Autonomous Cars

The state’s DMV is inviting proposals for how best to regulate heavy-duty autonomous vehicles, which have so far been prohibited on California’s public highways. Meanwhile, the California state legislature advanced a bill to require a human operator in robot trucks at all times. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar proposal last year, but hasn’t said whether he would do it again.

After almost two years of testing and a gradual phase-in program, Waymo says its finally ready to provide 24/7 robotaxi service at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. It’s a pretty big milestone, given how financially essential airports trips are for all human-powered ridehail and taxi services. Waymo also recently completed its 100,000th trip to the airport, and is available for curbside pickup at Terminals 3 and 4. Airport pickups are typically pretty chaotic. So, good luck robots!

The robotaxi company says its doing 100,000 paid trips a week, up from 50,000 a week last May. This comes after the company got rid of its waitlist in San Francisco, and expanded its service area in the city. Saswat Panigrahi, chief product officer, had this to say about the milestone:

People still think of autonomous vehicles as the faraway future, but for more and more people, they’re now an everyday reality.

People also don’t want to hear lots of robot cars honking at each other in parking lots as part of their everyday reality, but I digress. (Fixed this time, hopefully?)

Sophia Tung, who runs a 24/7 livestream of a Waymo parking lot, says on Reddit she’ll interview the director, Vishay Nihalani on the stream on Monday at 2:30PM PT / 5:30PM ET.

Tung plans to discuss the robotaxis’ 4AM honking and Waymo’s subsequent fix. She’s taking suggestions, like asking about highway testing or odd parking lot behavior. (There’s a spreadsheet.)

Correction: Nihalani is Waymo’s director of product management and operations, not the operations boss.

The Alphabet-owned company is taking its robotaxis to snowier climes, namely “Truckee, CA; Upstate New York; and across Michigan–from the Upper Peninsula to the metro Detroit area,” according to a post on X. So far, most driverless companies have avoided locations with messy weather, as rain and snow can really mess with the vehicle’s perception systems. But you can’t operate in dry, desert conditions forever and have a successful business.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Waymo has ventured onto snowy roads.

Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli explains why the problem started and why its autonomous cars are quieter now (shown in the livestream below):

We recently introduced a useful feature to help avoid low speed collisions by honking if other cars get too close while reversing toward us. It has been working great in the city, but we didn’t quite anticipate it would happen so often in our own parking lots. We’ve updated the software, so our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward.

Ford CEO Jim Farley announced the European Commission’s approval of its hands-free BlueCruise driver-assist tech (despite an ongoing NHTSA investigation), which means Mustang Mach-E buyers in 15 EU countries can now get the feature (and some current owners can get it through a software update).

BlueCruise has been driven for more than 213 million miles globally, according to Ford — up from 200 million in June.

During Alphabet’s earnings call on Tuesday, CFO Ruth Porat said the company will “commit to a new multi-year investment of $5 billion” into Waymo, which has launched its robotaxi service in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

Chinese automaker XPeng is revealing the first images of its P7 Plus electric car with camera-based self-driving technology that operates similarly to Tesla’s Full-Self Driving (FSD) tech. As reported by Electrek, XPeng previously used Lidar in its cars, an approach that some automakers and robotaxi ventures count on in the pursuit of achieving autonomous driving.

Misleading claims about Tesla’s alleged autonomous vehicle development are a dime-a-dozen, but this quote in the Wall Street Journal about China’s AV program was enough to exasperate ex-Waymo CEO John Krafcik.

Just to be clear: Waymo operates fully driverless vehicles, while Tesla’s Full Self-Driving requires a human driver behind the wheel.

Marc Whitten, who ran Amazon’s Fire TV and Kindle divisions and more recently served as president at Unity Create, is stepping into the role left empty by Kyle Vogt, who stepped down after a disastrous response to a driverless car crash incident. The GM-backed robotaxi company has been slowly deploying more vehicles after vacating San Francisco in the wake of the incident in which one of its vehicles dragged a pedestrian 20 feet.

Despite numerous setbacks, autonomous vehicle startups are somehow still able to get rich investors to open their wallets to them. Just today, Waabi, the driverless truck startup founded by former chief scientist at Uber’s Advanced Technology Group Raquel Urtasun, announced its Series B funding round, led by Uber and Khosla Ventures, of $200 million. The money will go toward the launch of the company’s “fully driverless, generative AI-powered autonomous trucks” by 2025. Big bucks and an elusive deadline to launch the new tech? What is this, 2017?

The legislation would have given large cities the power to tax or even restrict autonomous vehicle deployment. But after lawmakers proposed stripping local control provisions, the bill’s sponsor decided to put it on ice. AV lobbyists opposed the bill, calling it a “backdoor ban.” But supporters said cities should have more say over whether to allow driverless cars on their streets.

That’s on top of San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Zoox’s original Foster City test. Note, though:

We won’t be deploying our purpose-built robotaxi or offering public rides in Austin or Miami just yet. Our target cities for our first commercial markets remain Las Vegas and San Francisco. But we’re exploring several cities for future commercial offerings after our initial launch.

The robotaxi company now covers 315 square miles in Metro Phoenix, making it “the largest autonomous ride-hail territory in the United States” — a totally real and not-at-all-made-up superlative. Even so, the incremental growth shows that Waymo is getting more confident in its driverless capabilities. But some argue the real confidence is when it can start adding multiple new cities in a year. And Waymo still feels like it’s not quite there yet.

Under a new state bill, cities could limit the number of autonomous vehicles on their roads, and set maximum fares that companies could charge. The bill, which passed the State Senate and is now being considered by the Assembly, is in response to a number of incidents in which robotaxis blocked emergency vehicles or caused traffic jams. Lawmakers say they want to regulate robotaxis the same way they do human-driven for-hire vehicles.

The GM-owned robotaxi company is manually testing its cars in the Texas capitol, as it continues to slowly work its way back to some semblance of a commercial service. Cruise is also operating some of its vehicles in autonomous mode in Phoenix. The company suspended its robotaxi service last year after one of its vehicle struck and drug a pedestrian for over 20 feet in San Francisco.

GM’s Cruise reportedly settled with the pedestrian who was struck by a hit-and-run driver and then drug 20 feet by one of the company’s driverless cars last October in San Francisco. The settlement, which was reached earlier this year, was between $8-12 million, according to Fortune. The pedestrian has since been released from the hospital, and Cruise just started driving autonomously in Phoenix after months on the sidelines.