Alphabet's Waymo announced today that it's expanding to new markets, revealing that it's bringing some of its vehicles to Texas and parts of New Mexico. More specifically, those living in Texas and New Mexico can expect to see Waymo's Chrysler Pacificas and long-haul trucks on the road in the near future.
Rarely has "form follows function" been so fitting as with the Cruise Origin, the autonomous taxi pod that the GM and Honda-backed transportation company revealed this week. It's a far cry from most of the self-driving concepts we've seen before, swoopingly futuristic vehicles fit for a sci-fi movie. That's not from a lack of design attention, however: indeed, everything about the Origin is painstakingly intentional.
Cruise doesn't want to sell you an autonomous car, just rent you a seat in one, and the Cruise Origin is the self-driving electric vehicle it believes will coax drivers out from behind the steering wheel. Handiwork of Cruise, General Motors, and Honda, the Origin is no hopeful concept, the trio insists, but an actual production vehicle that will soon be plying the roads.
BMW's big electric car launch, the BMW iNEXT, will come with integrated 5G the automaker has confirmed at CES 2020, with the EV tapping high-speed connectivity for features like autonomous driving. Previewed as the Vision iNEXT back in 2018, the all-electric crossover SUV is expected to arrive on roads by 2021.
Smart e-moped maker NIU yesterday announced its launch in the US consumer market and it has more to say beyond mopeds. Joining the growing number of voices shouting "5G", the Chinese company is revealing two new electric motorcycle lines that are embracing the current trends in mobile and automotive industries. While the RQi-GT and TQi-GT have different forms and slightly different features, both are joined by a common thread, what NIU calls "5G IoT", that keeps the vehicles connected to NIU's cloud, whether you like it or not.
CES wouldn't be CES without a glittering autonomous car concept hitting the Las Vegas strip, and for 2020 it's the turn of the Audi AI:ME to ditch the driver. Billed as the "third living space," the self-piloted e-tron electric hatchback is a prototype of not only what the car of the future might look like, but the sort of things we may be doing inside when we're not focused on actively driving.
Qualcomm has built a modular autonomous car system offering automakers a shortcut to self-driving vehicles, as the chip-maker attempts to extend its footprint outside smartphones and modems. The Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform includes multiple chips and accelerators for things like computer vision, packaged into a car-friendly form factor, and with a whole software suite for autonomous driving.
Drifting is a sport that lots of people are into. It requires a high degree of car control to keep the vehicle sliding sideways while maintaining control. Anyone who has tried drifting knows it's not as easy as it looks. Researchers at Dynamic Design Lab created an autonomous car that uses tech to drift itself around a controlled course.
Hyundai plans to bring a flying car to CES 2020, previewing its vision of not only air taxi transportation, but how passengers will move between the ground and the skies. The Hyundai Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) will just be a concept, the South Korean automaker says, but it argues that there are legitimate benefits from spreading the commute upwards.
Mapping specialist HERE has found itself two new investors, with current investors including Audi, BMW, and Mercedes shuffling to accommodate Mitsubishi and NTT. Formerly known as Navteq, HERE was acquired from Nokia back in 2015 and has been working on not only digital mapping but services for future autonomous vehicles.
Ford has detailed its multi-million dollar plans to build autonomous vehicles in Michigan, part of a $1.45 billion scheme to reinvent its auto business and catch up in electrification. The news comes shortly after Ford unveiled its first all-electric crossover, the 2021 Mustang Mach-E, which has already proved controversial among muscle-car fans.
Forget self-driving cars and look instead to the skies, where startup Skyryse believes we'll soon be seeing self-flying helicopters. The company has revealed its first autonomous chopper, dubbed Luna, which has successfully completed a full flight - from takeoff, flight, and landing - without a human pilot's hands on the controls.