Uber is moving aggressively into robotaxis, striking deals with new partners and promising big investments to support future fleets – basically everything it can do except design and build the vehicles itself. (It tried that once, unsuccessfully.) Now, the ridehail giant is launching a new initiative to support its third-party robotaxi partners called Uber Autonomous […]
New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) dropped her proposal to allow robotaxi companies to launch commercially in cities other than New York City, citing a lack of support among state legislators, Bloomberg reports today. The move is a blow to Waymo and other robotaxi companies who saw New York, and especially New York City, as […]
Waymo defended its use of remote assistants for its robotaxis after the testimony of one of its top executives during a Senate hearing went viral. In a letter to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on Tuesday, Waymo’s head of global operations Ryan McNamara provided a detailed description of the company’s remote assistance operations, including the number […]
After years of testing and validation, Waymo announced today that it’s sixth-generation robotaxi technology is finally ready for passenger trips. The updated autonomous driving system will first be rolled out for employees and their friends in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with public customers to follow. Waymo’s current fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles runs on […]
Aurora, the driverless truck firm founded by former members of Google’s pioneering self-driving car team, is branching out. In advance of its quarterly earnings report today, the company announced that a new software update would enable it to triple its driverless network to a total of 10 routes across the Southern US. Currently, Aurora has […]
An autonomous vehicle drives down a lonely stretch of highway. Suddenly, a massive tornado appears in the distance. What does the driverless vehicle do next? This is just one of the scenarios that Waymo can simulate in the “hyper realistic” virtual world that it has just created with help from Google’s DeepMind. Waymo’s World Model […]
Is the long freeze on Chinese automakers selling cars in the US finally starting to thaw? China is the largest auto market in the world and now the largest car exporter, too. But high tariffs and geopolitical tensions have kept Chinese automakers away from US customers. Many of those cars are ready for primetime and […]
For years, Alphabet-owned Waymo has tried to set itself apart from other self-driving startups by emphasizing a culture of caution and safety. Now, just ahead of major planned rollouts across the country, it is facing a recurring failure in one of the most sensitive places imaginable: school zones. In December, the National Highway Traffic Safety […]
During a two-hour hearing in the US Senate Wednesday, top executives from Waymo and Tesla urged lawmakers to take action on long-stalled legislation to speed the deployment of self-driving cars on public roads. But after two hours of Q&A around a number of hot-button topics, including robotaxi safety, legal liability, remote operation, and China, it […]
Waymo announced a $16 billion investment round aimed at bringing its robotaxi business to more US cities, as well as some overseas markets. The funding round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, a “crossover” firm known for investing in late-stage tech companies before they go public. Waymo’s co-CEOs said in a blog post they would […]