Waymo's driverless car service could begin taking paying customers as soon as December, sources claim, with the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle project finally taking on Uber and Lyft. The Google spin-off had promised earlier this year that it would launch a commercial ride-hailing service somewhere in the US.
Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler and automotive supplier heavyweight Bosch will start an autonomous ride-hailing service in California next year, offering self-driving taxis. The project will take place in San Jose, the third largest city in California, while the vehicles will be Level 4/5 autonomous, with the ability to drive themselves completely without human interaction.
In a blog post on Monday, Waymo CEO John Krafcik revealed that one of the company's self-driving vehicles has been involved in an accident with a motorcycle. The "manual collision" happened in Mountain View, California, on El Camino Real, and was the result of an attempt to avoid a different anticipated wreck, according to the company. The car was not operating itself at the time of the accident.
Waymo has been given permission by the California DMV to conduct self-driving car tests on public roads. The company announced its new permit today, saying this is the first permit in the state that authorizes this type of testing. This follows almost a decade of testing in California, according to Waymo, which has been testing driverless cars in Arizona since 2017.
Cars are becoming more and more like smartphones these days. Not just "connected to smartphones" but also using pretty much the same technologies are the computers in our pockets. That's especially true for the silicon that allows for these vehicles to become partially or even fully autonomous. So it's not a big surprise that Samsung is announcing that two of its now popular chips are coming to the automotive industry, bringing its Exynos processors and ISOCELL sensors to the smart vehicles of the future.
In an announcement today, Arizona officials revealed the creation of the Institute for Automated Mobility (IAM). This consortium is composed of private companies, university researchers, and public officials, according to the state, the goal being a collaboration on state of the art research within Arizona. Intel is listed as a founding partner.
Waymo has announced that its self-driving vehicles have eclipsed 10 million miles combined. That huge number of autonomous miles were driven in 25 cities across the US including locations in California, Arizona, and Michigan. The roads included high-speed roads near Phoenix and the urban streets of San Francisco.
Toyota is the biggest Japanese automotive manufacturer and Softbank is one of the biggest tech firms in the country. The two firms have announced they have tied up to develop a platform that will allow the operation of self-driving vehicles. The duo sees these vehicles being used as mobile shops, hospitals, and other services in the future where fewer people control their own vehicles.
Next-generation autonomous car testing could accelerate in the US, with safety regulators weighing new versions of rules that would allow automakers to do away with human safety drivers and traditional controls. The proposed changes came as the NHTSA announced a pilot program for driverless vehicles, which will aim to make testing rules consistent across the country.
Consumer Reports (CR) recently ranked autonomous driving systems for the first time and in that test, it pitted Cadillac against Tesla, Nissan, and Volvo. Tesla's Autopilot system is the partially autonomous driving tech that we hear about most, but Cadillac has a similar system called Super Cruise. In CR's testing, the Cadillac system came out on top.
Honda and GM's Cruise autonomous car division have inked a multi-billion deal to produce a new self-driving vehicle, as the driverless car wars continue to escalate. The deal will see Honda invest $750m today in Cruise, the autonomous car start-up that General Motors acquired in early 2016, as a result valuing the company at more than $14.6 billion.
Renault is working hard to bring the future of autonomous vehicles to market with an experience that caters to just about every demographic. Renault showed off its EZ-Go autonomous vehicle for getting the masses wherever they need to be. For those not wanting a basic mobility experience, Renault is showing off its vision for a premium autonomous mobility service.