Uber beats Waymo as first to launch robotaxis in London
Uber beats Waymo as first to launch robotaxis in London

Uber beat out Waymo in launching a commercial robotaxi service in London, the city’s first. The vehicles use autonomous driving tech developed by Wayve, a UK-based startup, and will initially feature safety drivers behind the wheel. The launch is a milestone for Uber, which has been plotting a UK launch with Wayve for several years. […]

Elon Musk’s heterodox robotaxi philosophy gets put to the test
Elon Musk’s heterodox robotaxi philosophy gets put to the test

Believe it or not, the Tesla Cybercab is coming. Nearly two years after Elon Musk first unveiled the gold-tinted, gull-wing-door sporting, steering-wheel-free, two-seaters as the future of Tesla’s autonomy efforts, the company is finally putting them into operation as part of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. Public rides are here, and as Musk fans […]

Car owners want tech they can ignore
Car owners want tech they can ignore

Automakers keep shoving more tech into their cars, despite evidence that consumers are increasingly fed up with huge screens and glitchy software. In fact, the features that car owners appreciate the most happen to be the ones they barely notice, according to the latest tech survey from JD Power. The consumer research firm surveyed 68,084 […]

In a swipe at Tesla, Waymo says ‘cameras… aren’t enough’
In a swipe at Tesla, Waymo says ‘cameras… aren’t enough’

As Tesla gears up for the official launch of its steering wheel and pedal-less Cybercabs, Waymo is issuing a stark warning about Elon Musk’s approach autonomous driving. Srikanth Thirumalai, Waymo’s VP of Onboard Software, doesn’t specifically call out Musk or Tesla in a blog post, published Wednesday, entitled “10 AI Lessons from Driving 200+ Million […]

Robotaxis are real now — so is the pushback
Robotaxis are real now — so is the pushback

Robotaxis are expanding. So is the fight over the rules governing them. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul withdrew a proposal earlier this year that would have opened the door to driverless robotaxis outside New York City after taxi drivers, unions, and state lawmakers opposed it. Six months later, commercial driverless service remains illegal in […]

Tesla Robotaxis appear to go fully unsupervised in Austin ahead of Cybercab launch
Tesla Robotaxis appear to go fully unsupervised in Austin ahead of Cybercab launch

Seven months after Elon Musk announced that Tesla Robotaxis in Austin were operating without human safety monitors onboard, the city’s service appears to have finally gone fully driverless. Over the past two weeks, all 170 Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin monitored by the crowdsourced Robotaxi Tracker were unsupervised, the site’s creator, Ethan McKanna, told The […]

Waymo lifts the lid on the ‘brain’ powering its robotaxis
Waymo lifts the lid on the ‘brain’ powering its robotaxis

What’s in the trunk of your car? Shopping bags? A spare tire? Jumper cables? What about a high-powered computer capable of performing up to one quadrillion operations a second? Only if you’re Waymo. For the first time, Waymo revealed key details about the heavy compute “brain” housed in the trunk of its robotaxis, including chip […]

Tesla is finally launching the Cybercab — let’s hope it’s ready
Tesla is finally launching the Cybercab — let’s hope it’s ready

The Tesla Cybercab, that golden two-seater central to Elon Musk’s robo-supremacist ambitions, is finally nearing its public launch. Whether or not the no-steering wheel and no-pedal vehicle is actually ready for public roads, let alone customers, remains very much in doubt. According to The Information, Tesla is planning a public launch of the Cybercab in […]

Uber CEO brushes off reports of a Waymo break-up
Uber CEO brushes off reports of a Waymo break-up

After Uber and Waymo ended their partnership in Phoenix earlier this year, experts and robotaxi watchers wondered whether the companies’ improbable bromance was fraying. Not so, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said today. The two companies are committed to continue working together in Atlanta and Austin, and the partnership remains “very strong.” “Waymo is a very […]

Zoox can now charge for rides in its steering-wheel-free robotaxis
Zoox can now charge for rides in its steering-wheel-free robotaxis

Zoox just got permission to charge for robotaxi rides in its boxy, steering-wheel-less vehicles. On Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it has granted the Amazon-owned Zoox a temporary exemption, allowing it to deploy up to 2,500 vehicles annually over the next two years, as reported earlier by Reuters. The NHTSA’s decision exempts […]