robotaxis

Waymo After several years of testing its autonomous vehicles on city streets without a human engineer behind the wheel, Waymo is about to send its fully driverless cars onto freeways for the first time. The Alphabet-owned company announced the move in a blog post on Monday, signaling a notable expansion of its driverless car program. Waymo has been offering robotaxi rides to regular folks enrolled in its Waymo One ridesharing program in Phoenix and San Francisco, but the first freeway rides across Phoenix will be…

Jeff Farrah, CEO of lobbying group the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, which counts Waymo, Cruise, and other self-driving developers in its membership, says keeping motor vehicle regulation authority firmly in states’ hands is consistent with how vehicles have been regulated in the past. “Cities have a role to play in enforcing traffic laws, but life-saving AV technology cannot be scaled if dozens of cities are enacting contradictory regulations,” he says.Seattle disagrees. The city is a test bed for vehicles in…

Autonomous vehicle company May Mobility has launched its first driverless on-demand microtransit service on public roads in Sun City, Arizona in partnership with transit tech company Via. The milestone is in line with May Mobility’s goal of launching rider-only operations by 2023. It also signals that the gentle onramp approach to commercializing autonomy could be working for the startup. Sun City is a planned community for “active, retired adults.” Launching a driverless microtransit service in such an environment…

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)Whatever you believe about the future of AI, there’s probably a cult out there for you. Ideological factions have been drawing lines for years and they each seem to bring pseudoreligious trappings with them. If you believe AI will inevitably kill everyone on the planet you might want to join the MIRI cult. If you believe that AI is dangerous but you and your close personal friends are the only people smart enough to control it, you might fit in with the Effective Altruist cult. And if…

It is also a setback for an industry dependent on public trust and the cooperation of regulators. Cruise had in recent months touted ambitious plans to expand to more cities, offering fully autonomous taxi rides.General Motors' robotaxi unit Cruise is planning to re-launch in one unspecified city before expanding to others, just weeks after California barred its self-driving vehicles from public roads following an accident last month.Cruise last week paused all…

Cruise co-founder Daniel Kan has quit the beleaguered autonomous-car company, Reuters reported on Monday. His departure as chief product officer comes a day after Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt announced he was leaving the company that the pair set up 10 years ago. The significant upheaval follows a string of safety-related incidents involving its driverless cars on the streets of San Francisco, the same city where the General Motors-backed startup is headquartered. The most of serious of these happened in San…

The co-founder of Cruise, Kyle Vogt, resigned from his duties as CEO, CTO, and President on Sunday night, following a month of turbulence for General Motors’ self-driving car subsidiary. Vogt exits the startup he launched in his garage 10 years ago, just weeks after Cruise recalled 950 robotaxis after one of them dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco.Cops Pull Over Self-Driving Car“To my former colleagues at Cruise and GM - you’ve got this,” said Vogt in his resignation announcement on X. “Regardless of what originally…

This Cruise in San Francisco seemingly could not figure out how to pull aside on a narrow street to let a buss pass.Matt Rosoff, CNBCCruise CEO and founder Kyle Vogt posted comments on Hacker News on Sunday responding to allegations that his company's robotaxis aren't really self-driving, but instead require frequent help from humans working in a remote operations center.First, Vogt confirmed that the General Motors-owned company does have a remote assistance team, in response to a discussion under the header, "GM's…

Cruise, the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, has issued a recall effecting 950 of its robotaxis following a pedestrian collision in San Francisco last month.Previously, the company had grounded all of its driverless operations following the Oct. 2 collision during which a pedestrian was thrown into the path of the Cruise robotaxi by a human driver in a different car who hit her first.The Cruise autonomous vehicle braked aggressively before impact and then tried to pull over to the side of the road,…

Robotaxi companies are eager to present themselves with a green halo. “Climate change is the single biggest issue we face as a global community,” Cruise declared in a blog post published on Earth Day 2022. “Each of us has an opportunity to make an impact. Cruise knows the AV industry can –– and should –– help lead the charge.” Its rival Waymo seems to agree. In a post this summer, the company stated, “Cities where we operate gain another zero-emission transportation option, which could help them meet their climate…