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A Pennsylvania state law has gone into effect giving delivery drones the right to operate on city sidewalks, and it also classified them as pedestrians.
This makes Pennsylvania the latest in a string of states, plus Washington, D.C., to let these delivery robots maneuver around towns.
Not everyone is a fan of these changes, including the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which is calling for a “comprehensive overhaul” of city streets to make automation work.
The legal rights of robots have expanded, at least in Pennsylvania. There, autonomous delivery drones will be allowed to maneuver on sidewalks and paths as well as roadways and will now technically be considered “pedestrians.” It’s the latest change in the evolving relationship between autonomous vehicles and humans.

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In Pennsylvania, the legal limits for autonomous delivery robots mean a maximum top speed of 12 mph in a pedestrian area, 25 mph on a roadway, and a load limit of 550 pounds. The Pennsylvania law was sponsored by state senator Ryan Aument and went into effect in January. Aument did not respond to Car and Driver’s request for comment.
Counting Pennsylvania, there are now a dozen states, including Virginia, Idaho, Florida, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., according to Axios, where it is legal for personal delivery robots to share the streets with people.

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The benefits of autonomous delivery robots include a reduction in the need for large, potentially emission-heavy trucks to move in crowded cities and a reduction in the number of delivery drivers required to get the stuff people order online to them quickly. Of course, that last item is one reason groups like the Teamsters have come out against delivery robots. The National Association of City Transportation Officials has also issued a Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism that calls for more thought about adding self-driving robots to our streets. “Automation without a comprehensive overhaul of how our streets are designed, allocated, and shared will not result in substantive safety, sustainability, or equity gains,” the report said. Tech-friendly San Francisco even banned most sidewalk robots back in 2017.
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It takes a lot of artificial intelligence to get robots to safely navigate s crowded street. The Tamura Lab at Tohoku University in Japan has collected a list of factors autonomous vehicles should consider when interacting with pedestrians. That means avoiding “smartphone zombies,” or people who are walking while looking at a device instead of where they’re going, as well as using something called the “social force model” to try to understand a human’s intention about when they might change direction. In 2017, engineers at MIT created an autonomous robot that used socially aware navigation, to teach the AV to basically follow “the same rules as everyone else” regarding personal space and expectations about where to walk, one of the researchers said in a statement at the time. It’s not going to be easy to keep these knee-high robots moving alongside human pedestrians.
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The massive winter storm that hit Texas in February caused widespread damage to water and electric infrastructure, and it also shut down oil refineries in the state.
That meant fewer refinery byproducts were produced, which meant there was less polyurethane foam produced, which meant no foam for car seats—and now automakers might have to stop or slow production in March until replacement supplies can be found.
One anonymous auto executive told Automotive News that this is going to be a bigger problem than the microchip shortage the industry is already dealing with.
The Texas-size electric grid shutdown that made headlines last month continues to have an impact on people living in the state, but it may also now affect production of new automobiles. That’s because the state’s failure to prepare for the dramatic winter storm and the resulting power outages stopped local petrochemical plants from operating, which is having a domino effect on the foam required to make new vehicle seats.

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When the state’s processing plants had to shut down, they put a pause on refining oil, which meant that the oil refinery byproducts that eventually get used in seats (specifically the propylene oxide that’s needed for polyurethane foam) were also not being produced for a while. And that lack is now becoming evident to the automotive industry to the degree that, according to Automotive News, which broke the news, the looming foam shortage could alter automobile production starting next week, perhaps even Monday. Other sources said the impact might not be felt until later in March. But everyone seems to agree that finding alternative sources for seat foam is a priority right now.

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“Everyone is scrambling,” one unnamed auto-industry executive told Crain’s Detroit Business. “This problem is bigger and closer than the semiconductor issue.”General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota, BMW, Hyundai, and Kia all told Automotive News that they’re monitoring the situation but do not have any production stoppages to announce just yet.
The devastating winter storm that hit Texas in mid-February was caused by a blast of cold Arctic air moving further south than usual. It wasn’t like the state didn’t have any warning, with a senior meteorologist working for the state’s unusual electric grid operator, ERCOT, writing in the days before the worst of the storm hit, “This period will go down in Texas weather history as one of the most extreme events to ever impact the state. Temperatures early next week will set widespread daily records that are likely to be the coldest experienced since the 1980s.”
A possible foam shortage is not the only supply chain issue that automakers have faced recently. Late last year, the industry was not able to source enough microchips for new cars, which forced at least eight automakers in North America and more around the world to adjust schedules at production plants. That shortage was driven by auto plant shutdowns that happened in early 2020 when the coronavirus started spreading across the globe. At the time, automakers lowered their orders for more chips, thinking they would not need them if the virus dramatically lowered demand for new cars. But demand bounced back sooner than expected and automakers quickly learned chip suppliers had by then promised their products to companies making consumer electronics.

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The reborn Land Rover Defender has been popular on both sides of the Atlantic in its two-door (90) and four-door (110, pictured above) sizes, so it’s not surprising that a three-row Defender 130 is coming.
The Defender 130 is expected to seat seven in a body about 201 inches long, about the same overall length as the Cadillac Escalade and GMC Yukon.
The bigger Defender is targeted at North America as well as China and the Middle East, according to a Jaguar Land Rover executive.
While rumors of a larger version of the Land Rover Defender have been circulating since the stylish SUV was first announced—with a leaked document seemingly confirming its existence in 2019—the British company has now confirmed that the new three-row Defender 130 exists and is being readied for market.

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This news is no great surprise; buyers of rugged SUVs like the extra practicality of three-row versions. But it does confirm the importance of the Defender for Jaguar Land Rover’s bottom line, with the growing clan a sign of where demand is strongest. Defender sales have been accelerating strongly since it was launched last year, and despite the disruption of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it made up 16 percent of the company’s total production in the last quarter of 2020 with that proportion set to grow dramatically this year.
The original Defender had model numbers referring to its wheelbase in inches and included commercial and pickup 130s, but never a three-row SUV like this. The new Defender has broken this naming convention with the 110 sitting on a 119-inch wheelbase that the 130 will share, but with overall length increased to around 201 inches, according to the leaked document, and could seat as many as eight.
Land Rover has confirmed the Defender 130 was discussed during a call between investors and JLR chief financial officer Adrian Mardell in February. Automotive News Europe quotes Mardell as saying, “The Defender 130 will hit a sweet spot in North America, China, and the Middle East, which we’re not yet touching.”
We don’t know which powerplants the 130 will get, but we would not be surprised if the entry-level P300 four-cylinder engine wasn’t adjudged worthy of such a gargantuan range topper. The recently announced supercharged V-8 version is a much more likely option, one that would come with a price comfortably over $100,000. Diesels will be available in other parts of the world, and Land Rover is set to launch a plug-in-hybrid Defender in some markets, one that combines the 296-hp four-cylinder engine with a 139-hp electric motor. There are no immediate plans to bring the plug-in to the States, but that might change in the face of toughening emissions requirements.
JLR has committed itself to a comprehensive transformation that will see the Jaguar brand turn EV only, and its entire existing model lineup axed, as soon as 2025. With the 130 plus the strong likelihood of other future variants, the Defender is going to play an increasing role in the company’s future.
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