February 9, 2016 The overall budget proposal unveiled by Foxx on Tuesday, for fiscal year 2017, outlines the department’s 30-year vision for how automation and other changes can better cope with traffic as the U.S. population grows by an expected 70 million people. It covers everything from autonomous vehicles to unmanned aircraft systems, or drones. It prioritizes “clean, 21st Century surface transportation options”; public-private sector collaboration to accelerate low-carbon technologies and intelligent transportation systems; transportation safety enhancements; and what it calls 21st Century government and project delivery — meaning things like modernized permitting. It also allocates $15 million toward cybersecurity. In a December presentation, Foxx announced a “smart city” transportation contest with a $50 million prize, saying the DOT is “imagining connected and autonomous vehicles that can practically eliminate crashes and interact with wired infrastructure to eliminate traffic jams.” Loading the player… RELATED: Obama Will Speed Self-Driving Car As Google Partners Tesla Adds ‘Summon’ Self-Driving To Cars: A Big Deal?