Waymo says its autonomous vehicles have now traveled over 170 million miles while continuing to avoid serious crashes and injuries at a rate much better than human drivers. The company updated its online safety hub to reflect the new driving figures. But despite these successes, some safety advocates are raising questions about how the company […]
Nvidia added two leading Chinese automakers, BYD and Geely, to its robotaxi program, as the chipmaker seeks to put its stamp on the growing autonomous vehicle market worldwide. At its GTC conference today, Nvidia announced that BYD and Geely, as well as Isuzu and Nissan, would use the chipmaker’s Drive Hyperion platform, which combines the […]
Every six months or so, Nvidia’s head of automotive, Xinzhou Wu, invites CEO Jensen Huang to go for a ride in a vehicle equipped with the company’s hands-free autonomous driving system. But only when Wu has “good confidence” in the system’s driving capabilities. Recently, the two went for a drive from Woodside, California, to downtown […]
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 […]