Ever ridden in a car that drives itself?  I have!

I just returned from a trip to Palo Alto to support the Volkswagen North America team as they held a dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony for the brand new VAIL facility on the Stanford University campus. VAIL – theVolkswagen Group Automotive Innovation Laboratory— is a joint research and development facility that is a collaboration between Volkswagen and the Stanford School of Engineering.

The 8,000 suqare foot facility features seven bays, a full machine shop, driving simulator, two conference rooms and a presentation room. Oh, and did I mention the six vehicles on display, including the robotic Pike’s Peak Audi TTS Coupe (Shelley), the Solar Car “Apogee,” the hydrogen fuel cell-powered Touran HyMotin and the Clean Air Audi A8.

Opening remarks were made by Dean Jim Plummer of Stanford School of Engineering, followed by remarks by David Geanacopoulos, EVP for Public Affairs and General Counsel of Volkswagen Group of America, and Dr.Karl-Thomas Neumann, Chief Officer for Electric Traction at Volkswagen Group.

The ribbon cutting and formal dedication was done by honored guest, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In Chancellor Merkel’s speech, she commended the VW Engineers and Stanford students at VAIL for their collaboration in developing automobiles of the future. She took a tour of the VAIL facility and got a chance to interact with some of the Engineering students and learn about the projects they are working on.

Also in attendance to catch all the action were press and analysts from outlets like Associated Press, Reuters,  Autoblog, Bloomberg News, CNet, Fast Company, MarketWatch, Gartner, San Francisco Chronicle and Technologizer.

After touring the VAIL facility, Chancellor Merkel helped out with a demo of the Autonomous Vehicle, a car developed by VW/Stanford that drives itself with a tap on an iPhone (yes—apparently there’s even an app for that!). The demo was with Junior 2, a robotic Volkswagen Passat, which we watched pull out of a driveway then back into a parking spot with nobody behind the wheel.

One of the highlights of my day was getting to sit in the backseat of Junior 2 and taking a test drive. It was bazaar to see the wheel move on its own and see the minor adjustments that were made according to the trunk full of lasers and sensors. I think my car insurance rates would go down if I could drive with the help of Junior 2 more often…

Here are some photos I took:

The Solar Car, “Apogee” which raced across Australia (north to south) last fall going up to 180km/hr powered completely by solar energy.

Junior 1, a robotic Volkswagen Passat with the on-board sensors, computing hardware and artificial intelligence software to drive in urban traffic without any human assistance. Check out all those wires, bells and whistles!

Shelley, the Pike’s Peak Audi TTS coupe that drives itself at the limits of handling and friction to help researchers develop and refine control algorithms that can improve driver safety. This fall, the team hopes to test it’s ability to hold the road at high speeds on the famous Pike’s Peak mountain race course.

We live-Tweeted during the event and the Tweets can be found @Volkswagen. In addition, here are some stories with great photos and video that have run so far:

Technologizer

Fast Company

Bot Junkie

San Francisco Business Times

Market Watch

Stanford University News

Here is a video of my new friend, David Hoffert,  Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering Researcher and Dynamic Design Laboratory Kunzel Fellow at Stanford Universtiy,  who spent time speaking with me about his work on Shelley.

How to Program a Message on Your MEDEA Bottle from Medea Spirits on Vimeo

I was quoted in a PRWeek story by Aarti Shah today (“Google’s China move affirms reputation“). The article focusses on the Google brand and how its decision to “not censor” search and move their operations to a Hong Kong server might impact their brand reputation.

I think the simple answer is: only in good ways. Why? Because they stayed true to their Philosophy and chose to not compromise. Regardless of how you might view Google’s business overall (selling advertising and collecting data about people), you won’t be able to corner them for being hypocrites!

But this does bring up an interesting point not being debated as much right now:  Why go into China in the first place? Did they really think this wasn’t going to be an issue?  Google is a smart company, with some of the smartest people in the world.  Naïve isn’t  a word I would use to describe them. But let me table that for another day (and another blog)!

What I think is most interesting is how this act will impact mobile-focused companies doing business in China that rely on Google to help monazite their products and services.  For example,  OEMs like Motorola are breaking ties with Google in China. This is most likely a pragmatic act of  solidarity with the Chinese Government as Google might not be available in China in the near future anyway…so why not hedge their bets?

But to understand fully the implications here, you have to remember that Google isn’t just a web search being used on LAPTOPs and PCS. Google today is about mobile phones, mobile search, and location based services.  When looking at the global usage numbers these are consistently the big drivers in mobile data traffic. This is why people PAY for data plans.

Our pal Aarti Shah has been roaming the great Pacific Northwest over the past several days. Aarti is the Bay Area bureau chief for PRWeek, but her beat extends well beyond Silicon Valley. She covers the technology beat for the PR industry’s leading trade publication and was in Seattle to visit with MWW Group and several other Brand-X agencies.

While she doesn’t cover technology exclusively, Aarti is one of those reporters who understands the challenges of 21st Century tech PR. She listens well, asks tough questions, works hard to break stories and isn’t shy about calling for a timeout when some flak starts to max out her BS meter. But she also understands that the best reporting usually results from well-developed relationships, rather than pushing an agenda or asking a million questions. Last night was a great example of that.

We spent time chatting about various topics over dinner and wine at Purple in downtown Seattle. We only talked shop for a couple of minutes — traded a few rumors, dished some gossip, and so on. Sometime, somewhere, Aarti and I will have some news to talk about, and the relationship will be there to ensure that we both make the most of that opportunity.

A couple of weeks ago I was at CTIA in San Diego with my client Samsung Mobile to launch a new phone. We had some issues with WiFi, which is to say it wasn’t working! Between needing it to power Internet for some pre-release phones and for media to file their stories — let’s just say: AWKWARD. It actually all worked out beautifully and we had a great event. But while I was there, Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch.com was nice enough to let me borrow one of his five MiFi connections to fiddle with. This device is amazing. It fits in your front pocket (or back pocket if that’s your thing) and delivers about 30 feet of EVDO RevA or HSDPA speeds — which would have been perfect for our booth-side event.

I made an immediate note to self: buy several of these for team and have them at every event in the future. You should too!

Over the past two weeks, we’ve helped our client Volkswagen with the celebration of VAIL – the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory – on the Stanford University campus. (VW has the largest presence in Silicon Valley of any automaker and clearly is an industry leader in automotive innovation and technology. Need some proof? Check out Volkswagen’s ERL.)

Part of the work included talking about super-cool demonstrations of autonomous cars – cars that drive themselves. This morning, we sent out photos of “Junior,” the famous driverless VW Passat developed jointly by VW and Stanford. That prompted this response from a reporter at The Wall Street Journal:

“Thanks for the information. The Highway Patrol has been calling mine ‘the driverless Passat’ for years.”

Okay, so it has been for a while… but this time we really mean it! Stay tuned for ridiculously fascinating observations about the world of PR in the 21st century.