All posts tagged: robotaxis

Waymo’s robotaxis are coming to three new cities

Waymo’s robotaxis are coming to three new cities

Published by Webster

Waymo said it plans on launching commercial robotaxi services in three new cities: San Diego, Las Vegas, and Detroit. The announcement comes after the company said it would begin rapidly scaling to bring its fully driverless technology to more people on a faster timeline. Waymo didn’t say exactly when it plans on opening up its vehicles to customers in all three cities, but it will likely be sometime next year. The company currently operates in five cities: San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. It has also said it wants to launch in Boston, Seattle, Denver, Miami, New York City, and Washington, DC. (The company is experiencing local pushback in both Boston and Seattle.) Waymo is licensed for autonomous ridehailing in California, but will still need to obtain approval in Nevada and Michigan before it can operate fully driverless cars in a commercial capacity. Waymo will need a Transportation Network Company permit in Michigan, and testing approval from both Nevada’s DMV and the state’s transportation authority for commercial operations, Waymo spokesperson Sandy …

Lyft’s robotaxis will launch in Atlanta this summer

Lyft’s robotaxis will launch in Atlanta this summer

Published by Webster

Lyft will let users in Atlanta catch robotaxi rides starting this summer, as reported by NBC News. “Atlanta riders will have the opportunity to be matched with a fleet of autonomous Toyota Sienna minivans equipped with May Mobility’s autonomous technology, a deployment that Lyft and May Mobility aim to scale over time across multiple markets,” Lyft spokesperson CJ Macklin tells The Verge. Macklin said the company plans to bring autonomous vehicles to Dallas next year using Marubeni cars outfitted with Mobileye technology and that “thousands of vehicles and more cities” will follow. Lyft announced its partnerships with May Mobility and Intel-owned Mobileye in November, when it indicated its intention to launch the autonomous, May Mobility-powered cars sometime in 2025. Lyft announced its partnership with Marubeni in February. Disclaimer: We do not own any of the content, ideas, images, or text presented here. All rights belong to their respective owners. For more information and to view the original source, please visit the following link: Source link

Tesla awarded ride-hail permit in California, a first step for robotaxis

Tesla awarded ride-hail permit in California, a first step for robotaxis

Published by Webster

With its new permit, Tesla can transport its own employees as passengers in Tesla vehicles on a pre-arranged basis, according to CPUC. It can then transition to using the permit to transport members of the public, but will need to notify the agency first before initiating that step. TCP permits are different from the permits for ridehailing companies like Uber and Lyft, which operate as transportation network companies that connect independent drivers to customers via mobile apps. With its new permit, Tesla can transport its own employees as passengers in Tesla vehicles on a pre-arranged basis. Also, its important to note that Tesla is not yet participating in CPUC’s autonomous vehicle passenger program — though it will need to do so if it intends to launch a commercial passenger service using driverless cars. The company would also need to obtain permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test fully driverless vehicles — which it has yet to do. Musk has caught a lot of flack over the years for repeatedly promising that fully …

Tesla awarded ride-hail permit in California, a first step for robotaxis

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says robotaxis will launch in Austin this June

Published by Webster

Tesla will launch an “unsupervised, no one in the car” robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, Elon Musk said in an earnings call Wednesday. “We just want to put a toe in the water, make sure everything’s okay, put a few more toes in the water, with safety of the general public and those in the car as a top priority,” Musk said. In its letter to shareholders, Tesla said its customers have cumulatively driven over 3 billion miles on Full Self-Driving (Supervised) — the company’s advanced driver system — as of January. Tesla says that FSD (Supervised) is a precursor to fully autonomous vehicles, but the company warns customers that they need to continue to pay attention to the road since the system does not make the vehicle autonomous. The company also claims to have increased AI training compute by over 400 percent in 2024. The company recently posted video of dozens of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles driving “without human intervention.” The vehicles have no human safety driver inside them as …

It was a rough year for robotaxis — but not for Waymo

It was a rough year for robotaxis — but not for Waymo

Published by Webster

While its rivals have been stuck in perpetual testing or forced to shut down completely due to dry coffers, Waymo has quietly amassed a legitimate robotaxi business that continues to grow and evolve. And today, it showed off a few numbers that underscore just how far ahead of the rest of the industry it is. Chief among those is the number 4 million, which is how many driverless rides the company provided in the three cities in which it operates: Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Waymo says it has provided a total of 5 million driverless rides in its three key markets, which means nearly all of its growth took place this year alone. Waymo’s service area is small but growing — the company says that it services 500 square miles cumulatively across all three of its main cities, as well as Austin, where it is still operating with a waitlist. The company plans to launch in Atlanta and Miami and recently said it would test its vehicles in Japan. Four million driverless trips …

Waymo’s robotaxis pass the first responder test

Waymo’s robotaxis pass the first responder test

Published by Webster

Waymo’s driverless vehicles can detect emergency vehicles, know how to respond to hand signals for traffic cops, and can be disabled manually when something goes wrong, according to an independent review of the company’s first responder protocols. As such, the Alphabet company’s first responder protocols passed an independent review conducted by Tüv Süd, a German tech inspection company. The firm’s assessment found that Waymo’s First Responder Program “meets industry standards” for responding to emergency situations, which is in line with the best practices set out in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Waymo — and indeed the entire autonomous vehicle industry — has been under intense scrutiny, especially around how its driverless cars behave around police, fire, and other emergency responders. But Waymo is staking out the position that it goes beyond what’s required to prove that its vehicles are trustworthy. The firm’s assessment found that Waymo’s First Responder Program “meets industry standards” Case in point: having its first responder protocols scrutinized by an independent group like Tüv Süd. The company has also publicly released its …

Cruise lost 5 million this quarter, even with its robotaxis on hiatus

Cruise lost $435 million this quarter, even with its robotaxis on hiatus

Published by Webster

Even with most of its autonomous vehicle fleet on ice, Cruise is still bleeding cash. The robotaxi company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors lost $435 million in the third quarter of 2024, GM reported this morning. That’s an improvement from the $791 million lost in the third quarter of 2023. It’s an instructive moment to check in with Cruise, because the company has been on hiatus since October 27, 2023, weeks after one of its driverless vehicles in San Francisco struck and then dragged a pedestrian over 20 feet, severely injuring her. Cruise has made small steps toward restarting its robotaxi service since then, with test vehicles on the roads in Arizona and Texas. It recently announced plans to deploy manually driven vehicles in the Bay Area later this year, but it still hasn’t said when it will resume its paid commercial service. Cruise is unique in the world of autonomous cars, in so far as we have much more insight into the company’s finances than nearly all of its competitors. …

New York City welcomes robotaxis — but only with safety drivers

Published by Webster

New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times. As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City is trying to get ahead of the problem by outlining what it calls “a rigorous permitting program” that it claims will ensure applicants are “ready to test their technology in the country’s most challenging urban environment safely and proficiently.” “This technology is coming whether we like it or not,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to The Verge, “so we’re going to make sure that we get it right.” “This technology is coming whether we like it or not” The requirements would exclude companies without previous autonomous vehicle testing experience in other cities. Applicants would need to submit information from previous tests, including details on any crashes that occurred and how often safety drivers have to take control of the …

How May Mobility went fully driverless while avoiding the pitfalls of robotaxis

Published by Webster

You probably haven’t heard of autonomous vehicle operator May Mobility because the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company is exceptionally good at avoiding the types of headlines generated by other AV companies. In its six years in operation, there haven’t been any injuries, crashes, blocked intersections, or mass layoffs. While there have been some struggles, the company has proven to be an outlier among AV operators by continuing to raise money while others have seen their funding dry up. And now, May Mobility is ready to go fully driverless, a milestone that has the company taking stock of its successes — and looking ahead to the future. “The most capital-efficient AV company that the world has ever seen” “It’s not robotaxis,” May Mobility CEO Edwin Olson said of his company’s business model. “We’re selling long-term transportation contracts, primarily to businesses and governments, which builds us a really easy on-ramp to deploy the technology step by step, keeping our burn rate low. And being really the most capital-efficient AV company that the world has ever seen.” Robotaxi ventures like …

Cruise’s driverless robotaxis are accepting passengers in Phoenix and Austin

Published by Webster

On Tuesday, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt tweeted a short video of passengers from those two cities raving about its fully driverless vehicles as proof of a promise delivered. “Folks, we are entering the golden years of AV expansion,” he added. To start out, only “friends and family” of Cruise employees will have access to the company’s ridehail service, including its fully driverless vehicles. But that will gradually grow to include people unaffiliated with Cruise. The company opened waiting lists for both cities this week and expects to begin offering rides once it has enough vehicles to meet the demand, a spokesperson said. To start out, only “friends and family” of Cruise employees will have access to the company’s ridehail service Earlier this year, the company boasted that it would only take “90 days” to go from “zero to driverless” as a demonstration of its ability to launch in new cities without as much testing needed as its original market, San Francisco. Indeed, it did take years for Cruise to launch its paid driverless taxi service …