Five days, three continents, and four cities: Munich, New York, San Francisco, and Beijing. It may sound like the itinerary of a famous rock band’s world tour, but it’s actually something even more exclusive. BMW's integrated its newest concept car into a jet, and set off on the iNEXT World Flight to preview its vision of the next generation of electric vehicles.
Mercedes-Benz has revealed Vision URBANETIC, a new concept for a modular, autonomous platform equally at home transporting cargo as it is people. Handiwork of Mercedes-Benz Vans, the new concept is based on an underlying self-driving chassis, that would be electrically powered for zero-emission use in cities and other urban areas.
Air travel is dire, autonomous car development is split into poorly-communicating silos, and the goal of cutting road fatalities and making better use of infrastructure simply isn't the priority it ought to be. That, at least, is how Volvo sees the state of play in the self-driving world, and while the striking new 360c concept car may be a very visible expression of its focus on autonomy, arguably it's its ambitions for co-development and exploring new businesses that are more dramatic.
Concept cars are typically a designer's flight of fancy, but that doesn't mean the Volvo 360c doesn't have some very good ideas for real-life. The autonomous EV, with its highly flexible cabin and communicative light strips, is a rich vein of clever details, some more production-ready than others.
The folks at Skydio made a drone that took self-driving car-like tech to the skies - now they're releasing that tech to developers. With the Skydio Autonomy Platform, developers were invited this week by the Skydio team to join in on the Skydio R1 fun with Skills. Skills can be developed by developers "in a few lines of Python via a rich set of APIs." How much could this affect the life of the average SlashGear reader? Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
Volvo has revealed its new driverless concept car, but the Volvo 360c is more about how autonomy could change your day-to-day life than the usual auto industry obsessions of speed and horsepower. The striking prototype is more about the interior and what you'll do in it, in fact, whether that be sleeping, entertaining, or working. With that, Volvo argues, could come reduced congestion in cities, less of a pressure to live in dense urban environments, and even potentially lucrative alternatives to air travel and more.
Apple has experienced its first autonomous car crash in California, state DMV records reveal. The incident happened on August 24 and, based on the publicly available report, was the result of a different vehicle that struck the rear of the autonomous car. The incident is reported to have happened during daylight hours and didn't result in injuries.
Waymo's autonomous cars may not be as advanced as widely believed, with insiders along with human drivers sharing the roads with the Alphabet company's Arizona trial warning a reality-check is required. The self-driving car project was spun out of a Google division, and began real-world testing in Phoenix, AZ in 2016.
Toyota and Uber have announced that they are extending their collaboration agreement in the autonomous auto realm. The deal will see Toyota invest $500 million into Uber. Uber plans to integrate its self-driving tech alongside the Toyota Guardian technology in vehicles built specifically for the Uber ride-sharing network. Toyota and Uber want to bring autonomous ride-sharing to the masses at scale.
Kroger is testing the use of self-driving cars for grocery deliveries as a pilot taking place in Scottsdale, Arizona. The test is performed in conjunction with Nuro, which is behind the first ever autonomous delivery car. The new serivce requires customers to purchase items via the Fry's Food website or mobile app, after which point the vehicle will deliver the goods.
The Apple Car rumor has reignited, with analyst predictions that the Cupertino company will look to four wheels and complex technology for its next iPhone-scale success. Speculation that Apple is considering wading into transportation has been a regular topic of discussion in recent years, as investors and fans alike try to guess what the $1 trillion company might do next.
Self-driving cars are the future. Almost every car maker, in one way or another, has embraced technology that can take over the wheel partially or completely. It has become not a question of “if” but of “when”. Some car makers are convinced that self-driving cars will be hitting the road in two years’ time. That, however, might be an extremely optimistic outlook that may miss out on how self-driving car tech just isn’t trustworthy yet, and it’s not for the reasons you might immediately think.