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 […]
Is Tesla still a car company? It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves more frequently over the past year, especially as the company’s car business shrinks and Elon Musk continues to push the message that Tesla should be seen more as an AI and robotics leader and less so as a mere seller of four-wheeled […]
Waymo has finally broken through its SFO logjam. The company announced today that it will start offering robotaxi rides to a select group of passengers traveling to and from the San Francisco International Airport, a major step in Waymo’s effort to increase its footprint in the Bay Area. The company plans on gradually growing the […]
A Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California, on January 23rd, causing minor injuries and prompting the National Highway Traffic Safety administration to open an investigation. The incident occurred during normal school drop off hours, with other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity, NHTSA […]
Waabi, the Toronto-based autonomous trucking startup, is expanding its portfolio to include robotaxis. And it’s bringing Uber along for the ride. Raquel Urtasun, the former chief scientist at Uber’s now defunct Advanced Technologies Group, founded Waabi in 2021 to be a more “AI-centric approach” to autonomous vehicles. That approach initially focused on trucking, with Waabi […]
Tesla’s robotaxis are not robotaxis in the sense that they’re not fully driverless and still feature safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case anything goes wrong. But the automaker is shaking things up with its approach to pricing, according to a new analysis of the nascent market. Obi, an app that aggregates […]
Tesla scrapped its Autopilot driver assist feature that used to come standard in new vehicles, as it attempts to steer customers to its newly subscription-only Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. According to Electrek, the company removed Basic Autopilot as a standard feature from new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in North America. That means in […]
Tesla is finally doing unsupervised robotaxi trips in Austin, Texas, according to a video posted on X. Elon Musk reposted the video, congratulating Tesla’s AI team for the milestone. For months, Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco have included safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case of emergency – a fallback […]