Self Driving Cars

The industry faces new headwinds after California in October suspended the permit of General Motors' Cruise robotaxis to test on public roads.The U.S. Transportation Department needs to support the development of autonomous vehicles, a coalition of groups representing the industry warned on Thursday, saying the nascent industry risks losing out to competitors like China."The AV industry is at a critical juncture and in need of strong leadership from USDOT," the…

It’s not getting any easier for beleaguered autonomous-car startup Cruise after a report on Tuesday suggested its main backer, General Motors (GM), is about to slash funding for the startup. Cruise recently suspended nationwide testing on U.S. streets following a string of troubling incidents involving its autonomous cars, the most serious of which occurred in San Francisco last month when a Cruise car came to a halt on top of a woman who seconds earlier had been knocked over by a human-driven vehicle. GM will reveal…

IN RECENT years artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a revolution. After decades of modest progress that never quite lived up to its promise, a different approach—relying on big data and stats, not clever algorithms—made huge strides in solving real-world problems like voice- and image-recognition and self-driving cars. Also in the past ten years, a lot of books have been published that aim to explain what AI is, where it’s going and why it matters. Books by AI academics do well at explaining the technology but are…

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…

In August 2016, WIRED visited the San Francisco offices of a young startup recently snapped up by a surprising buyer. General Motors acquired three-year-old Cruise for a reported $1 billion in hopes the straitlaced Detroit automaker could coopt the self-driving technology tipped to disrupt the auto industry. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt—a scrappy Twitch cofounder who competed as a teen in BattleBots—said he intended to stick around, but to keep running the driverless-car tech developer like a startup. He’d be out of a job, he…

Cruise General Motors-owned  Cruise has halted production of its fully driverless vehicle — the Origin — just over a week after it suspended robotaxi operations nationwide following a number of troubling incidents involving its cars. The news was announced by Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt during a meeting with staff on Monday, according to Forbes, which obtained audio of the gathering. The Origin van is a purpose-built driverless vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and was trumpeted as the future of Cruise’s robotaxi…

Autonomous car startup Cruise has run into trouble in California after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said Tuesday it was suspending its deployment and driverless permits with immediate effect. The dramatic intervention comes just a couple of months after General Motors-owned Cruise was given permission to operate robotaxi services around the clock, but also follows a number of troubling incidents involving self-driving Cruise cars on the streets of San Francisco, where it’s been carrying out tests on…

Dubai Police While U.S. firms like Waymo and Cruise focus on ridesharing services with their autonomous vehicles, the United Arab Emirates’ coastal city of Dubai is aiming to take the technology to another level by deploying it in police patrol cars. Dubai Police recently announced plans to use fully electric, self-driving patrol cars in residential areas, local media reported this week. The robocar’s battery allows it to patrol non-stop for up to 15 hours and features an advanced security camera with 360-degree…

Waymo Six years after launching its autonomous-truck program, Waymo has said it’s decided to focus more on developing its ridesharing ambitions using its self-driving cars and minivans. The California-based, Alphabet-owned company said its decision to effectively put autonomous trucking on the back burner is down to the “tremendous momentum and substantial commercial opportunity” that it’s seeing with the pilot ridesharing service it launched in Arizona in 2018 before taking it to several other states. Customers…

Tesla's move to license its technology comes after years of failed promises by many to create software that lets cars drive themselves.Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk on Wednesday set new targets for artificial intelligence products including self-driving software and using humanoid robots in factories, though he acknowledged he's been optimistic before.The electric vehicle maker is in early talks with a major automaker to license its full self-driving technology, Musk…